RACE-HATRED IN THE UNITED STATES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 5, 1 October 1919, Page 7

RACE-HATRED IN THE UNITED STATES

BAFFLING PROBLEM OF " BLACK AND WHITE"

THE IMPULSE OF INSTINCT (By Ignatius Pliayre, Author of "America's Bay,", in the London "Observer.") Once- again the strange, instinctivo loathing'of the white man for the Ethiop has W.hzed out, and human beings have been burned—not in the Africas, buit in lavish pliicago, the seat and centre of America's "Big Business"; a city devoted, to culture and the arts (all sneers to the contrary," notwithstanding), and with a population as great as that of Paris. flow shall we explain this ilamc of brutish savagery in the Land of Liberty? How' account for the murderous onslaughts, a few months back, in East St. Louis—a city in Lincoln's own State? A tvpioal lynching was that of Lloyd Clay, a" nineteen-year-old negro, in the beautiful city of Vickßburg, Miss. The Macks outnumber the white in this State. The usual mob-me'eting- was held outside,the gaol. The customary attack on fchfl gaol itself was time with steel railway-tracks. The alleged culprit (he was entirely innocent) was dragged out and beaten. ' Jt First North Street a, crowd of 1500 citizens, including women and little children, strung the wretched creature up on a tree. • He was stark naked.: ' "Slioot him!" yellled some, "No, cried others,, "let him die slow," With head twisted, the negro dangled, limply; and men below hauled .on his legs. Kerosene' was now- 'Brushed upon the body. A bonfire was' got ready and saturated with petrol: . . . There was a roaring shoot of Jfame. : . Tho man's flesh hissed and blistered, and orinkled. His fajCe was hideously distorted, and he raised frenzied arms in: prayer. The logs curled back ... And- American ladies looked upon this sight for an hour and a half in the serene light of a Southern, moon! AYlieii tho body was out down, there was a -rush for bits of the rope as souvenirs; the tree itself was hold to be a reverend monument. This, in the America of-1919! Truly, •as Mr. Lloyd George reminds us,' in an -e'ra of plain speaking, "Man is a savage animal" —tho "eternal brute", of Heinrich von 'Preitsohke, and not "the two-legged-,god," whom Hegel impressed upon Heine. What started that razor and pistol in the great city of Chicago? A'little nigger' strayed over the "black line" on the Cako beaohs reserved for whites, and was driven back with a shower of atones from outraged dignity. There lias been bad feeling in the North, ever since tho blacks oame migrating from the South in hundreds of thousands, allured by high wages, due to war-work and the absence of millions of men "Over there" in' France. • ' Now. this colour question is a fascinating problem for the statesman and psychologist. It concerns Great Britain vitollyi for its seeds of-fire are ever present in South Africa, in British Columbia, in India, and the Australias, who impressed their "All-White" policy upon Mr. W. M. 'Hughe3 in Paris, anff that unmistakably.

The. black' man is a serious factor of disunion between Boer and Briton in South Africa. Your typical Dutchman is Hot unkind, but he views the natives a.9 "schspselsj" or mote "creatures," no better than cattle; useful enough in field or mine.'but on no account to bo educated 'or enfranchised, or admitted to any sort;'of equality with the white man. Aristotle's "slaves by nature" is precise-ly-the. Boar's;.view of the black man ; so the traditional British policy of progress and citizenship for the negro rouses a nrofound mistrust.

It is the same in America, where impatient: Southerners'maintain thai the ,"Yankees" (of the North) know little of nothing of "the nigger," who must always be "kept in. his place." This racial aversion- is danKeroosly inconsistent. Australia occepts her aboriginal "blackfellows,"'but. absolutely excludes the yellow man.-; '-.As Governor of. New. South Wales'. Lord Ciirrington reported' as• follows to the Secretary of'State;—"l am positive that this is not a .cry got. up for political purposes. It is a deeplyfounded feeling and-belief of the Vast majority of the colonists." .

So far 'atf America is concerned, .this matter is shelved by, the Root-Takahira "Gentleiiien's Agreement" of 1907—a precarious enough instrument in a sorap-of--1 paper age. This question of. race hatred and the colour bar eludes and transcends all statesmanship. There is no gainsaying the fact that the whites regard tho. non-whites 'as inferior animals, where tho' two races dwell together.

Pink-thinking : humanitarians deplore these periodic waves of violence; but to their accuser." the white .rioters retort; "You don't live with the black man." And when perfect equality is urged, tho reformer is crushed with. "Would you let vour ilaurfiter roniTv a. nigger?'' Abo Lincoln's 4.000,000 emancipated sloves have multiplied to 12,000,000, and nothing that thp blacks can fiver do will make them.anything but an incubus and a curse td the white race, for fifty years, every known solution has been mooted: deportation, segregation in some Western enclavc—even "miscegenation," as in Brazil.- But America abhors tho "tar brush" taint. Theoretically "equal" as a citizen, the black man is utterly ostracised, and any commerce with a white woman—even legal marriage—is a social tragedy of lifelong penalty.. 1 Very few Amoricans hre keen on the uplift of the negro. The typical Southerner is an excellent' master, often with .a real fondness for tho "good nigger"— • the fondness which a man has for a loyal and faithful dog. Thore is a third class who favour the harshest restrictions for the black man, and cherish savago memories of-the Reconstruction Period, when 4,'000,000 emancipated slaves—only a few generations removed from downright savagery, and even cannibalism—were suddenly given a political power over the whites. It. is a mistake/to suppose that lynchings and Tace riots are exclusively due to the "protection of women." A saucy word can. loose murder; both above and below the Mason and Dixon Line. Georgia, with Over a million blacks, has a very bad record. In one morning recently, five negro churches, two schools, and a lodge-hull were ' burned in Putnam County, and the "black trash" were so*, verely beaten. Governor Bleflse, of South Carolina, declared that the negroes "belonged to the order of lower animals, with absolutely no standard of morality." They are treat ed accordingly. A criminal wlio ventured to speak to tho Governor without the guard's permission in the State gaol, waa nu'' in tne stocks, riven forty-five la9hes, and then tortured for half an hour with a strong electric battery. "Confessions" are extorted from black men with hot irons. And the system of hiring out convict labour to contractors, unquestionably puts a premium, upon "blackbii'ding" on the smallest provocation, or nonu at all. "Givß us'the nigger, or we'll hang the ijudge," 'screamed the moh at Murray, Ky. Here the Governor rf the State, Mr. A.'O.; Stanley, had to risk his life for justice's sake- In 'another' oase, five blacks were lynched to death in Georgia, and afterwards found wholly innocent. Since 1889 well over 3000' colourod men nnd women havo been savagely killed in this way by '.\merioan mobs. A negro's life goes for nothing, when race-hatred ilames in this mysterious- way. He is regarded as a mere travesty of humanity) a necessary evil in the land, with his growing wenches rolling down the Southern street, an abiding temptation to white young.men. Long ago, when Mason of Virginia was Minister in Paris under the Second Empire, his Haytian colleague—a pure negro—astonished the Diplomatic Corns by a display of glib courtesy and address. "What d' you think of himr".the slaveowner was asked, when fhe black Minister withdrew. "I reckon that, feller's wuth a thousan' dollars," was how Mason assessed his coloured' confrere. And that is the spirit, not only of America, but of all lands where the white man dwells with the black. "Now is your chance to settle the negro problem," said the German Emperor to Mr. James W. Gerard in Berlin. "If America insists on coming into the war, why doesn't she send her negroes across and let us shoot them down?" , As a fact, 900,000 black troopers were"

available, and nearly 200,000 were Gent to France. I cannot pretend that they fought well, though the "Buffaloes' (367 th Infantry) made a fair show; and negroes like Needham Roberts and Harry Jolmson received the French Croix de Guerre. The return of 200,000 black "heroes," trained in the use of lethal weapons, aroused no enthusiasm in either North or South. Meanwhile, "Jim Crowism"—special cars' and trams, waitingrooms, schools, churches, and residential quarters—is rigidly enforced against the coloflred folks. As for political "equality," I once asked a former State official of Alabama how the black vote was suppressed. "At first we killed them," he 6aid, calmly. "Then we stole their ballots. But now the thing is legally fixed." And my friend explained how 531 negro folks lent decent colour in electoral returns, as "representing" a du.skv population of 800,000!. Yet thfeo blacks produce many, a freakish genius, of whom the late Booker T. Washington was perhaps the most notable. I know negroe' worth, ,£10,000; in Virginia the blacks own property worth over JEB,OOO.OGO. Tanner, the painter; Cook, the composer of Broadway revues; Paul Dunbar And W. Braithwaite, the poets—here are » few lights-of the coloured proletariat. Tuskegee and Hampton are the technological Universities of negrodom. But | when all is said, tho black man remnins an abhorred pariah in the United States; and self-pity is the dominant note of his music and song.' The Red Indians are dying out, herded on State reservations; but the black race, prolific and robust, presents white America with a problem which can never be solved. General Smuts alluded to this in the i South African dinner at tho Savoy. "Our rproblem." he said, "is a very difficult ] one, and quite unique in a way." It reversed America's conditions. "I do not know- that we- have cone vary far in Solving it hH-herto, But there was certain axioms.-" . . . "One is that there must he no inter-m'xture of Wood." America is equally- resolved; and, 1 have s?en perfectly "white" children; with blonde hair and blue eyes, in the negro schools side by side with woolly pickaninnies that might have come straight from tho Congo. Only inspection of the finger-nails showed the tarbrueh taint in these tragic cases. AH blacks, of whatever shade, are segregated; and periodically, race hatred blaze" out. nraaeeountaMy—to the wrath and real distress of President Wilson, whose lo f -h- idealism is so well known, Beating, shooting, hanging, and burning alive—these crimes of the crowdhvonos's All- th».,Pre«W»nt witi)* l horror. "How," he asked, after the East St. Louis orgies, "are we to recommend democracv to the acceptance of other oeoplts. if we disgrncn our own bv proving that itis, after all. 110 protection to the weak?"