dignity
against the half-white than against the all-black, while in Guiana,
according to Sir Harry Johnston in his great work "The Negro in the New
World," it is the half-white that, in his turn, despises the black and
succeeds in marrying still further whitewards. It might have been
thought that the dark-white races on the northern shore of the
Mediterranean--the Spaniards, Sicilians, &c.--who have already been
crossed with the sons of Ham from its southern shore, would, among the
American immigrants, be the natural links towards the fusion of white
and black, but a similar instinct of pride and peril seems to hold them
back. But whether the antipathy in America be a race instinct or a
social prejudice, the accusations against the black are largely
panic-born myths, for the alleged repulsive smell of the negro is
consistent with being shaved by him, and the immorality of the negress
is consistent with her control of the nurseries of the South. The devil
is not so black nor the black so devilish as he is painted. This is not
to deny that the prognathous face is an ugly and undesirable type of
countenance or that it connotes a lower average of intellect and ethics,
or that white and black are as yet too far apart for profitable fusion.
Melanophobia, or fear of the black, may be pragmatically as valuable a
racial defence for the white as the counter-instinct of philoleucosis,
or love of the white, is a force of racial uplifting for the black. But
neither colour has succeeded in monopolising all the virtues and graces
in its specific evolution from the common ancestral ape, and a
superficial acquaintance with the work of Dr. Arthur Keith teaches that
if the black man is nearer the ape in some ways (having even the remains
of throat-pouches), the white man is nearer in other ways (as in his
greater hairiness).

And besides being, as Sir Sydney Olivier says, "a matrix of emotional
and spiritual energies that have yet to find their human expression,"
the African negro has obviously already not a few valuable ethnic
elements--joy of life, love of colour, keen senses, beautiful voice, and
ear for music--contributions that might somewhat compensate for the
dragging-down of the white and, in small doses at least, might one day
prove a tonic to an anaemic and art-less America. A musician like
Coleridge-Taylor is no despicable product of the "Melting Pot," while
the negroes of genius whom the writer has been privileged to know--men