FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321  
322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   >>  
Meet at the dining-table and in the drawing-room,--visit, study, play, associate familiarly and intimately,--and the young people of the two races, in many instances, will pass through acquaintance and friendship to love and marriage. Then springs a mixed and degenerate race; then the white race, with its proud tradition, its high ideals, its grand power, shades off into an inferior, mongrel breed. Our inheritance, our civilization, our honor, bid us shut out and forbid that degeneracy at the very threshold." Let it be assumed that for the present the white South resolutely maintains its attitude of social separation. But let its defenders consider some of the consequences it involves, and make account with them as best they may. Does not this social code strongly confirm, and indeed carry as a necessary implication, that industrial separation which must work injuriously not only to the negro but to the community? If the white gentleman will not associate with a black gentleman in a committee on school or public affairs, if he will not admit him to his pew or his drawing-room, is it not to be expected that the white carpenter or mill-hand will refuse to work side by side with the black? What that means where the black man is in a small minority, we see here at the North,--it shuts him out. Where he is in stronger force, as at the South, the refusal of industrial fellowship means growing bitterness, and the complication and aggravation of labor difficulties. It all goes along together,--the social separation and the industrial. Further, this means that each race is to be ignorant and aloof from the other, on its best side. The best side of every civilized people is seen in its homes. The white and the black homes of the South are strangers to each other. Edgar Gardner Murphy in his admirable book, _The Present South_, while he does not for a moment question the necessity of the social barrier, laments that ignorance of each other's best which it involves. He dwells hopefully on that development of the family life which marks the negro's best advance,--but what, he asks, can the white people really see or know of it? Surely it is a very grave matter to keep two intermingled peoples thus mutually ignorant of each other's best. If it be asked, "What course can reasonably be considered as a possible alternative to the jealous safeguarding of our race integrity?" the answer might suggest itself: "Simply deal with every
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321  
322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   >>  



Top keywords:

social

 

industrial

 

people

 
separation
 
involves
 

ignorant

 
gentleman
 

associate

 

drawing

 

minority


stronger
 

difficulties

 

growing

 

complication

 

aggravation

 
bitterness
 

refusal

 

fellowship

 

Further

 
peoples

mutually

 
intermingled
 

Surely

 

matter

 

considered

 

suggest

 

Simply

 
answer
 

integrity

 

alternative


jealous

 

safeguarding

 

Present

 

moment

 

admirable

 

Murphy

 

strangers

 

Gardner

 

question

 

necessity


family

 

development

 

advance

 

dwells

 

barrier

 

laments

 
ignorance
 

civilized

 

community

 

shades