an observation made less often; but that _there is no problem_
would seem to be either the flippant remark of one who dabbles in
sociology or the profound utterance of a new seer.

Mr. Seligmann, nevertheless, does not hesitate either to make this
assertion or to attempt to demonstrate its truth. In "the
conversational tone of the scientist," he cites the testimony of
anthropologists, the opinions of students of racial and sociological
questions, the conclusions reached by scientific surveys of rural and
urban conditions, the observations of sworn eye-witnesses and the
findings of grand juries in cases of inter-racial disturbance. The
conclusion to be reached, to his mind, is that the so-called race
problem is not a problem in itself, but a "blind spot" in the eye of
the American public, a "color psychosis," a "habit of thought" by
which questions of race and racial differences are connected,
"frequently deliberately," with phases of American life with which
they should have nothing to do,--in fact, with every phase of American
life. This habit of thought, Mr. Seligmann says, is prevalent
throughout the southern part of this country and is spreading through
the North and West. In the cities, it makes the smallest and most
natural examples of race tension "definitely subject to manipulation
by political leaders and their allies in newspaper offices," raises
the rent to Negro applicants for houses, protests against their living
in certain localities, opposes the Negro in industry as he awakens to
the strategic position which he occupies and uses such opposition in
the fostering of race riots. In the rural communities of some parts of
the South, it has created an "American Congo" in which peonage is
practiced openly. In the World War, it made the United States'
"essential struggle" internal rather than external, brought about the
rebirth of the Ku-Klux Klan on this side of the waters, and worked
against the success of the Nation's arms abroad. In social questions
it makes sex "the distorted glass by which the Negro is presented to
view." It "lays its fetters upon science" and stifles the truths of
anthropology with a blanket of myth. The spread of the habit of
thought is in many cases part of a deliberate propaganda, the chief
agent of which is the American newspaper, and "the only course for
white Americans to pursue is to cultivate thorough-going skepticism as
to everything which American newspapers publish about the Ne