UJ lA^

Ct9SOL

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBARARY,
NEW HAVEN, CONN.

THE HEART OF THE RACE PROBLEM

BY

QUINCY EWING

[Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly for March, 1909]

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
I 4 Park Stbeet, Boston, Mass.

THE HEART OF THE RACE PROBLEM

BY QUINCY EWING

" And, instead of going to the Congress of the United States and saying there is no distinction
made in Mississippi, because of color or previous condition of servitude, teU the truth, and say
this : ' We tried for many years to Uve in Mississippi, and share sovereignty and dominion with
the Negro, and we saw our institutions crumbling. . . . We rose iu the majesty and highest type
of Anglo-Saxon manhood, and took the reins of government out of the hands of the carpet-bagger
and tho Negro, and, so help us God, from now on we will never share any sovereignty or dominion
with him again.' " — Governor James K. Vakdaman, Mississippi, 1904.

During the past decade, newspaper
and magazine articles galore, and not a
few books, have been written on what is
called the " Race Problem," the problem
caused by the presence in this country of
some ten millions of black and variously-
shaded colored people known as Ne
groes. But, strange as it may sound, the
writer has no hesitation in saying that at
this date there appears to be no clear con
ception anywhere, on the part of most
people, as to just what the essential pro
blem is which confronts the white inhab
itants of the country because they have
for fellow-citizens (nominally) ten million
Negroes. Ask the average man, ask even
the average editor or professor anywhere,
what the race problem is, the heart of it;
why, in this land with its millions of for
eigners of all nationalities, the race pro
blem of problems should be caused by
ten million Negroes, not foreigners but
native to the soil through several genera
tions ; and in all probability you will get
some such answer as this : —
" The Negroes, as a rule, are very ig
norant, are very lazy, are very brutal, are
very criminal. But a little way removed
from savagery, they are incapable of
adopting the white man's moral code, of
assimilating the white man's moral sen
timents, of striving toward the white
man's moral ideals. They are creatures
of brutal, unta,med instincts, and uncon

trolled feral passions, which give frequent
expression of themselves in crimes of hor
rible ferocity. They are, in brief, an un
civilized, semi-savage people, living in a
civilization to which they are unequal,
partaking to a limited degree of its bene
fits, performing in no degree its duties.
Because they are spatially in a civiliza
tion to which they are morally and intel
lectually repugnant, they cannot but be
as a foreign irritant to the body social.
The problem is. How shall the body so
cial adjust itself, daily, hourly, to this
irritant; how feel at ease and safe in spite
of it .'' How shall 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 inhabit
ants of the same land with their centu
ries of inherited inferiority 1 "
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 in
dividual 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 av
erage men or philosophers, to whom the

4

The Heart of the Race Problem

answer given to our question would not
seem to state, or" at iiny rate fairly indi
cate, 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 pro
blem as it exists in the South (whatever
it be in the North) is stated, or even fair
ly indicated, in the foregoing answer.
In Northern and Western communities, .
where he is outnumbered by many th ru
sands 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 out
numbered by many thousands of white
people, the race problem, essentially, and
in its most acute form, is something dis
tinct from his laziness or ignorance, or
brutality, or criminality, or all-round in
tellectual 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 ig
norant, 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 sup
posed that the average Negro is as a mat
ter of fact the equal, morally and intellect
ually, 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
possible, asking the reader to bear in mind
that very much more might be said along
this line than I allow myself space to say.

That the Negro is not a problem be
cause he is lazy, because he declines to

work, is evidenced by the patent fact that
in virtually every Southern community
he is sought as a laborer in fields, mills,
mines, and that in very many Southern
communities the vexing problem for em
ployers is not too many, but too few
Negoes. In certain agricultural sections,
notably in the Louisiana sugar district,
quite a number of Italians (" Dagoes ")
are employed, The reason -is not dissat
isfaction with Negro labor, but simply
that there is not enough of it to meet the
requirements of the large plantations.
There is, perhaps, not one of these plan
tations on which any able-bodied Negro
could not get employment for the asking;
and as a rule, the Negroes are given, not
the work which demands the lowest, but
that which demands the highest, effi
ciency : they are the ploughmen, the team
sters, the foremen. If any one doubts
that Negroes are wanted as laborers in
Southern communities, very much want
ed, let him go to any such community
and attempt to inveigle a few dozen of
the laziest away. He will be likely to take
his life in his hands, after the usual warn
ing is disregarded !

The small politician's trump card,
played early and late, and in all seasons,
that the Negro is a black shadow over
the Southland because of his excessive
criminality, serves well tlie politician's
purpose, — it wins his game ; but only be
cause the game Ls played and won on a
board where fictions, not facts, are domi
nant. Nothing is easier than to offer so-
called proofs of the contention that the
Negro's tendency to crime is something
peculiar to his race; there are the jail and
penitentiary and gallows statistics, for in
stance. But surely it should not be diffi
cult for these so-called proofs to present
themselves in their true light to any one
who takes the trouble to consider two
weighty and conspicuous facts : this, first,
that the Negroes occupy everywhere in
this country the lowest social and Indus-

The Heart of the Race Problem

trial plane, the plane which everywhere
else supplies the jaU, the penitentiary, the
gallows, with the greatest number of their
victims; and secondly this, that in the
section of the country where these penal
statistics are gathered, all the machinery
of justice is in the hands of white men.
No Negro is a sheriff, or judge, or justice
of the peace, or grand or petit juryman, or
member of a pardoning board. Charged
with crime, again and again, the black
man must go to jail ; he is unable to give
bond; he is defended, not by the ablest,
but by the poorest lawyers, often by an
unwilling appointee of the court ; he lacks
the benefit of that personal appeal to
judge and jury, so often enjoyed by other
defendants, which would make them
want to believe him innocent until proven
guilty ; he faces, on the contrary, a judge
and jury who hold him in some measure
of contempt as a man, regardless of his
guilt or innocence. He is without means,
except occasionally, to fight his case
through appeals to higher courts, and er
rors sleep in many a record that on re
view would upset the verdict. In the light
of such considerations, it would seem im
possible that criminal statistics should
not 'oearhari upon the Negro race, even
supposing it to bt gjact that that race of
all races in the world is the least crim
inal. Let it be admitted without question
that in most Southerr communities the
crimes and misdemeanors of the Negroes
exceed those committed by an equal num
ber of white people, and we have admit
ted nothing that at ali explains or ac
counts for the race problem. For is it not
equally true that in every other commun
ity the doers of society's rough work, the
recipients of its meagrest rewards, are
chargeable, relatively, with the greatest
number of crimes and misdemeanors ? Is
it not true, as well in Massachusetts and
Connecticut as in Louisiana and Mis
sissippi, that the vast majority of those
occupying prison cells are members of
the lowest social class .? that the vast ma
jority condemned, after trial, to hard la

bor with their hands were accustomed to
such labor before their judicial condem
nation? Nothing is more preposterous
than the idea that the race problem
means more Negroes hanged, more Ne
groes imprisoned, more Negroes in mines
and chain-gangs, than white people! If
the Negro did not furnish the great bulk
of the grist for the grinding of our penal
machinery in the Southern states, he
would constitute the racial miracle of this
and all ages!
My own conviction is, and I speak
with the experience of forty years' resi
dence in Southern states, that the Negro
is not more given to crimes and mis
demeanors than the laboring population
of any other section of the country. But
be this as it may, it is abundantly certain
that no race of people anywhere are more
easily controlled than the Negroes by the
guardians of law and order; and there
are none anywhere so easily punished for
disobedience to the statutes and man
dates of their economic superiors. Courts
and juries may be sometimes subject to
just criticism for undue leniency toward
white defendants; but that courts and
juries are ever subject to just criticism for
undue leniency in dealing with black de
fendants is the sheerest nonsense.
The frequent charge that the Negro's
worst crimes partake of a brutality that
is peculiarly racial, is not supported by
facts. I need not enlarge upon this state
ment further than to say that the Negro's
worst crimes, with all their shocking ac
companiments, are, not seldom, but often,
duplicated by white men. Let any one
who doubts the statement observe for one
week the criminal statistics of any cosmo
politan newspaper, and he wUl have his
doubt removed.
Assuredly we do not hit upon the es
sence of the race problem in the Negro's
propensity to crime !

Do we hit upon it in his ignorance, in
the fact that an immense number of the

6

The Heart of the Race Problem

black people are illiterate, not knowing
the first from the last_letler of the alpha
bet ? Hardly. For, almost to a man, the
people who uio.st parade and most rail at
the race problem in private conversation,
on the political platform, and iu the pages
of newspapers, books, and periodicals,
are disposed rather to lament, than to as
sist, the passing of the Negro's ignorance.
Ex-Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi,
used the following language in a message
to the legislature of that state, January,
1906: —
" The startling facts revealed by the
census show that those [Nei;Toes] who can .
read and write are more criminal than
the illiterate, which is true of no other ele
ment of our population. . . . The state
for many years, at great expense to the
tax-payers, has maintained a system of
Negro education which has produced dis
appointing results, and 1 am opposed to
the perpetuation of this systenL My own
idea is, that the character of education
for the Negro ought to be changed. If,
after forty years of earnest effort, and the
expenditure of fabulous sums to educate
his head, we have only succeeded in mak
ing a criminal of him and impairing his
usefulness and efficiency as a laborer,
wisdom would suggest that we make an
other experiment and see if we cannot
improve him by educating his hand and
his heart. . . . Slavery is the only pro
cess by which he has ever been partially
civilized. God Almighty created the Ne
gro for a menial, he is essentially a serv
ant." This is the reply of an ex-governor of
one of our blackest states to those who
contend that the Negro is a problem, a
" burden carried by the white people of
the South," because of his ignorance
and consequent inefficiency; and that the
lightening of the burden depends upon
more money spent, more earnest eft'ofts
made, for the schooling of the blaick peo
ple. According to this ex-governor (and
there are thousands who agree with him
in and out of Mississippi), the race pro
blem is heightened, rather than mitigat

ed, by all attempts to increase the Negro's
intellectual "Oiciency. The more ignorant
he is, the less burdensome he is to the
white man, provided his heart be good,
and his hand skillftd enough to do the
service of a menial. Nothing but slavery
ever partially civilized him, nothing but
slavery continued in some form «an civ
ilize him further!

IV
If we listen vainly for the heart-throb
of the race problem in the Negro's lazi
ness, and criminality, and brutality, and
ignorance, and inefficiency, do we detect
it with clearness and certainty in the per
sonal aversion felt by the white people for
the black people, aversion which the white
people can no more help feeling than the
black people can help exciting? Is this
the real trouble, the real burden, the real
tragedy and sorrow of our white popula
tion in those sections of the country where
the Negroes are many, — that they are
compelled to dwell face to face, day by
day, with an inferior, degraded popula
tion, repulsive to their finer sensibilities,
obnoxious to them in countless ways in
explicable ? Facts are far Aom furssish-
ing an affirmative answer; However pro
nounced may be the feeling of personal
aversion to-w ard fie Negroes in North
ern communities, Vhere they are few,' or
known at long raiige, or casually, there
is no such thing in Southern communities
as personal aversion for the Negro pro
nounced enough to be responsible for
anything resembling a problem. How
could there be in the South, where from
infancy we have all been as familiar with
black f a^jes as with white ; where many of
us fell asleep in the laps of black mam
mies, and had for playmates Ephrom,
Izik, Zeke, black mammy's grandchild
ren; where most of us have had our
meals prepared by black cooks, and been
¦waited on by black house-servants and
dining-room servants, and ridden in car
riages and buggies with black hostlers?
We are so used to the black people in the

The Heart of the Race Problem

South, their mere personal presence is
so far from being responsible for our
race problem, that the South would not
seem Southern without them, as it would
not without its crape myrtles, and live-
oaks, and magnolias, its cotton and its
sugar-cane !
It is very easy to go astray in regard to
the matter of personal aversion toward
the members of alien races, to magnify
greatly the reality and importance of it.
What seems race-aversion is frequently
something else, namely, revulsion aroused
by the presence of the strange, the un
usual, the uncanny, the not-understood.
Such revulsion is aroused, not only by the
members of alien races, alien and unfa
miliar, but as certainly by strange ani
mals of not more terrifying appearance
than the well-loved cow and horse; and
it would be aroused as really and as pain
fully, doubtless, by the sudden proximity
of one of Milton's archangels. It was
not necessarily race-aversion which made
Emerson, and may have made many an
other Concord philosopher, uncomfort
able in the presence of a Negro, any more
than it is race-aversion which makes the
Fifth Avenue boy run from the gentle
fannyard cow; any more than it is race-
aversion which would make me uncom
fortable in the presence of Li Hung
Chang. The Negro, simply, it may be,
was a mystery to Emerson, as the farm
yard cow is a mystery to the Fifth Ave
nue boy, as the Chinaman is a mystery
to me.
The Negro ]s not & mystery to people
whom he has nursed and waited on,
whose language he has spoken, whose
ways, good and bad, he has copied for
generations; ahd his personal presence
does not render them uncomfortable, not,
at any rate, uncomfortable enough to be
get the sense of a burden or a problem.
It may be very difficult for Northern
readers, to whom the Negro is in reality
a stranger, a foreigner, to appreciate fully
the force of what has just been said; but
appreciated by them it must be, or they
can never hope to realize the innermost

meaning of the race problem in the
South. So much for what the race problem is
not. Let me without further delay state
what it is. The foundation of it, true or
false, is the white man's conviction, that
the Negro as a race, and as an individual,
is his inferior: not human in the sense
that he is human, not entitled to the exer
cise of human rights in the sense that he
is entitled to the exercise of them. The
problem itself, the essence of it, the heart
of it, is the white man's determination to
make good this conviction, coupled with
constant anxiety lest, by some means, he
should fail to make it good. The race
problem, in other words, is not that the
Negro is what he is in relation to the
white man, the white man's inferior; but
this, rather : How to keep him what he is
in relation to the white man; how to pre
vent his ever achieving or becoming that
which would justify the belief on his part,
or on the part of other people, that he
and the white man stand on common
human ground.
That such is the heart of the problem
should be made evident by this general
consideration alone: namely, that every
where in the South friction between the
races is entirely absent so long as the
Negro justifies the white man's opinion
of him as an inferior; is grateful for privi
leges and lays no claim to rights. Let him
seem content to be as the South insists he
shall be, and not only is he not harshly
treated, not abused, and never boycotted,
but he is shown much kindness and gen
erosity, and employment awaits him for
the asking. Trouble brews when he be
gins to manifest those qualities, to reveal
those tastes, to give vent to those aihbi-
tions, which are supposed to be charac
teristic exclusively of the higher human
type, and which, unless restrained, would
result in confounding the lower with the
higher. The expression " Good Nigger "
means everywhere in the South a real
Negro, from the Southern standpoint, one
who in no respect gets out of focus with

8

The Heart of the Race Problem.

that standpoint; tl^e expression " Bad
Nigger " means universally one who in
SOUI' respect, not necessarily criminal,
does get out of focus with it. So, staled
differently, the race problem is the pro
blem how to keep the Negro in focus
with the traditional standpoint.
But we are very far from needing to rely
upon any general consideration in sup
port of the proposition advanced above.
It is supported by evidences on eiery
hand, waiting only the eye of recognition.
Scarcely a day passes but something is
said or done with thi.-; end in view, to em
phasize, lest they forget, the convictioi!
for both wlute man and Negro that the
latter is arui must remain an inferior.
Let me instance a few such evidences.
Consider, first, the " Jim Crow " leg
islation in the manner of its enforcement.
Such legislation is supposed to have for
its object the separation of the races in
trains, street-cars, etc., to save the white
people from occasional contact with
drunlten, rowdy, ill-smelling Negroes, and
to prevent personal encounters between
the whites and blacks. How is this object
attained in the street cars of Southern
cities ? Members of the different races
occupy the same cars, separated only by
absurdly inadequate little open-mesh
wire-screens, so tiny and light that a
conductor can move them from one seat
to another with the strength of his little
finger. Needless to add, these screens
would serve to obscure neither sound,
sight, nor smell of drunken rowdies who
sat behind them ! In summer cars, black
and white passengers may be separated
not even by a make-believe screen; they
are simply required, respectively, to oc
cupy certain seats in the front or the back
end of the cars.
In Birmingham, Alabama, the front
seats are assigned to Negroes in all
closed cars, and the back seats in all
open ones. Why the front seats in the
one case, and the back seats in the other,
it is not easy to understand in the light
of the letter and alleged spirit of the
Jim Crow law ! The underlying purpose

of the law i.s clearly not the separation of
the races in space; for public sentiment
does not insist upon its fulfillment to that
end. The underlying purpose of it would
seem to be the separation of the races in
status. The d(;etrine of inequality would
be attacked if white and black passen
gers rode in public conveyanceyt"< equal
terms; therefore the Negro whi ,'s in
a public conveyance must do so, not as of
undoubted right, but as with the white
man's permission, subject to the white
man's regulation. " This place you may
occupy, that other you may not, because I
am 1 and you are you, lest to you or me it
should he oh.iciired that I am, I and you are
you." Such is the real spirit of the Jim
Crow laws,
Why is it that in every Southern city no
Negro is allowed to witness a dramatic
performance, or a baseball game, from a
first-class seat ? In every large city, there
are hundreds of Negroes who would glad
ly pay for first-ela^ seats at the theatre
and the baseball game, were they permit
ted to. It can hardly be that permission
is withheld because theatres and baseball
games are so well attended by half the
population that first-class seats could not
be furnished for the other hah". As a mat
ter of fact, theatre-auditoriums and base
ball grand-stands are seldom crowded;
the rule is, not all first-class seats occu
pied, but many vacant. Surely as sim
ple as moving from seat to seat a make
shift screen in a street-car. would it be to
set apart a certain number of seats in the
dress-circle of every theati-e, and in the
grand-stand of every baseball park, for
Negro patrons. The reason why this is
not done is perfectly obvious : it would
be intolerable to the average Southern
man or woman to sit through the hours
of a theatrical performance or a baseball
game on terms of equal accommodation
with Negroes, even with a screen between.
Negroes would look out of place, out of
status, in the dress circle or the grand
stand ; their place, signifying their status,
is the peanut-gallery, or the bleachers.
There, neither they nor others will be

The Heart of the Race Problem

9

tempted to forget that as things are they
must continue.
How shall we account for the " intense
feeling" (to quote the language of the
mayor of New Orleans) occasioned in
that city one day, last July, when it was
flashed over the wires that the first prize
in the ' ional Spelling Contest had been
won ' Negro girl, in competition with
white children from New Orleans and
other Southern cities ? The indignation
of at least one of the leading New Orleans
papers verged upon hysterics ; the editor's
rhetoric visited upon some foulest crime
could hardly have been more inflamed
than in denunciation of the fact that, on
the far-away shore of Lake Erie, New
Orleans white children had competed at
a spelling bee with a Negro girl. The su
perintendent of the New Orleans schools
was roundly denounced in many quarters
for permitting his wards to compete with
a Negro; and there were broad hints in
" Letters from the People " to the papers
that his resignation was in order.
Certainly in the days following the Na
tional Spelling Contest the race problem
was in evidence, if it ever was, in New
Orleans^.aind the South! Did it show it-
sfi¥i^ihen, as its problem of Negro crime,
or brutality, or laziness ? Assuredly not !
Of the Negro's personal repulsiveness ?
By no means ! There was no evidence of
Negro criminality, or brutality, or lazi
ness in the Negro child's victory; and
every day in the South, in their games and
otherwise, hundreds of white children of
the best families are in cteer personal
contact with little Negroes than were the
white children who took part in the Cleve
land spelling bee. The " intense feel
ing " can be explained on one ground
only: the Negro girl's victdry was an
affront to the tradition of the Negro's
inferiority; it suggested — perhaps indi
cated — that, given equal opportunities,
all Negroes are not necessarily the intel
lectual inferiors of all white people. What
other explanation is rationally conceiv
able ? If the race problem means in the
South to its white inhabitants the bur

den and tragedy of having to dwell face
to face with an intellectually and morally
backward people, why should not the
Negro girl's triumph have occasioned in
tense feeling of pleasure, rather than dis
pleasure, by its suggestion that her race
is not intellectually hopeless ?
Consider further that, while no Negro,
no matter what his occupation, or person
al refinement, or intellectual culture, or
moral character, is allowed to travel in a
Pullman car between state lines, or to en
ter as a guest a hotel patronized by white
people, the blackest of Negro nurses and
valets are given food and shelter in all first-
class hotels, and occasion neither disgust
nor surprise in the Pullman cars. Here
again the heart of the race problem is laid
bare. The black nurse with a white baby
in her arms, the black valet looking after
the comfort of a white invalid, have the
label of their inferiority conspicuously
upon them ; they understand themselves,
and everybody understands them, to be
servants, enjoying certain privileges for
the sake of the person served. Almost
anything the Negro may do in the South,
and anywhere he may go, provided the
manner of his doing and his going is that
of an inferior. Such is the premium put ,
upon his inferiority ; such his inducement
to maintain it.
The point here insisted on may be made
clearer, if already it is not clear enough,
by this consideration, that the man who
would lose social caste for dining with an
Irish street-sweeper might be congratulat
ed for dining with an Irish educator; but
President Roosevelt would scarcely have
given greater offense by entertaining a
Negro laborer at the White House than he
gave by inviting to lunch there the Princi
pal of Tuskegee Institute. The race pro
blem being what it is, the status of any
Negro is logically the status of every other.
There are recognizable degrees of infe
riority among Negroes themselves ; some
are vastly superior to others. But there is
only one degree of inferiority separating
the Negro from the white person, at
tached to all Negroes alike. The logic of

10

The Heart of the Race Problem

the situation requires that to be any sort
of black man is to be inferior to any sort
of white man; and from this logic there is
no departure in the South.
Inconsistent, perhaps, with what has
been said may seem the defeat in the
Louisiana Legislature (1908) of the anti-
miscegenation bill, a measure designed
to prohibit sexual cohabitation between
white persons and Negroes ; to be specific,
between white men and Negro women.
But there was no inconsistency whatever
in the defeat of that bill. In all times
and places, the status of that portion of
the female population, Lecky's martyred
" priestesses of humanity," whose exist
ence men have demanded for the gratifi
cation of unlawful passion, has been that
of social outcasts. They have no rights
that they can insist upon; they are sim
ply privileged to exist by society's per
mission, and may be any moment legis
lated out of their vocation. Hence the
defeat of an anti-miscegenation measure
by Southern legislators cannot be con
strued as a .failure on their part to live
up to their conviction of race-superiority.
It must be construed, rather, as legisla
tive unwillingness to restrict the white
man's liberty; to dictate by statute the
kind of social outcast which he may use
as a mere means to the gratification of his
passion. To concede to Negro women
the status of a degraded and proscribed
class is npt in any sense to overlook or
obscure their racial inferiority, but on the
contrary, it may be, to emphasize it. Pre
cisely the same priiiciple, in a word, com
passes the defeat of an anti-miscegena
tion bill which would compass the defeat
of a measure to prohibit Negro servants
from occupying seats in Pullman cars
At the risk of reiteration, I must in con
cluding this article take sharp issue with
the view of a recent very able writer, who
asks the question, "What, essentially, is
the Race Problem ? " and answers it thus :
" The race problem is the problem"'of
living with human beings who are not
like us, whether they are in our estima
tion our ' superiors ' or inferiors, whether

they have kinky hair or pigtails, whether
they are slant-eyed, hook-nosed, or thick-
lipped. In its essence, it is the same pro
blem, magnified, which besets every
neighborhood, even every family."
I have contended so far, and I here re
peat, that the race problem is essentially
not what this writer declares it to be. It
is emphatically not, in the South, " the
problem of living with human beings who
are not like us, whether they are in our
estimation our superiors or inferiors." It
may be, it probably is, that in the North,
where the Negro is largely a stranger, a
foreigner, very much to the same degree
that the Chinese are strangers and for
eigners in the South; and where, conse
quently, the Negro's personal repulsive
ness is a much more significant force than
it is in the South. Assuredly there would
be no race problem anjrsvhere, were there
no cont.act with others unlike ourselves!
The unlikeness of the unlike is every
where its indispensable foundation. But
we get nowhither unless we carefully dis
tinguish between the foundation of the
problem and the problem itself. There is
nothing in the unlikeness of the unlike
that is necessarily problematml; it may
be simply accepted and i'ealt with avs J!^
fact, like any other fact The problem
arises only when the people of one race
are minded to adopt and act upon some
policy 'more or less oppressive or repres
sive in dealing wiJh the people of another
race. In the absence of some such policy,
there has never been a race problem since
the world began. It is the existence of
such a policy become traditional, and
supported by immovable conviction,
which constitutes the race problem of the
Soutlicrn states.
There was an immensely tragic race
problem distressing the South fifty years
ago; but who will suggest that it was
the problem of " living with human be
ings who are not like us ? " The pro
blem then was, clearly, how to make
good a certain conviction concerning the
unlike, how to maintain a certain policy
in dealing \vith them. What else is it to-

The Heart of the Race Problem

ll

day? The problem, How to maintain
the institution of chattel slavery, ceased
to be at Appomattox; the problem, How
to maintain the social, industrial, and
civic inferiority of the descendants of
chattel slaves, succeeded it, and is the
race problem of the South at the present
time. There is no other.
Whether the policy adopted by the
white South, and supported, as I have
said, by immovable conviction, is expe
dient or inej^edient, wise or unwise,
righteous or unrighteous, these .•:,re ques-
I tiops which I have not sought to answer
' one way or another in this article. Per-
Ijiaps they cannot be answered at all in
>ur time. Certain is it, that their only
I'^real and satisfactory answer will be many

years ahead of the present generation.
In the mean time, nothing could be
more unwarranted than to suppose that
the race problem of one section of this
country is peculiar to that section, be
cause its white inhabitants are themselves
in some sense peculiar ; because they are
-peculiarly prejudiced, because they are
peculiarly behind the hour which the high
clock of civilization has struck. Remove
the white inhabitants of the South, give
their place to the white people of any
other section of the United States, and,
beyond a peradventure, the Southern
race problem, as I have defined it, would
continue to be — revealed, perhaps, in
ways more perplexing, more intense and
tragic.