THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1909. THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3136, 12 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 1909. THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.

To "Tne Times" (London) Sir Harry Johnston has contributed a series of articles on the negro question in the United States, in which he makes an earnest and interesting attempt to present a fair and comprehensive statement of the most stupendous racial problem that has confronted the world, and to draw hnpo for tha future from his observations. Sir Harry Johnston brought to 'his task special personal qualification:). He is absolutely detached from United States politics, with which the negro question has long, unfortunately, been inextricably mixed. He is unaffected by the deep-seated prejudices of the South, or by the abstract theorising and cold-blooded philosophy of the North. He is a keen anthopological and sociological stu-

dent, with a long record of distinguished official service and exploring achievement in the African continent, the negro's home. But one rises from a perusal of his articles with a sense of the blankness of the prospect of a satisfactory readjustment of the attitudes toward each other of the white and black races on the North American continent. As to the capacity of the negro for a higher state of civilisation than his present average environment in the United States permits, there is little doubt. Sir Harry Johnston appears to have no doubt, in fact. But he shows, all the more forcibly because to do so was obviously against his inclination, that the mental *nd > moraJ condition of the black man is \ an insignificant rather than an important factor in the practical considerations given to the negro problem by the White American people directly affected by it. That is, th; people of the Southern States. With them it is a physical repulsion, < carried to a degree which makes it as inscrutable as the forces of love and hate, and equally as moving. Of the 10,000,000 negroes and negroids in s the United States, 2,000,000 belong, in appearance and culture to the white races, and really require to dress as European men and women do. They are as white in complexion as Europeans of the Mediterranean basin. Blonde hair ard blue eyes, and even red hair, are very common in the whitest type of them. But in the eleven Southern States, where seven-tenths of the population is found, the social prejudice is "still so Strong that laws are enacted to keep fie two races absolutely apart in marri: ge, education, religious observances, entertainments, and many forms of labour; in asylums, hospitals, hotels and pn-iuns, and, above a'.l, in tram-cars,gtrains and steamers." And under this terrible ban rest every man and woman known to possess the slighest trace of negro blood. Only a few weeks ago a white man and a negro were sentenced in ' Virginia under a State law to eighteen years' imprisonment for the crime oi marriage! To us, far rjmo\ed iron the scene, this farcaryin* of a prejudice appalls by its seeming cm ltv and inhumanity, but on the spot it is accepted without demand for justification. And time intensifies rather than abates it. How can two such antipathetic races,

occupying a common country, and standing equally before the law in regard to privileges and responsibilities be made to live together in amity?"ln an optimistic moment, when the dreamer and not the calcu r lating student must have held the pen, Sir Harry Johnston wrote in his summary: "Whilst we are theorising on thi3 side and on t!>at, predicting one extreme solution or ant ther, in a'l probability the difficulty is gradually thinning <u\ In'twenty years' time then miy be na more need to d;scJis the colour question in the Unite! States." But he wrote nothing to show that tins was'i orj than a merely inconsequential h<..e. Dr. Booker Washington, the high apostle of trie movement for uplifting the negro, himself "realises that f r years to come the negro, shoald mike common cause with the white m n in condemning any further intf rmixture in blood." Sir Harry Johnston's own estimate s that no such intermixture can prove acceptable for at least 100 years to come. And of what is beyond that century he cannot speak, of course. Any solution of the problem in the directi n of an absorption of one race into the other is not to be looked for. That hopa removed, what is left? History possesses no record of two originally antagonistic peoples becoming strong and united, as nations must which are happy and contented, except by the process of marrying and giving in marriage. ,