Friction between the races : causes and cure Read online

  Dr. G. V. Hamilton says, "Forenoons spent with nervous patients and afternoons with healthy monkeys can teach you surprising truths about human nature. For about nine years I spent mornings listening to nervous patients in my consulting room, and my afternoons watching a tribe of monkeys which I kept in my forty acres of live oaks near Santa Barbara . . . Throughout these years my purpose was, of course, to try to add to our understanding of human nature." In the book, Understanding Human Nature, by Dr. Alfred Adler, the author says, "Our examination of nervous diseases prove that the psychic anomalies, complexes, mistakes, which are found in nervous diseases are fundamentally not different in structure from the activity of normal individuals. The same elements, the same premises, the same movements, are under consideration. The sole difference is that in the nervous patient they appear more marked, and are more easily recognized. The advantage of this discovery is that we can learn from the abnormal cases, and sharpen our eye for the discovery of related movements and characteristics in the normal psychic life. It is solely a question of that training, ardor, and patience which are required of any profession."

  Suicides are abnormal beings. In them self-renunciation is over-developed. The fact that the white people have a far greater number of suicides proportionately than colored people suggests the presence among them of the attitude of self-renunciation which expressing itself in a higher way than suicide has made their social structure strong, progressive, and enduring. The self-renunciation of George Washington and Ex-President Calvin Coolidge shown in declining to aspire for the third term in the presidency of the nation illustrates the part played by the attitude in the stabilization of society. Revolutions to displace men clinging to authority for too long a period take place where self-renunciation is weak. Where this attitude is weak, one generation does not make the sacrifices needed to advance properly the interests of the next generation.

  The Civic Sense

  3. The civic life of the Negro race does not give sufficient evidence of the widespread presence of a keen sense of personal responsibility for the general welfare.

  Whether one approves or disapproves of the principles of the N.A.A.C.P., it must be conceded that it has been very vigorous in pushing the claims of the Negro race. After twenty years of such service contributions from Negroes for its maintenance do not average one cent per capita according to the following statement by Mr. Eust Gay: And for the year ended 1929, December 3l, the Association got from membership barely $40,000, ten times the minimum it should have received. Just one cent per capita. Evidently we cannot value the Association's program very much. Evidently we hold our liberty and the securing of justice in this country very cheaply. Now here is an angle of this situation which should cause colored people to hang their heads in shame."

  There is nothing more fatal to a democracy than an attitude of apathy. It is the mother of corruption and machine politics. Autocracies and oligarchies thrive where the masses of the people are apathetic. The seriousness of this matter may be seen from the following statement by Dr. Alfred Adler in the book Understanding Human Nature: "When the social feeling has been insufficiently developed, one acquires sufficient interest for his fellows only with great difficulty, even under threat of punishment; whereas in the presence of a well-developed community consciousness, this interest is self-evident. * * *

  "It really does not matter what you think of yourself, or what other people think of you. The important thing is the general attitude towards human society, since this determines every wish and every interest, and every activity of each individual."

  Habit of Inquiry

  4. There is in some minds a native thirst that leads to investigation along all lines. While there are some investigative minds in the Negro race the number is far too small. There is great need of the universal possession of the attitude of curiosity which leads to inquiry. The inquisitive mind cannot be on perfectly good terms with the stationary mind.

  The late Nathaniel S. Shaler said that the Negro on the whole, is lacking in the degree of curiosity which leads to inquiry. The lack of a proper degree of the spirit of inquiry leads to the prevalence of rumors which have no foundation in fact, causes a lack of proper support for authorship, causes some newspapers to resort to fantastic methods to increase circulation, and causes the lot of the advanced thinker to be peculiarly hard. As to whether a race is to be progressive or stationary depends in large measure upon the extent of the habit of inquiry.

  Spirit of Division

  5. There is in nature a divisive spirit. It is this spirit in nature which leads to her uniform tendency toward variability. But some races have far more divisive tendencies than others. At present the Negroes are characterized by a divisive spirit. The white people of the United States have 261 members for each church, and the colored people have 122 for each church. Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn says: "The Anglo Saxon branch. of the Nordic race is again showing itself to be that upon which the nation must chiefly depend for leadership, for courage, for loyalty, for unity and harmony of action, for leadership, for self-sacrifice and devotion to an ideal."

  The Baptist denomination occupies about the same relative position among the white and the colored people of the South. The minds of nine thousand colored people of Greenville, Mississippi, call for some twenty-two or twenty-three Baptist Churches in which to express themselves. The minds of six thousand white people call for one Baptist Church. In Texarkana, Texas and Arkansas, there are fourteen Negro Baptist Churches and five white Baptist churches, with the Negro population of the two cities about one-fourth. of that of the white people. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, there are five white Baptist churches for the twenty-one thousand white population, and five Negro Baptist churches for a Negro population of four thousand. Throughout the South there is one Methodist denomination among the white people and three strong Methodist denominations among the colored people.

  Is there anything in the climate of Africa which imparts the impulse to divide? The African ant is destructive, eating the wood of tree. Mr. Wm. T. Hornaday, in the book, The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals, says: "Our present ( 1921 ) male African elephant, Kartoum, is not so hostile toward people, but his insatiable desire is to break and to smash all of his environment that can be bent or broken. His ingenuity in finding ways to damage doors and gates, and to bend or to break steel beams, is amazing. His greatest feat consisted in breaking squarely in two, by pushing with his head, a 90 pound steel railroad iron used as the top bar of his fence. He knows the mechanism of the latch of the ponderous steel door between his two box stalls, and nothing but a small pin that only human fingers can manipulate suffices to thwart his efforts to control the latch. Kartoum has gone over every inch of surface of his two apartments, his doors, gates and fences, to find something that he can break or damage. The steel linings of his apartment walls, originally five feet high, we have been compelled to extend upward to a height of nine feet, to save the brick walls from being battered and disfigured. He has searched his steel fences throughout, in order to find their weakest points, and concentrate his attacks upon them. If the sharp pointed iron spikes three inches long that are set all over his doors are perfectly solid, he respects them, but if one is the least bit loose in its socket, he works at it until he finally breaks it off."

  Regardless as to whether Africa does or does not impart the impulse of division we have ample evidence that-this is an attitude which the colored people of the United States should watch with the utmost care.

  IMMEDIACY

  6. Prof. Carl G. Jung refers to what he calls the immediacy of the Negro race. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls the Negro of Africa essentially the child of the moment. Prof. Kelly Miller calls attention to the shortness of the lives of Negro institutions, organizations and enterprises. The halictus bee has an attitude that calls for the rebuilding of her colony twice a year, the Wasp once a year, while the society of the apis bee lasts from three to ten years and that of the ant as long as forty years. If the Neg
ro race on the whole is characterized by a short range vision and the rest of the American people by long range vision it can be seen that there will be a conflict of spirits.

  This childlike immediacy to which Prof. Jung refers plays a large part in the splitting of Negro organizations. Negroes, like all other human beings, are imperfect, and these imperfections manifest themselves in their organizations. Some of them are very glaring and annoying and call loudly for reformation. Reformers appear and are able to show very clearly that there are evils which should be removed. Often this cannot be done at once. Reformers, characterized by "childlike immediacy" insist upon immediate correction, and when this does not take place, they proceed to try to cure the evils by pulling away from them.

  Those who withdraw from what they consider evil conditions are themselves imperfect human beings, and it is not long before evils appear in the new organizations. These evils most likely will be of a different nature but they will be evils just the same. Other reformers will appear, and again "childlike immediacy" will assert itself. The organization which came as a result of a split itself now suffers a split. This process goes on and on, and will go on indefinitely until the "childlike immediacy" is cured.

  Co-Ordination

  7. The power of coordination has been acquired by only two sets of living creatures--social insects and human beings. The rarity of the attainment is further shown in that only one family of insects is fully social in every species, and only one race of human beings manifests collective efficiency throughout its ranks.

  The human beings who do not coordinate their activities are far behind in this respect the social insects, concerning which Nathaniel S. Shaler says: "It is evident that in the intelligence of the articulated animals there is a latent capacity for combining the work of a host of individuals, so that from the association is developed something of the nature of public opinion, we lack a better term for it,--which enables and requires all the co-operators to act in unison."

  The late Justice Gaynor, of New York, once remarked that whenever one race has contempt for another that contempt is likely to overflow in some way. In order to avoid this overflow of contempt from whatever source it may chance to come every race and group should act in such a way as to engage the respect rather than the contempt of others.

  It is impossible for one group to have a full respect for another group in the absence of collective efficiency. When a group fails to meet its joint tasks, although seeing the need and possessing the power to do so, the respect of on-looking groups is lowered. This is tending in the direction of contempt, which, as stated, has the tendency to overflow in some unpleasant way. Every group and every race owes it to itself and to the rest of humanity to manifest collective efficiency, to take care of its joint tasks.

  The Declaration of Independence was wise in recognizing the fact that there are some things which should be done out of "a decent regard to the opinion of mankind." It is utterly unwise for even the strongest nation to ignore the thoughts of others regarding it. We know not when nor how the ill opinion of others may affect us.

  There is an opinion of mankind that the Negro race does not function up to capacity. Mr. H. L. Mencken, editor of the American Mercury, says, "For all their progress, economic, political and cultural, they have yet failed to accomplish two things that are of the first importance--indeed more important than any other. The first is the organization of their people into a coherent and reasonably steadfast bloc, capable of acting, when the common interest is at stake, as a unit."

  As a race we should make a record that will prevent men from holding such views. Mr. Will Alexander, of Atlanta, Ga., a winner of the Harmon Award given annually to the person who has done most during the year to promote good will between the races, says, "It is of the highest importance that the nation should realize that the Negroes can do in a first class way any work which other men can do." In view of this fact it is quite important for the Negro race in the United States to know how to make the nation realize that it is thoroughly capable as a race.

  Tasks Not Being Adequately Met

  We call attention to some joint tasks which could be met if approached with collective efficiency. The Negro race in the United States, with all its marvelous progress, is threatened with death as a race. Health records show that it began life under freedom with sounder bodies and better health than the white people of this country. They were freer from consumption than the whites. At the present time Negro policy-holders in insurance companies, (the most healthy type of the race), have twice the death rate of the whites for consumption. Negro boys between the ages 10 and 14 have a death rate eleven times that of white boys of similar ages. Negro girls of these ages have a death rate eight times that of white girls of the same age.

  In addition to the ravages of disease germs, Negroes are being mowed down by deadly weapons in their hands. Negroes in one Southern city killed eleven more of their own race in one year than were lynched by the more than thirty millions of white people of the South during the past three years. The Negroes kill each other at about ten times the rate at which white people kill each other. The disposition of the colored people to kill each other has lifted ten southern cities to the pinnacle of being the greatest murder centers of the world, a shameful eminence that stings to the quick. The three cities of the North which lead all their sister cities of that section in the rate of homicides are cities to which colored people have gone in large numbers in recent yearn and a public official in one of those cities says that eighty per cent of the crimes of brutality have been comitted by persons that have been there less than a year. The colored people in one southern city have boosted the murder rate until in 1928 it was four times that of Chicago, six times the average rate of American cities, thirty-five and one-half times that of Canada. and one hundred and twenty times that of England and Wales.

  The Rating of Races

  There is a rooster that develops a tail forty feet long, but this long tail will not give him the highest rating. Likewise a race can be great along lines which do not bring the highest esteem. The ability of the Negro race to produce talented individuals is no longer questioned but is cheerfully conceded. But individual excellence does not bring the highest rating. Races are rated according to the capacity manifested for sustained collective action of the highest order.

  The late Gen. Foch who commanded the greatest army of men ever assembled under one leadership thus commended the American people for their efficiency: "A prodigious effort on the part of your entire nation's intelligence, will power and energy. A prodigious effort which has filled your associates with admiration and gratitude, and confounded your enemy."

  Mr. A. Wendell Malliett, in one of a series of articles appearing in the Pittsburgh Courier, says, "To my mind the black man of America is the most individualistic human being in existence."

  Mrs. M. E. Tracy says: "Haiti symbolizes a universal problem. What our attitude should be toward Latin-American countries is submerged in the greater question of what the attitude of all civilized governments should be towards the semi-civilized world. Call it tyranny, imperialism or exploitation, as you prefer, but those people who know how to do things, who want to do them and who need material with which to do them will make others behave while they work. That is the basic law of progress."

  Proposed Cures

  Let us now glance at some proposed cures. Great stress is being placed on education and rightly so, but the mistake must not be made of thinking intellectual training will solve the problem. Benjamin Kidd holds that intellectual training in the absence of certain social traits lowers rather than raises racial efficiency.

  Prof. Floyd H. Allport discounts intellectual training as a solvent of the inter-racial situation. He says, "This discrepancy in mental ability is not great enough to account for the problem that centers about the American Negro, or to explain fully the ostracism to which he is subjected * * * The heart of the Negro question is not to be in the sphere of intelligence. *
* *"

  William Dean Howells was of the opinion that race prejudice would disappear in the face of Negro art. He regarded the poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar as establishing the essential unity of the human family. He said, "I permitted myself the imaginative prophecy that the hostilities and the prejudices which had so long constrained his race were destined to vanish in the arts; that they were to be final proof that God had made of one blood all nations of men." Howell's theory of the conquest of race prejudice through the development of art was subjected to a test recently in the city of Philadelphia. A Miss Hunter, director of the Art Alliance of Philadelphia, in refusing a bronze figure of a Negro as an art exhibit, is reported as saying, "The color problem seems to be unusually great in Philadelphia."

  Industrial education, thrift and economic progress so ably stressed by the late Booker T. Washington has not bright the nation any nearer to the solution of the problem, although the policy was a wise one and has done an untold amount of good. The economic success of the Negro is what enabled the race to invade the fine residential sections of their northern emancipators precipitating the flight of the latter.

  The fear has been expressed that adjustment will be of a temporary nature, hence the enduring character of the problem. Prof. Wm. Dougall, of Harvard University, says, "The circumstances and environment may modify or even check for a time, the effects of the inherited racial characteristics; but these will always come out again and make themselves felt, and being thus the most persistent element in man's mental makeup, they will appear as the dominant influence in the development of the character and point of view of the group."