l the white inhabitants of
the land, with their centuries of inherited superiority, conserve their
civilization and carry it forward to a yet higher plane, hampered by
ten million black inhabitants of the same land with their centuries of
inherited inferiority?"

To the foregoing answer, this might now and again be added, or advanced
independently in reply to our question: "Personal aversion on the part
of the white person for the Negro; personal aversion accounted for by
nothing the individual Negro is, or is not, intellectually and morally;
accounted for by the fact, simply, that he is a Negro, that he has a
black or colored skin, that he is different, of another kind."

Now, certainly, there are very few average men or philosophers, to whom
the answer given to our question would not seem to state, or at any rate
fairly indicate, the race problem in its essence. But, however few they
be, I do not hesitate to align myself with them as one who does not
believe that the essential race problem as it exists in the South
(whatever it be in the North) is stated, or even fairly indicated, in
the foregoing answer. In Northern and Western communities, where he
is outnumbered by many thousands of white people, the Negro may be
accounted a problem, because he is lazy, or ignorant, or brutal, or
criminal, or all these things together; or because he is black
and different. But in Southern communities, where the Negro is not
outnumbered by many thousands of white people, the race problem,
essentially, and in its most acute form, is something distinct from
his laziness or ignorance, or brutality, or criminality, or all-round
intellectual and moral inferiority to the white man. That problem as
the South knows and deals with it would exist, as certainly as it does
to-day, if there were no shadow of excuse for the conviction that the
Negro is more lazy, or more ignorant, or more criminal, or more brutal,
or more anything else he ought not to be, or less anything else he
ought to be, than other men. In other words, let it be supposed that
the average Negro is as a matter of fact the equal, morally and
intellectually, of the average white man of the same class, and the
race problem declines to vanish, declines to budge. We shall see why,
presently. The statements just made demand immediate justification. For
they are doubtless surprising to a degree, and to some readers may prove
startling.

I proceed to justify them as briefly as poss