THE NEGRO PROBLEM IN AMERICA. vi rE greatly honour President Roosevelt
for asking Mr. Booker Washington, the negro philanthropist, to dinner, and yet we wish it had not occurred to him to do it. He vas, of course, entirely within his right both as gentleman and as President in giving the invitation, which seems to have been unpremeditated, and, indeed, acci- dental, he wishing to continue a conversation which the announcement of dinner broke off. The President of the United States is the agent of the people, not their slave ; and the claim of the " public " to interfere in his private life, a claim which of late years has been pushed to pre- posterdus lengths, required a sharp rebuke. The public might as well settle the dishes he should eat as the guests whom he should receive. Mr. Roosevelt, moreover, as having been elected by events rather than by any party, claims to be in a special degree the representative of the entire people; and the eight millions of negroes in the United States count at elections as well as on the Census rolls. • He was entirely within his right, whatever his motive ; and if his motive was to weaken a prejudice by defying it, and he expected the consequent outburst of irritation, and was unmoved by the expectation, he did a very noble act. It is quite time that an American Presi- dent endeavoured to lead the people, instead of always listening with his ear to the ground to receive their whispered commands. Nevertheless, we wish that the President had not been moved to give the invitation, because we do not believe that the recognition of a non- existent equality between the races is the way to kill out the white prejudice against the black one. There is no equality. As they all interbreed, it may be taken as certain that, in that far past which it has been the will of Providence to hide so completely from us, all the families of man sprang from one common stock ; but it is equally certain that they have developed unequally, and that the negro stands at the present moment behind both the white man and the brown. Individuals have advanced to a highlevel, but the race, besides its apparent deficiency in accumulating power, retains in Africa, in Hayti, and in the Southern States deep traces of savagery, especially as regards the rela- tions of the sexes, which it will need generations to work out. During the process the hatred of the white race for the black, when brought into immediate contact, rather increases than diminishes, every step forward taken by the latter deepening at once jealousy and distaste in the former, just as the squire of high degree almost loves his grooms, but has neither affection nor respect for wealthy tradesmen. Emancipation, which, as we hold, was a pure act of justice, essential to any Christian civi- lisation, the refusal of wages being a continuous robbery, killed kindliness of feeling instead of developing it in. the .superior breed. That colossal though noble blunder, the concession of the vote, made them bitterly hostile, so hostile that they often prevent its use under penalty of death; and the demand for social equality, which naturally 6npervenes on the vote, drives them perfectly frantic. TheY feel the demand. as an insult to each individual white Illa!1, and when white women are concerned this temper rises to a fury that can be assuaged only by blood. They pass social rules stronger than any which in the Middle Ages divided the castes of Europe, stronger, indeed, than those antique and immovable rules which in India rail off the castes from each other. The whites of the Southern States not only refuse to intermarry with the blacks— which was once the test line between patrician and gutter blood—or to eat with them—which is the Indian test line— but to live in the same hotel with them, or go in the same car with them, or even—which is remarkable because it is admitted to be a breach of religious teaching—to take the Communion from the same cup. As the races are both brave, and the lower one morbidly vain, as they have to live together, and as every distinction, if fully carried out, involves a breach of law, this condition of affairs provokes a silent struggle, breaking out perpetually in village war, which is so dangerous that many keen and cool observers, Tocqueville for one, have believed that the ultimate remedy must be either the extirpation of the negro, or his forcible expulsion, or his voluntary retreat south- ward, which would leave the territory of the Union to the whites and the Red Indians, who, though equally hated, are, for reasons which have their root in the history of past ages, not equally contemned. A trace of Indian blood hurts no man on the American Continent, and the Virginian aristocrat would dine with President Diaz without a qualm.
We believe that the " remedies " we have quoted are all impossible, the numbers to be dealt with being unmanage- ably great, and that there is a far milder one, strict social segregation, with a full acknowledgment of inequality, to be maintained until in the course of ages it is found to be inconvenient or absurd. The white and the black men should form themselves avowedly, as they now do un- avowedly, into two castes, like the Hindoos and Mussul- mans of India, with no intercourse except on the common business of life. The white men should be acknowledged by the black men as the superior caste, which they are, and the black men should be acknowledged by the white men as fellow-citizens entitled to all rights except those which presuppose equality. The two should neither quarrel nor embrace, never intermarry, never eat together, or play together, or worship together, or, if that is found necessary, travel together in the same car. The vote should, for the present, be withdrawn from the blacks, who then would occupy precisely the position of white women, and the right to sit on juries should be regulated so that though the whites gave the verdict, the blacks were never left unrepresented. Every office except the Presidency should remain open to both ; but the white should have the right of demanding as a mark of caste superiority that he be tried by a white Judge, a privilege which he demands and secures in every country in which he has obtained "capitulations."
We believe that under these arrangements the two colours would. be able to live together in peace, and would develop side by side in their own way, until at last the colour rules were felt to be inconvenient, and were swept away in favour of equality. They are exactly in accordance with the facts—which is always a strong buttress for the arrangements of any community—and might, if strictly observed and kindly worked, be brought, if not completely within the Christian law—which certainly prescribes equality in worship—at least into full accord with practical Christian sentiment. Forty years ago they would have been hotly denounced by philanthropists ; but that excel- lent though enthusiastic class of men have learned much wisdom lately, and seem to recognise that though no inequality can justify slavery for one moment, natural in- equalities do exist, and are best treated by complete but kindly recognition. We do not, at least, hearany audible cry for giving votes to the Zulu or the Bushman.. As to their practicability, they already existin India, where mthousands of villages Mussulmans and Hindoos live side by side, never intermarrying, never eating together, never, if they can help it, touching each other; yet transacting all the business of life with each other without quarrelling or breaking any ordinary law. So do the Brahmin and the Sudra, and so, above all, do the white men and the brown—no Indian is really black—though the former claim, and actually wield, the sole political power. It is not always in close association that liking and respect are born, still less through the denial or artificial concealment of plain facts, and the plain fact is that the black man in the Southern States is not and cannot be made the equal of the white, the effort to treat him as such producing nothing on both Sides but a dangerous irritation. If we are not greatly mistaken, Mr. Booker Washington, of whom we wish to speak with all respect as perhaps the ablest man of his race, himself recently acknowledged this in a public speech which made a deep impression, not only on his hearers, but all through the Union. At any rate, this solution is strongly urged by a negro writer (Mr. W. H. Councill) in a very able paper in a recent number of Leslie's Weekly, i.e., that of October 12th. He desires to keep the races entirely apart, and to let each develop on its own lines, while keeping a respectful distance from the other. It is through strict but kindly segregation that, in the present exceptional circumstances, the road to peace between the races lies, a segregation which each should accept as made by laws over which neither of them has any power.
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