THE COLOUR LINE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10022, 19 April 1910, Page 4

THE COLOUR LINE.

In the January number of "East and West," the well-knowD missionary quarterly review, there is a thoughtful and candid- article un "Colour Antipathies," from the pen of the Rev. R. F. Callaway, who for the last ten years has been a missionary in the diocese of St. John's, Kaffiraria.. "The Catholic Church of Christ," he writes, "does not recognise caste." Yet it is only too apparent that caste in religion is aB firmly established in South Africa to-day as it was in the Southern States of the Union in the days of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." We may hope there are comparatively few who would not shrink from expressing the logical outcome of their prejudice with the vigorous directness of the lady who remarked, "Well, if there are to be Kaffirs in heaven, I hope I don't gee there!" But the colour cleavage is undoubtedly painfully defined, and no amount of education avails in any appreciable degree to break down the white man's attitude of

reserve and aloofness. A native may have passed his Cape matriculation, r and wear clothes ordered from a London tailor, and speak English fault- . lessly, or he may be a person of considerable wealth, or he may be a . priest, yet there are very few houses • where he would run the risk of en- ; tering by the front door, or sitting down to tea with his hostess. Mr Callaway very franKly adds, "Frequently I feel a great repugnance to shaking hands with some native whom probably in my reasoned judgment I esteem higbly." For the attitude of antagonism he deplores is not the outcome of reason, but rather of some deep-seated racial instincts. The natives themselves as might be expected are deeply conscious of the slights they receive, and as one of their clergjmen recently remarked at a clerical conference, "Native Christians find I if hard to realise that they belong to the same church as the English." It is a painful fact, and a singular comment on the limitations of the modern religious and democratic sentiment. Environment, in Mr Callaway's . opinion, las much to do with it, for,

often, in spite of our better selvee, the instinct reasserts itself ia the society of European friends and neighbours. It is much easier for a white priest to be friendly with coloured people when his white neighbours are some miles away, out of sight and hearing."