No Thank You
THE theory of the Hamitic origin of Negroes, Hottentots, Australians and Papuans implies that four races out of seven have experienced a degeneracy. This sweeping backward movement of the work of an all-wise and all-beneficent Creator is appalling to contemplate; and it is not surprising that theorists have existed who could deny the inferiority of these races with the same naivete as any other indisputable fact of observation. Judging from intercourse with friends of the Negro, of the noisy and denunciatory stamp, I should think a large body of "philanthropists " must exist who maintain that it is mere lack of opportunity which causes the Negro to seem inferior to the white man. "Consider how, for two hundred years, he has dwelt in bondage; see him worked, late and early, in all weathers; sheltered, like stock, in inclosures too open for comfort or health, and subsisted on 'sides' and potatoes from January to December. The laws have even made it a crime to teach him to read a newspaper, or the Holy Bible. Think of the hardships which he has endured, and judge whether they are not sufficient to have crushed all intelligence and moral principle and manly spirit cut of a human being."
But, my good friend, I was not proposing to discourse of the Negroes of the 'United States. I am thinking of Africa, the continental home of the Negro. Yet, since the American Negro is suggested, allow me 'to inquire how far the Negro has descended below his native condition by being brought into contact with American civilization? Has he been sheltered in a more storm-riddled hut, or clothed in scantier attire, or subsisted on a leaner diet? Or has he associated with more degraded savages, or learned to practice a more superstitious worship, or been deprived of a more cultivated society?
The Negro, perhaps, is not, in America, what he would have been if left to his own mastery in the midst of civilized society. The condition of the northern Negro will settle this question. But has he not made more progress than his countrymen who were left behind? Can we appeal to the oppression of the American Negro as an apology for the condition of the Negro on the banks of the Senegal and the Congo?
The Israelites were in "the house of bondage" two hundred and sixteen years; and it is not supposable that bondage in the rude infancy of the world, and in heathen Egypt, was less depressing than bondage during the last two centuries in a Christian country. But were the Israelites ever reduced to the mental and moral condition of the Negro? The literature, laws and religion of the Mosaic period will supply the answer.
That the Negro race is an inferior race I shall show by an appeal to anatomical, physiological, psychical and historical facts. I have already pointed out the salient characteristics of the Negro race. Let me advert to those which establish his inferiority. Capacity of cranium is universally recognized as a criterion of psychic power.* No fact is better established than the...
But, my good friend, I was not proposing to discourse of the Negroes of the 'United States. I am thinking of Africa, the continental home of the Negro. Yet, since the American Negro is suggested, allow me 'to inquire how far the Negro has descended below his native condition by being brought into contact with American civilization? Has he been sheltered in a more storm-riddled hut, or clothed in scantier attire, or subsisted on a leaner diet? Or has he associated with more degraded savages, or learned to practice a more superstitious worship, or been deprived of a more cultivated society?
The Negro, perhaps, is not, in America, what he would have been if left to his own mastery in the midst of civilized society. The condition of the northern Negro will settle this question. But has he not made more progress than his countrymen who were left behind? Can we appeal to the oppression of the American Negro as an apology for the condition of the Negro on the banks of the Senegal and the Congo?
The Israelites were in "the house of bondage" two hundred and sixteen years; and it is not supposable that bondage in the rude infancy of the world, and in heathen Egypt, was less depressing than bondage during the last two centuries in a Christian country. But were the Israelites ever reduced to the mental and moral condition of the Negro? The literature, laws and religion of the Mosaic period will supply the answer.
That the Negro race is an inferior race I shall show by an appeal to anatomical, physiological, psychical and historical facts. I have already pointed out the salient characteristics of the Negro race. Let me advert to those which establish his inferiority. Capacity of cranium is universally recognized as a criterion of psychic power.* No fact is better established than the...
...
26-30, M