Chapter IX · PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS (continued 3)

4. Better.

5. Much was gained through the war. However, at the present time things seem to be at a standstill.

6. Racial relations between all races were never more acute nor more keenly felt and resented than during the present day.

7. Conditions, I believe, are getting a little better.

8. I don't believe that consideration of right and wrong influences fundamental reactions. One's conception of advantage and disadvantage determines the character of every act. I believe that all social relations are in a state of flux and that with the improvement of mankind which is coming with the evolution of a sense of higher values there will be an improvement in human relationships.

9. Race relations on the whole are growing worse instead of better, and they are crystallizing in the wrong direction. The whites are adjusting their conscience to their conduct, and are consciously or unconsciously justifying violation of the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States at the behest of race prejudice.

10. They are becoming distinctly worse as each year solidifies the hatred and crystallizes the opinions of the whites which immediately subsequent to the Civil War were in a chaotic state.

11. The last year or so has shown that riots are more quickly started. In our opinion race relations are likely to get much worse, especially if the present flood of European immigration continues. But getting worse to become better is much like a boil which, after it gathers and breaks, leaves the body in a healthier condition. Negroes are becoming more and more determined to enjoy their constitutional rights.

12. I am in doubt.

13. I am an optimist. I believe relations are becoming better.

OPINIONS ON SOLUTION

Question: Do you believe that money and the acquisition of wealth make an appreciable difference in the degree of respect in which Negroes are held by their white neighbors, or in the treatment they receive?

Economic Progress[84] 1866 1919 Gain in Fifty-three Years

Homes owned 12,000 600,000 588,000

Farms operated 20,000 1,000,000 980,000

Businesses conducted 2,100 50,000 47,900

Value of church property $1,500,000 $85,900,000 $84,400,000

Wealth accumulated $20,000,000 $1,100,000,000 $1,080,000,000

Answers:

1. Yes, money and wealth are the root of all good and evil. In North Carolina, a rich Negro, McCary, who, it was alleged, had been caught in intimate relations with a leading white woman, was sued for money damages instead of being lynched. Money and wealth must be widely diffused enough to make an appreciable difference, however; isolated cases of wealth ordinarily engender friction and hatred.

2. No, because I personally know many who are highly respected and kindly treated in their communities though in very humble circumstances.

3. I believe that money or wealth causes more respect to be accorded within white people's hearts, but it is more likely to increase racial feeling than to lessen it. The element of jealousy among poorer whites probably gives rise to such statements as keeping the Negro in his place. The whites of better circumstances merely use these existing feelings to gain their own selfish ends.

4. Yes, and no. Money is power. The power over a man's subsistence is the power over his will. The individual who has money is sought because he is in a position to confer advantages. He is likewise hated because he can inflict pain. Were race prejudice logical and based upon reason and not hysteria, the procurement of money and the consequent demonstration of basic equality would improve conditions. However, the majority of persons do not think but are exploited. Religious dogmas and racial antipathies being useful adjuncts in the process are sufficient to outweigh material or rational considerations.

5. Absolutely.

6. The possession of money causes whites to accord the Negro more respect and better treatment if the particular Negro can intelligently handle his affluent situation so as to demand such.

7. I think that money and the acquisition of wealth make an appreciable difference in the degree of respect in which Negroes are held by their white neighbors; not that the prejudice against the race is reduced considerably or possibly to any extent, but because men worship dollars, and if they are possessed by Negroes, Negroes fall in for additional respect as the holders of wealth.

8. I believe that the acquisition of wealth causes marked increase in respect, provided that a fairly large group of Negroes in that community respectively are the possessors; but for merely one or two persons to acquire wealth in a community is not likely to inspire respect. It may cause its opposite. I assume, of course, that a fair intelligence was necessary to secure the wealth.

9. Intelligence and wealth are necessary to the self-respect of the Negro. I doubt not that in many instances they would increase racial friction for the time being; but the time must come and is now near at hand, when the white race must recognize that the whole is greater than any of its parts. A community like Chicago, for instance, cannot be intelligent if the Negro is ignorant; it cannot be competent if the Negro is inefficient; it cannot be virtuous if the Negro is vicious; it cannot be healthy if the Negro is diseased. Intelligence and wealth will not of themselves solve the race problem, but the problem cannot be solved without intelligence and wealth.

10. Money and wealth do make a difference in the amount of respect accorded to individuals, as they lessen the causes for class antagonism. The white man accords esteem to those who are able to secure good clothing, decent homes, education, and indulge in what are considered luxuries. These things, too, increase the respect the Negro has for himself and make him demand respect from others. The treatment accorded him is not likely to be changed as his advancement tends to increase hatred among the whites whom he rises above, and a desire not to treat him as an equal among those whose level he reaches.

11. Money, commerce, rule the world. The average white man is happiest when he sees the Negro down. But if the Negro has money he is willing to conceal his prejudice and trade with him. Money, in the possession of no matter whom, commands fear, which is the nearest most human beings get to having respect for others. While one rich Negro in a town, in most instances, would receive pretty much the same treatment as other Negroes, yet a hundred rich Negroes in that same town would certainly make a big difference. Apply this ratio to the nation. A rich Negro, even in Georgia or Mississippi, certainly has a far pleasanter lot than a poor white.

12. Yes.

13. Yes, it does for white people. To quote a friend, "It is easy for anybody to be respectful and courteous to a million dollars." This is especially true of Americans.

Educational Progress[85] 1866 1919 Gain in Fifty-three Years

Per cent literate 10 80 70

Colleges and normal schools 15 500 485

Students in public schools 100,000 1,800,000 1,700,000

Teachers in all schools 600 38,000 37,400

Property for higher education $60,000 $22,000,000 $21,940,000

Annual expenditures for education $700,000 $15,000,000 $14,300,000

Raised by Negroes $80,000 $1,700,000 $1,620,000

Question: Do you believe that if Negroes were 100 per cent literate it would make any great difference in race relations? Are general and higher education likely to widen the breach between Negroes and white persons, increase intolerance, resentment, sensitiveness to insults, or can a quieted process of adjustment or complete fusion of interests be expected?

Answers:

1. Education will help decidedly, especially that kind of education which gives Negroes a command of some special accomplishment in any field of endeavor. Higher education will not in my opinion widen the breach if Negroes will consciously and deliberately set out to educate white people as to their ideals, ability and character, and at the same time labor to increase the spirit of self-help and self-confidence among their own group which will serve to decrease ignorance and irresponsibility among the less fortunate and untrained members of the race.

2. I conceive that literacy in itself is a cure for nothing except illiteracy. One-hundred-per-cent literate Negroes without proper use of their literacy may even make matters worse. General and higher education may be expected to make matters better only if there is general and higher education among whites and the education on both sides is of the right kind. In America, at present, education, where it touches race lines, appears to be more propaganda than education. It is reported that some histories of reconstruction taught to Negroes by the state in parts of the United States emphasize and detail their shortcomings and omit their virtues. Obviously such education is education for mistrust, unrest, conflict. It educates the races apart, and its logical consequence is conflict. I am ready to answer, then, that general and higher education which emphasizes likeness and passes over without undue attention unlikeness, education which aims to have men live in harmony and cooperation and does not aim to array classes against classes and races against races by omissions and emphasis, may be expected to better our race relations in the United States provided it finds lodgment in the school systems of both races.

3. If 10,000,000 literate Negroes were environed with 100,000,000 white men, the majority of whom were below their cultural level, the dominant minds among the whites would arouse ethnic antagonisms as an economic weapon to be used in promoting their selfish ends. I believe that there is not a single force, ethical, religious, or of any type, sufficiently powerful to cause an individual to forego what he believes to be his highest advantage, and the appeal to group instincts is the easiest method of securing mass action.

4. If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would certainly be more sensitive to insults and more resentful. I should expect a great increase in racial differences, unless those Negroes imbibed a tendency to non-resistance. That, however, is far from likely. With universal literacy, a larger acquaintance with current events and conditions, Negroes could immeasurably improve their living conditions, but their contacts with the whites would be far more unpleasant.

5. One hundred per cent literacy among Negroes would make a huge difference. In the long run it would lessen the breach between Negroes and white persons, for Negroes would strive for equality. The most essential thing is to produce a change in the mental equipment of the Negro. The white man's mind will take care of itself. What is needed is a more balanced and equal meeting of the minds. But there would be bloodshed at the beginning.

6. Resentment and sensitiveness to insults will increase on the part of Negroes as they grow in intelligence, but as their spirits rebel more insistently and positively against insults, it cannot help but have its effect upon white men who ignorantly mistreat them, and if the respect growing out of love does not follow, the respect growing out of tolerance, as in the case of the Jews in America, will ensue and result in recognition of equal intelligence and culture.

7. Literacy must be 100 per cent on both sides to bring about a "complete fusion of interests" or a "quieted process of adjustment." Intelligent Negroes among uneducated whites would aggravate the situation.

8. If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would command more respect, because men always command more respect when they are intelligent.

9. I believe in education first, last, and always as a leveller and as a bulwark of defense. There is no race prejudice among broadly cultured people. Art knows no such distinctions.

10. (a) Yes. (b) Not, if at the same time the education of the whites is broadened and made more general. (c) Better education of both races will facilitate a fusion of interests, beginning probably in economic relations.

11. It would make them much more bitter, for (a) the Negro would be more sensitive to injustice and have more of the combative spirit which literacy usually gives, and (b) whites would be more jealous and anxious to show the Negro his place. I believe that such an intensification of the struggle is desirable and necessary, as I don't believe that the brilliant ideas necessary for solution of the race problem can come other than as the children of the most intense and bitter racial conflict. Of course it would defeat its purpose if such a conflict were bloody, as then we would have a long period of the nauseating burden such as America suffers with today, viz.: the North attempting to reconcile the South.

12. Literacy will make a difference also in race relations. The difference will increase in degree as literacy advances beyond the mere ability to read and write to a wider participation in every field of educational or intellectual endeavor. As far as I have been able to observe, the breach between whites and Negroes is widened as Negroes advance in education and culture. The educated Negro rarely comes in contact with the white man as a menial or laborer—the only point of contact which the great majority of white people want. He will respect the Negro teacher, lawyer, doctor, or business man who knows his work thoroughly and can do as well as he. He is not likely, however, to find any reason to co-operate with this class of Negroes, and the Negroes do seek such co-operation.

13. (a) Yes. (b) In slavery times whites made it a crime to teach Negroes to read. That desire, in up-to-date garb, remains in the breast of most whites today. To many white persons a Negro of superior talent and refinement is a more detestable production than the most pronounced rogue. Most white persons, even of the best quality, are secretly displeased at a Negro of this type. They were brought up to regard Negroes as being below them, and the sight is a blow to their vanity. (c) A dollar talks much more sweetly than Emerson or Shakespeare and even Christ to most men, therefore a process of adjustment or complete fusion of interests will be effected chiefly through trade relationship, not esthetics.

Question: If unrestricted suffrage were given Negroes throughout the United States, would matters be helped?

Answers:

1. Equal suffrage between the races in some parts of the country would doubtless precipitate a temporary disturbance, but it is not thinkable that under democratic institutions any group or class can be permanently or for a long while refused equal participation in the government under which they live and by which they are controlled. Shall we do evil that good may come?

2. Every appreciable increase in power among Negroes will be met with jealousy and repression by the whites. Unrestricted suffrage does not mean much when people have guns at the polls and dare other people to vote. Its inception would mean acute racial trouble, I think, but if the Negroes used the same means and methods to register their vote as the whites do to keep them from registering it, and kept it up long enough, ultimately conditions would be very much improved where Negroes constitute about half the population of a unit.

3. Yes. Even though Negroes might not vote intelligently at the outset, they would tend to vote for their own welfare. The Negro does not feel wholeheartedly that he is a part of the American people. But with the vote he would be in a better position to work for common ends. Though voting for the capitalist parties would not mean much to the Negro, a vote for the money barons is better than no vote at all.

4. Unrestricted suffrage is a right as well as a privilege. It is essential for building up the sense of responsibility and loyalty among any group of people in a democracy founded on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

5. Yes, the ballot is a protection which the Negro now is intelligent enough to use and keep. In the present segregated condition of the Negro, the ballot has a genuine property value. Police protection, better lighted and better paved streets, I am convinced, must come to him through the ballot or else he does not get them.

6. Unrestricted Negro suffrage would help a great deal in securing for Negroes the things it is possible to secure through the use of the ballot. Political parties, as well as the Negro himself, would realize the power of Negro suffrage and would doubtless be inclined to cater to that vote. The exercise of such unlimited suffrage is likely to increase for a time the tenseness in race relations, as the whites would not readily give up the domination they have secured. The agitation in Ohio and in the Middle West over the exercise by the Negro of his suffrage shows how clearly the white man fears the power of the ballot when used by the Negro.

7. Other things remaining the same, it would not.

8. Not necessarily by that fact alone. The ultimate value of the right of suffrage is conditioned by the intelligence with which that right is used.

9. This goes without saying. In Chicago, Negroes exercise considerable influence in the city administration, because of their strong political power. The same is true of New York and Cleveland. Apply this to the nation.

10. Yes.

11. Yes, if we had a third party with racial cohesion.

12. Suffrage to be effective must be taken and not conferred. "Who would be free, himself must strike the blow." A man has no right that he can't protect and defend.

Question: How about religion as a solvent of racial difficulties and differences?

Religious Progress[86] 1866 1919 Gain in Fifty-three Years

Number of churches 700 43,000 42,300

Number of communicants 600,000 4,800,000 4,200,000

Number of Sunday schools 1,000 46,000 45,000

Sunday-school pupils 50,000 2,250,000 2,200,000

Answers:

1. Religion, if it ever becomes a vital force in the everyday affairs of people, will be one of the greatest forces in solving race difficulties. At the present time its influence is practically nil. The average church is still calling worn-out theology religion; those which have adopted a more modern and practical view of religion are too few to exert any influence in race problems.

2. Religion per se, to my mind, has failed, but Christianity, the spirit manifested by Jesus Christ in his life and which he commanded his followers to imitate, if adopted in its vital truth and simplicity by all professing Christians, could solve all the difficulties.

3. Religion might be helpful in solving racial difficulties if it were tried—but it has not been very largely tried yet.

4. Religion as a solvent of racial difficulties is necessary, but both groups will need to practice it to the same degree.

5. The religion of America, or of any other country, is merely an index to the national character. Religion expresses itself in the church, and the church is a capitalistic institution. Expressed religion in America, because its pecuniary existence largely depends upon the rank and file of the people who support it, will not rise above the prejudices and folkways of that rank and file. Religion will not solve many racial difficulties or differences.

6. Religion hardly touches the deeper motivations. It may regulate details, but usually the priest-craft succeeds by sophistry, emphasis or omission in avoiding certain fundamental issues in their religious exhortations. It often appears that the preacher is retained to idealize the crassness of the world, and unpleasant things are simply taboo. He must look to his salary.

7. It has no utility. It had no utility in the world war and so a fortiori could have no utility in our race problem where more bitter issues are involved.

8. Unfortunately religion has little sanction over the social conduct where interest and passions are involved. This was too sadly manifested in the world war. It is to be hoped, however, that there may arise a moral and spiritual renaissance under whose sanction religion may exercise controlling influence over the frictional relations among men.

9. Very much overestimated is religion as a solvent of racial differences. Neither Negroes nor whites have enough confidence in it to put it into practical application. No one thing will bring about the Negro's real emancipation. The fight must be carried on in every sphere where prejudice has vitiated relations.

10. Religion has failed to solve the racial difficulties and differences in America because its principles have never been practiced by the people. Religion has remained a beautiful theory. If the religious principles were practiced there would be no racial difficulties.

11. Utterly valueless. The average individual cannot think. He lives only in the concrete. Material advantages outweigh philosophical benefits. Deprive religion of the moving force of fear which its exponents engender, and it will entirely cease to be dynamic.

12. The religion of Christ will prove a solvent if men ever give it a trial.

13. Religion, in our opinion, has never settled any question. Nothing else contains so much the germs of strife. Mankind, throughout the ages, has never been able to agree on it. The history of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa is one long record of warring religions.

SOCIAL ADJUSTMENTS

Question: What are some of the most pronounced mental complexes experienced in adjusting your personal desires and expectations to the present social system?

Answers:

1. A constant haunting feeling when in the presence of white persons that they desire to shun me because of my color; that they are eager to use me to further their ends under the guise of piety or patronizing the "good-feeling-toward-your-people" attitude. I suffer from time to time an acute embarrassment because of uncouth conduct in the presence of white persons on the part of uncultured Negroes. Such conduct embarrasses me generally, but the presence of white persons who are supposed to be inimical seems to be the dominant element in the situation.

2. The most pronounced mental complex which I experience in adjusting my desires and expectations to the present social system is not the "inferiority complex" with which most Negroes are charged by the whites. I desire all that the social system affords; but as to expectation it is necessary for me to use auto-hypnotism to make myself expect it in order that I can present to the white man the front of optimism, the necessary air of expectancy to secure success. The shocks and disappointments which a Negro must constantly experience tend to get him in the attitude of expecting nothing.

3. I can't describe the mental complexes, but some are caused by situations such as these: I go to the library to get a book, and I am told that I must sit in a seat among dusty shelves of newspaper files at a table marked "For colored people"; in order to see a play I have to sit in the gallery. I submit to that and when I get to the theater, I am told that no seats are reserved for colored people. I go to a lecture by the Hon. Mr. So and So (white) and he discusses the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, creating much enthusiasm among the unthinking and some of the thinking. Then the next morning I take up the paper of which the same gentleman is the editor, and read a sneering editorial on the race question, and so on.

4. Personally, I am able to impersonalize my relation to the situation, and experience no mental perplexities. I try to preserve a rational attitude in an irrational environment and objectify cruelty, injustice and wrong. I know that I as an individual am not Jim Crowed, or disfranchised or socially isolated; it is the race to which I belong. My only perplexity is how to remove these racial, not personal, disqualifications.

5. Determination to fulfill my personal desires in spite of the present social system; a loss of respect for the white man's sense of justice.

6. The arrogance of the poor ignorant white man and the snobbishness of the middle class. This is the stumbling-block for the future of our race to overcome.

7. Trying to get white persons, as employers, etc., to accept me as a man first of all, then to judge me on my merits, irrespective of my color. Trying to attain to the same degree of success and liberty of any other man of my training and experience in spite of the world in which I live.

8. Amused and almost cynical tolerance. A desire to reap the greatest possible advantages from the system, without permitting my intelligence to admit that it is right because it is personally advantageous.

9. My desires are never adjusted to the present "social system"; they are constantly out of harmony with the practices of our so-called democracy, as these practices relate to the Negro.

10. If this question means what I think it does, space will not permit an intelligent answer.

11. A hyper-sensitiveness in regard to the subject Negro; a tendency to see racial antagonism as a motive of conduct in every act of white persons when perhaps it is sometimes absent; a hesitancy about entering public places or approaching individuals for fear of rebuff or insult; a withdrawal into a Negro world in which almost every thought and act are colored by a racial aspect before a humanitarian one, are some of the mental complexes experienced in a greater or less degree by almost every colored person.

Question: Do you believe that Negroes are prejudiced against white persons?

Answers:

1. Some are, but the prejudice is due to nurture rather than to nature.

2. Prejudice means pre-judgment. Negroes come into the world to find most white persons disliking them. They grow up in an atmosphere where they find whites ready to insult them because of the color Nature saw fit to give them. Therefore, knowledge, not prejudice, causes Negroes to dislike whites. Human beings, and even dumb animals, love only those who love them. The average Negro is, however, quick to drop this defensive attitude when he meets a fair-minded white person. Perhaps too easily, as he is often taken advantage of by shrewd whites disguised as friends.

3. I do not believe that Negroes are inherently prejudiced against the white race. Personally, I have absolutely no such prejudice. I do not believe that the white race is inherently prejudiced against the Negro, but that it is wholly a feeling stimulated by social opinion which can be modified and controlled. I put in evidence the facts: First, when social pressure is removed, white women marry Negro men, and white men marry Negro women. Second, the superior always shows prejudice against the inferior, whether superiority is claimed on basis of wealth, culture, birth, or position. The prejudices of inferior against superior is never so pronounced as that of superior against inferior. Natural antipathy is mutually reciprocal. Third, some white persons are less influenced by it than others. Fourth, race antagonism as such is scarcely discernible where Latin civilization and the Catholic religion are in control. Fifth, it does not exist in the Mohammedan dispensation. Sixth, the experience of thousands of Negro soldiers in France proves its comparative absence. Seventh, race prejudice seems to be principally the vice of the Teuton and the Anglo-Saxon, which must be subject to ultimate control. It will not be quite so strong among Germans as it was before the war.

4. I do not believe that Negroes as a race are prejudiced against white people, although I am conscious of an increasing prejudice against white people on the part of many individual Negroes, especially educated colored women who live in the South and resent keenly the indiscriminate approaches of white men.

5. Many Negroes are cynical of all the professions of white men. They often express their hatred of white people openly. I think, however, that feeling is more prevalent among the younger Negroes than among the older ones.

6. Many pretend to be. Most of them are not.

7. Yes, 98 per cent of them are.

8. Not as individuals. They are affected by the spirit of mass hostility to dissimilar masses based upon the desire to appropriate and retain advantages. Racial prejudices are the products of the will of dominant individuals evoking responses from weaker intelligences and serving the purpose of the dominating mind.

9. If so, to a very slight extent. What feeling most Negroes have is created almost solely to offset the prejudice and antagonism of the whites. The prejudice of the whites I might describe as primary; that of the colored, secondary.

10. Yes; too much so among some groups.

11. Negroes in most cases are very much prejudiced against whites.

12. Yes. The difference lies in the degree. Prejudice is artificial. It is learned. The white boy and girl have been "taught" more prejudice than the Negro. Negroes seldom teach prejudice outright. When they learn it, it is inescapable. America is a school, I fear, at present where even the most backward learns something of prejudice whether he will it or not.

13. I believe there is a strong prejudice against white persons. This antipathy is, I believe, not based on racial unlikeness, but on resentment because of cruel treatment as an inferior.

Question: Are you ever conscious of a feeling of racial inferiority or even the desire to compensate for a supposed inferiority?

Answers:

1. I attribute inferiority and superiority alike to individuals, not race. I have every confidence that my race is capable of producing as great men, and proportionately as many of them, as any other race under the sun. I trace to environment the responsibility for not releasing their energy upon constructive work, but concentrating it upon gaining a living or a chance to gain a living. Many times I feel the desire to compensate for a supposed inferiority, because I believe in nailing a lie wherever possible.

2. I never have a feeling of racial inferiority or a desire to compensate for a supposed inferiority (with reservations). I am usually cognizant of the fact that most white people consider the Negro an inferior. This often causes the bristles to rise on my back.

3. Personally, at no moment of our lives. The Negro is really superior in stamina. His race is progressing, while the whites appear to be standing still. The white race has had seven thousand years or more of education and civilization, yet in this prosperous republic today the average white person is comparatively poor and possesses little education. The Negro, in spite of the oppressive handicap due to color, is progressing along all lines, commercial, professional and artistic.

4. I am never conscious of racial inferiority, but I am a firm believer in the theory that any human being will be whatever his environment and his heredity will make of him, regardless of the color of his skin or the form of his skull. One in considering this point of view should be sure not to confuse the words "inferiority" and "inequality."

5. No.

6. I feel no desire to apologize to the world because I am a colored woman; I had to be of some race, and here I am.

7. No. I believe that accidents of environment determine relative positions.

8. Decidedly no! I believe absolutely in my own worth as a man and as a Negro and defer only to wider experience, knowledge, or skill, whether possessed by white persons or Negroes.

9. No!

10. No.

11. I never have a feeling of racial inferiority or a desire to compensate for a supposed inferiority.

12. Personally, I am absolutely unconscious of any feeling of racial inferiority. I recognize the control of social forces and influences which may seem too strong to be overcome at present. I simply suffer it to be so now.

13. I have never felt any racial inferiority, though always when thrown in school work or business with white people the desire to do my work as well or better than they is very strong. This desire comes primarily from a desire to show that the Negro is not inferior in his ability.

NEGRO PROBLEMS

Question: Do you believe that there should be recognized leaders of Negroes? Are there such persons whom you regard as qualified for leadership? Discuss their merits and demerits.

Answers:

1. As long as the dominant power treats with us as with Negroes rather than as with American citizens, there will be need of recognized leaders; but these leaders should be chosen by the Negroes themselves, not chosen and imposed by others.

2. Yes and no. Theoretically and ultimately, no. Practically and immediately, yes. In any clearly differentiated group the spokesman should come from and grow out of conditions within the group. In a community in which there were cultural and not ethnic divisions there would be no need for Negro leaders. What was good for the hive would be for the good of each bee. However, in a community in which color is a target, defensive alliances under the best possible leadership are a sine qua non. I am too close to the problem to have sufficient perspective to attempt the discussion of personalities.

3. Logically, no. Practically, under present conditions it is imperative to have Negro leaders. Where people do not read much, do not study much, they are incapable of doing much thinking. Better a bad leader under such circumstances than no leader at all. The very clashes between rival leaders with their several points of view force the rank and file to attend to conditions and compare conflicting views. This often marks the beginning of interests in striving to improve conditions. The merits of leaders are considered in another place.

4. I do not think that it will be possible, or advisable, to attempt to appoint or elect leaders for Negroes. Naturally men and women of exceptional powers will be recognized by those of less developed powers as leaders of thought in various connections in their several localities.

5. There should be no recognized leaders of Negroes except those who are selected from groups or bodies of Negroes—selected by them for a particular purpose or a particular cause. I do not believe in Negro leadership secured by members of the white race and then handed to our group as a leader without first having had the endorsement of the Negroes themselves.

6. Yes. Emmet Scott, Dr. Du Bois and Mr. Grimke. Mr. Scott has great executive ability. Dr. Du Bois is a great philosopher and an ardent race rights advocate. Mr. Grimke a scholar and wise counsellor. This combination as Leaders' Council would, in my opinion, conserve our best interests. Mr. Scott is too much of an opportunist for an ideal leader, Dr. Du Bois is too radical at times, Mr. Grimke is too much of an intellectual recluse.

7. There should be recognized leaders of Negroes, recognized by Negroes because of their merits in their particular fields of endeavor. There are Negroes qualified for such leadership today, but their affiliations with organizations largely or partly supported by philanthropic whites negative their usefulness.

8. I believe every community should develop its own leadership. A great deal of our present leadership is too largely clerical and political and therefore not free, broad, and independent. We need a leadership which is free, courageous, and which possesses a program and definite objective.

9. I do not approve self-appointed leadership or leadership bestowed by white friends because they can command funds. If there are to be leaders, they should be chosen by selection so that there can be "solemn referendum." With this qualification, there are a large number of Negroes whom I would vote for as leaders. The trouble now is that our so-called leaders are not responsible to those whom they are supposed to represent.

10. There should not be; as soon as one appears, destructive influences are brought to bear upon him both from within and without, making of him within a short period an extremely artificial and useless guide, but who is followed, nevertheless, by Negroes blindly to their own great injury.

11. I believe firmly in the capacity of the race for self-leadership. Any people can govern themselves better than an outsider is apt to govern them, unless the alien is willing to become naturalized in the group he aspires to lead. The white race at present is unable or unwilling to become naturalized in the Negro group.

12. The basis of Negro leadership should rest on the ability to develop within the masses a desire and the power to obtain better homes, education and their privileges as citizens without belittling themselves or adopting the toadying attitude. Any individual who is striving in a community to secure these things for his people should be considered a leader. The mere ability to write a book, edit a magazine, or publicly express the cause of the Negro is not a sufficient qualification for leadership even though it does bring national prominence.

13. (a) Under the circumstances, yes. (b) Useless to discuss this. People usually choose as their leaders those who express most strongly prevailing sentiments. (c) The followers are their own judges of merit and demerit.

Question: What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest mistakes of prominent Negroes in their policies or stand on racial issues?

Answers:

1. Most are honest, I think, but emphasize too much some one pet solution, such as "Get Property," "Industrial Education," etc. Many are insincere, using their influence to feather their own nests, letting the race go hang. An intolerance among Negroes themselves for those among their number who have different opinions as to the wisest courses in arriving at the better conditions which they equally are trying to bring about. Some characteristics possessed by most of the so-called leaders may be summed as follows:

Don't bother and leave all in the hands of God.

Overestimation of the Negroes' present attainments, eulogies instead of information.

Oratory of denunciation only, raising prejudice against whites but offering no course of action or thought leading to improvement either of Negroes personally or individually, or as a race.

A disinclination to tell the blunt truth when interracial conferences offer the opportunity for an exchange of views.

2. The greatest mistake that leaders usually make is that of failing to study the problems towards the solution of which they are working. They also are not willing to co-operate with leaders along other lines.

3. Selfishness and lack of moral backbone in the face of possible financial loss.

4. To accept that there is a purely racial psychology. And to think, act, or accept as a Negro and not as a man.

5. (a) Compromising attitude; (b) depending on support of white people financially and morally; (c) failure to co-operate freely with all cases among the Negroes themselves.

6. Lack of absolute frankness with white people about mind and feeling of Negroes; lack of absolute frankness with Negroes about their own shortcomings and failure. I believe that many men are overcoming this weakness.

7. Short-sightedness. They seem not to look ahead and see the consequence of their arrangements and concessions. Most of them, because of the manner of their selections, are unacquainted with history, sociology, etc. They see the present, not even the present generation. They fall into advices and concessions today which prove a noose tomorrow. There is lack of poise. Often they seem to know nothing of a means. There is no intermediate ground; it simply is or it is not. This absolutism inevitably leads to trouble. This of course does not apply to all of our leaders.

8. The greatest mistakes of prominent Negroes in their stands: A statesman is supposed to be the fusion of two necessary elements: (1) the theorist, such as we have in our college professors and most of our writers; and (2) the practical politician who can get things done. The main fault with most of our prominent Negroes in their policies and behavior is that they never accomplish this fusion; all fall very definitely into either group one or group two, and either group by itself is helpless.

9. The greatest mistake of prominent Negroes, in my judgment, is that they pay too great a deference to the attitude of the white race rather than to the inherent demands of humanity. Jesus refused to defer to the arrogance of Pilate, although he exercised the power of life or death.

10. Faulty perspective due to improper training; failure to grasp the economic significance of race prejudice; and a tendency to preach the doctrine of non-resistance when they get rich and fat. The younger crop of Negroes, armed with modern scientific education are remedying the first two. Time will show whether they will prove more unselfish.

DEFENSIVE PHILOSOPHY

Question: If it may be assumed that there are conditions which are intolerable, or, at least, a constant source of irritation to Negroes, it is to be expected that some defensive philosophy is necessary to give poise, dignity, and self-respect. What is your philosophy? What basic philosophical considerations, even if not crystallized into dogma, support your outlook on life, or that of Negroes of your acquaintance and general point of view?

Answers:

1. I believe racial solidarity, as I conceive it, to be the defensive philosophy of many Negroes. My own philosophy, if I have one, is summed up in the belief that potentially the Negro has the same qualities making for success and usefulness as any other group. All he needs is an even break. I believe in an offensive program to teach pride in their achievements and prepare themselves for keen, hard competition all along the line. I believe in attacking the indifference and ignorance of white people which is largely the basis of prejudice, by educating them to respect and believe in the self-defending, non-favor-asking, justice-demanding Negro.

2. My philosophy rests upon two propositions. The first is borrowed from the Latin "I am a man; nothing human is foreign to me." The second is: A man is entirely the product of his environment. (Heredity is the sum of our former environments.) Given, then, an essential equality in all men, temporary advantages are the results of environment. Self-preservation and its corollary, the desire for the preservation of species, are fundamental traits, and the Israelites, killing those who said Sibboleth and not Shibboleth, have their prototype in those who make non-conformity in hair, color, speech or culture, a crime and inferiority stamp. It seems rational to suppose, however, that man may evolve sufficient mentality, and far enough away from the brute, to make differences in culture and not physical characteristics the basis of distinctions. Until then the pursuit of pleasure and advantage is the proper aim of life.

3. The Negro maintains his self-respect and dignity in the face of intolerable conditions because of his natural optimism and his hope for and belief in the approach of a better day. I teach my children that they should not seek companionship with any other children who reluctantly associate with them, not that my children should consider themselves in any way inferior or unequal, but that they should be possessed of too much personal pride to wish association with those who would not be pleasant and agreeable.

4. My philosophy is a pessimistic one. There is often a sense of hopelessness. To live in the white group makes it incumbent on me to overcome many presumptions on their part. On the other hand, to create mutual understandability is a phase of aggressive conduct I follow. To conduct one's self in a more socially acceptable way, viz., to do a certain thing better than any member of the dominant group, is another excellent mode of enhancing social values. But the best way of all is to assume an offensive attack, and place the white group or individual on the defensive at all times. This can be accomplished only by a superior type of mind.

5. Never submit passively to unnecessary indignities. Keep alive the spirit of protest against all injustice from black or white. I am just as good or at least my right to decent treatment is as good as that of any other man. I am what I think and do, not what some other person does to me or thinks about me.

6. My experience with the segregation tendency has taught me to look down upon the system. It bristles with contradictions, being foolishly fastidious, fanatically unreasonable, and usually carried out by the uncultured element. Moreover, the promoters of the system are not ready to discuss the matter; it is simply taboo. The immoral forays of members of this super-sensitive "superior race" coupled with criminal economical advantages maintained by intimidation aside from being tragic lends a subtle hypocrisy which does not escape even the casual observer. Add to this the hysteria of the thing and you have a medley of the ludicrous hypocritical, illogical, and hysterical. Any man then who is honest and self-respecting easily comes to feel himself superior to the promoters of the institutions. One moves among these conditions with a feeling probably not unlike that of Socrates among the Athenians, although, if he chances to be a man of color, with far less freedom of conduct and speech.

7. My philosophy would be that by our conduct as a group we will be able to disprove the principles upon which the white man's intolerance is based; we should assert our rights and use propaganda to change the white man's point of view civically, morally and in the economic world.

8. I am firmly convinced that a dignified friendly attitude towards the white race is the wisest course for the Negro: education, industry, and good manners will win for us more real tolerance and consideration than continued agitation and bitterness. Truth and justice will demand fair play in time, and sentiment must be molded by appeal to intelligence and finer sentiments through undisputable facts.

9. Cultivate a wholesome discontent with untoward conditions and use every lawful means to improve these conditions, so that it may not be said that we are satisfied with unjust discriminations. "The talent for misery is the fulcrum of progress."

SEGREGATION AND RACIAL SOLIDARITY

Question: What, to your mind, is the distinction, either in point of view or definite racial aim, between segregation and "racial solidarity"?

Answers:

1. Segregation implies coercion by the dominant group. Racial solidarity implies certain subjective tendencies of like-mindedness. Racial solidarity may be enhanced by segregation but it thrives best if its causes have their roots in the will to progress rather than the will to exist amidst oppression. Though segregation may aid the tendency toward racial solidarity, neither segregation nor racial solidarity are to be advised in a modern civilization. Racial solidarity for protective reasons with strong limitations (never legal) may be advisable today in America.

2. The definite racial aim of segregation is to prevent the contact of races physically; to prevent Negroes from living with the whites in their neighborhoods and vice versa; to keep themselves separate as a group, thus making segregation of schools and other institutions a natural sequence. Whereas, the aim of racial solidarity is to focus the financial, economic, political and social strength of the group for the purpose of meeting the attacks of the white race as well as for the solution of group problems; for example, solid financial strength would mean Negro business houses of every description, banks, etc.; it would mean that the race as a unit would withdraw its patronage and support from any institution or business that discriminated against members of their group; they would boycott as a unit any brand of goods made by a firm dealing unjustly with colored patrons, etc. It means that politically the group would throw its strength to the party whose principles are in harmony with the welfare of the Negro.

3. Segregation presupposes a force from without which seeks to compel those of the same race or nationality or religious belief to remain among themselves, separated from those of another group supposedly superior. Grouping together either for purposes of living or of religious worship or for other purposes, with the idea of developing a group or race consciousness and thus to develop "pride of race," presupposes a force from within—that is a conscious desire of the people themselves to develop the latent powers within their own group through intensive application.

4. Negroes tend to flock together as do members of other racial groups. I do not regard this as segregation. When an effort is made from without to group them together, which carries along with it restrictions of movement, residence or activity, we have segregation. Racial solidarity seems to me to be the conscious or unconscious reaction to segregation. It is a doctrine of revolt.

5. Segregation means to me regulation of racial contacts by law or force between white and colored people. Racial solidarity is a natural development of massing because of race congeniality.

6. Segregation and racial solidarity differ fundamentally and essentially in the motive prompting the individual act to be discussed. Segregation is the forcing apart of any group into a less favorable environment in order that advantage or position may accrue to those in authority. Race solidarity represents the active part in the same rôle, and is the effort of individuals to utilize similarity of aims or of situation as the basis of an offensive or defensive alliance.

7. Racial segregation is harmful as a social aim. Racial segregation is the result of the attempt of a more powerful group to impose its ideas of racial inferiority upon a weaker group. The weaker group in its attempt to defeat this program rightly adopts racial solidarity as a definite aim in order to strengthen itself both to resist discrimination which usually follows segregation and to attack the vicious and narrow-minded motives of proponents of racial segregation.

8. Voluntary segregation is a step, consciously or unconsciously taken, toward racial solidarity.

9. It seems to me that segregation and racial solidarity differ in that the latter is merely a mental attitude whereas the former, though it includes a certain mental attitude, is chiefly characterized by a sort of hysterical physical separation. Racial solidarity obviously can exist among groups separated by considerable distance, as among Jews. When the mental attitude is not, or is felt not to be, adequate to effect the desired separation among races, then a sort of hysteria ensues and separation is one of the forms in which this hysteria expresses itself. On the whole we may have reason to doubt its efficacy, for it bears a relation to race solidarity akin to that which legal restraint bears to moral restraint.

It seems probable that both racial solidarity and segregation aim at the same thing. Segregation, it seems to me, in the long run must prove a poor means to the end, and it would not require a very imaginative person to think that in its crass forms it may destroy the very end it aims to achieve by creating a prejudice of a violent and consuming sort.

10. The term "segregation" in current discussion connotes legal compulsion, whereas "racial solidarity" implies voluntary union of the colored group under the compulsion of internal feeling or social influences.

11. Segregation, either voluntary or forced, is purely an objective situation, a setting apart in a definite location from one's fellows. Racial solidarity is subjective and is the feeling of cohesion between persons of the same race. Segregation is undoubtedly a factor in intensifying this feeling of the consciousness of kind.

12. The distinction between segregation and "racial solidarity" is in a point of view, viz.: racial solidarity concerns the interior of the Negro, his psychosis, as to its inclusion of a cohesive spirit; segregation concerns the exterior of the Negro, is looking at the situation from the viewpoint of the whites and relates to the barriers opposed by the whites to his unlimited expansion. Voluntary segregation may seem to point to the mind and viewpoint of the Negro rather than the whites, but voluntary segregation does not become a practical problem until the whites attempt to use it as a precedent, in which case it becomes after all a matter of the viewpoint of the whites.

13. It would appear that there is a very fundamental difference between segregation and racial solidarity as the terms are now used in the United States relative to the Negro. By racial solidarity it is generally understood that there is some sort of a physical separation which has been decreed by a law, as for example: the various residential segregation laws enacted some years ago and the segregation laws relative to the separation of races in public conveyances, etc. Racial solidarity, it may be said, is largely volitional, whereas segregation, as the term now is generally used, has back of it an enacted law or the idea of having an enacted law.

A still more fundamental distinction is that racial solidarity does not turn upon the receiving of benefits from privileges or things that are for all the public; segregation, on the other hand, has to do almost exclusively with the restriction of privileges relating to the free use of things that are for all the public, as for example, the free use of public conveyances, public places, the establishing of residences, etc.

14. Segregation aims to herd Negroes together in order that they may be cheated of the rights of citizenship the more easily. Racial solidarity urges Negroes to get together in order that they may fight segregation the more effectively. "National solidarity" is, to our thinking, a far better weapon. Negroes should endeavor to find out those whites who are their friends and ask them to join in the fight for the enforcement of the Constitution.

Question: A large number of Negroes are in agreement on the matter of separate colored churches with colored pastors, and, more recently, colored bishops. Yet this is an argument used by many exponents of the segregation idea, both whole and partial, for other separate institutions. Candidly, what is your opinion on the subject?

Answers:

1. Separate churches, etc., are but a part of the system of segregation inherent in the social fabric of America. This question is therefore not fundamental or basic enough. As a matter of logic and sociological analysis, since I do not favor legal or customary segregation, I cannot favor separate churches, which are but a reflex of enforced segregation. Therefore I do not favor other separate institutions. Yet, I at all times favor free assemblage and organization whatever the social system is or may be. If separate institutions are "desired" by the group and this "want" is not cramped by such considerations as factors like American public opinion, then separate institutions are in order. The test is the free and unimpaired development of the group.

2. The "colored" church is itself an anomaly. The very idea is logically ridiculous. From the practical standpoint it is the result of the un-Christian attitude of churches which preceded it and largely brought it into being. If I had to join a church now, I hope I should decide according to the doctrines and tenets rather than according to the race of the pastor and communicants. If any consideration should guide me rather than the doctrines, it would be to go where I could do the most good.

3. The idea of using the fact of the Negro's preference for his own church, governed by its own ministry, as a reason for segregation not only is absurd but is a weak reason for the manifestation of race prejudice. That Negroes prefer to be together in religious worship is a well-established fact; that they wish their church to be governed by their own ministers and bishops is equally well established; that such desire is natural and human, one must admit; but that this perfectly normal desire should become a reason for forcing upon the Negro other separate institutions is not justifiable. There is a fine distinction between the performance of one's religious rites and the activities necessary to maintain and foster these (which becomes social in character), and the business arrangements of getting an education, being conveyed somewhere, buying a meal, or paying to hear a world-famed artist. The former is part of one's private life and as such is a matter of choice and should be confined to those who are closest to him by race and spiritual conception. The latter are affairs of business wherein one wishes something and pays for it; and as long as he has the necessary greenback, expects to be accorded the rights and courtesies given any citizen of the city or state. The French, the Italian, nearly every nationality, have their own churches, their own ministers, and worship in their own tongue. But no one ever hears anything about segregating the Frenchman or the Italian for that reason.

4. The latter plan, racial solidarity, is not at all inconsistent with the spirit of democracy even when it means the development of separate colored churches or the appointment of colored bishops for colored churches in the denominations where the color line is not so sharply drawn.

5. In my opinion, the Negroes as a whole are not in harmony and agreement on colored churches as such. It is a condition that has been pushed upon them; a means to the end. If Negroes were treated just as any other member of a white church, and given the same opportunity to advance to positions of honor within the church, ministers, priests, bishops, etc., regardless of color, there would be no Negro churches.

6. It is this universal spirit which causes Negroes to desire Negro churches and Negro bishops, because the dominant minds can more easily secure advantages when in an environment in which they conform to the majority pattern and are not parts of a clearly differentiated minority.

7. Separate colored churches in some degree are necessary in order to build up racial solidarity as described above. In other words, a strong defensive many times makes for an effective offensive.

8. Separate colored churches have never seemed to me to be necessary.

9. I am convinced that a limited race separation is not only desirable but unavoidable. There is a wide stretch of possibilities between absolute segregation and unlimited social communication. To argue that because Negroes have and want ministers and teachers of their own color, therefore they should want absolute segregation, strikes me as a bit absurd. There are at least two justifications: it may be thought that the Negro ministers and teachers understand our racial aspirations better and can better impart instructions leading to a realization of them.

10. Wherever Negroes find themselves segregated in schools and churches by choice or control, they should have teachers, preachers and overseers of their own race. Long distance leadership is neither desirable nor effective. This leadership will acquire requisite efficiency by survival of the fittest.

11. The motivation of any separate institutions should be the basis of its approval or disapproval. If Negroes of their own volition develop Negro churches, banks, clubs, stores or other organizations as a means of developing enterprise or initiative, or for providing better opportunities of work for young men and women of our race, I am in accord with such separation. If, however, such separation is forced on them especially in public places, such as hotels, restaurants, theaters and railroads, a separation which sets the Negro apart from the general public, I believe it should be condemned and fought against.

12. It is argued that if many of our leading Negroes agree upon the expediency of complete racial separation in church life, they are inconsistent in not applying it to all matters concerning the Negro. The answer to this is as follows: The highest end of the Negro is the same as that of the man of any other race, viz.: complete self-expression and development of his individuality; in deciding upon what he shall accept or reject in any case this must be his guiding principle; between being a nonentity in the "white" church and partially expressing himself in a Negro church, he naturally chooses the latter, choosing it not as the summun bonum, but solely as the lesser of two evils; between having the Negro officers in the world war and having Negro officers who are trained in a separate camp, he considers the latter less injurious. But give the Negro a choice between a separate church where only partial self-expression can be possible, and a "white" church which would give him full opportunity for individual expression, and he would not hesitate a moment in choosing such a "white" church.

13. Separate colored churches, colored pastors and colored bishops represent more or less a voluntary action of colored people and are indicative of racial solidarity in just the same way as Jewish churches having Jewish rabbis represent Jewish solidarity.

14. As a slave the Negro was welcome to worship at the white church. As a citizen he is not. The white church is a semi-public institution, being more social than religious in its tone. Since Negroes are not wanted, their only recourse is to have their own churches. And if their own churches, why a white pastor or bishop, when Negro preachers quite as competent can be found?

OPINION-MAKING

Question: On what instruments ordinarily responsible for the making of public opinion do you rely for your opinions? With what reservations do you accept what you read in the white press? To what degree are you influenced by the opinions of colored persons?

Answers:

1. Of course I read daily papers, magazines and books and attend lectures and seek every possible means to learn the trend of thought and philosophy of life as it develops throughout civilization. However, whenever the Negro question is treated, I always approach with suspicion the arguments presented by white people. I always read expressions forecasting the approach of democracy with the knowledge that but few white writers and speakers think of the colored races in their utterances. The colored newspapers are much more fair than the whites, but even they, at times, are inclined to bias.

2. Magazines, colored and white papers, public speakers. I accept with great reservation what I read in the white press. I am influenced to a small degree by the opinions of the colored papers.

3. The daily papers, the Nation, the New Republic, the Crisis, the Messenger, the Literary Digest, the Socialist Review, the colored papers, and other scattered organs from here, there and everywhere. The dependence I put upon these white papers is hard to state in words. If in a white paper I see something favorable to the Negro on a question of fact, I take it at face value. On questions of opinion, I draw my own conclusions from my own study and experience, wherever possible. Likewise in a colored paper I take at face value on a question of fact anything favorable to the white view. Otherwise I draw my own conclusions.

4. (a) Daily papers, lectures and magazines. (b) Always with reservations on any subject, especially on race records. (c) Not very much outside of a few good magazines.

5. Every article in white or Negro press is read with the idea that the bias of the writer must be discounted and that the conclusions cannot be accepted, but that one's conclusions must be made from the aggregate of the facts gleaned from every available source bearing upon the subject under discussion.

Leading New York newspapers: Herald, Times, World, Tribune, Call.

Leading American monthlies: World's Work, American, Metropolitan.

Leading American weeklies: Nation, New Republic, Freeman.

Leading American quarterlies: Yale Review, American Journal of Sociology, Non-Partisan Review.

Leading New York Negro weeklies: New York Age, Negro World.

Leading Negro monthlies: Messenger and Crisis.

I read all these papers with great reservations as to their truth and good judgment.

6. Newspapers, magazines, legislative action, personal contacts. The white press will always justify suspicion and the traditional grain of salt with reference to its news concerning Negroes. White news reporters know too few actual facts about Negroes and are too hemmed about by traditional prejudices to be reliable news gatherers in this field. Colored newspapers are, in my opinion, becoming increasingly more reliable in their expression of the thoughts and mind of Negroes, although many times they suffer from the same disease with reference to white people which besets white reporters.

7. History and observation. I habitually question unfavorable comment, because the prejudice and the training of the writers must be considered. Colored papers, unless paid to do otherwise, are more likely to exaggerate reports favorable to the Negro. Therefore some reservations must be made on account of the prejudice and the lack of training of many of the writers.

8. I believe that the information I get from the instruments ordinarily responsible for public opinion influences my opinion but little at any particular moment. I seem to have a theory of present-day tendencies in American institutions with reference to the Negro, and I accept items from these instruments merely as confirmations or negations of my opinions. Usually the negations are so few and far between that I can look upon them as sports or the "exception that proves the rule." Perhaps the Crisis figures most prominently in forming my opinion. At least when my opinion is formed, I am unable to account for it by any small number of books, or other publications. I read regularly the New York Age, the Negro World, and from time to time many other Negro newspapers; I read the Crisis, the Messenger, the Century, Review of Reviews, World's Work, Outlook, Independent, and various scientific articles bearing on the Negro and such reviews of an even larger number of articles as appear in the Psychological Bulletin and similar publications from time to time.

Nearly always when I read, the white press items concerning the Negro are looked upon as carefully selected and shaped for propaganda. By a careful and studied system of emphasis and omission such items can be made to prove most any point. There are exceptions, such as the Independent editorials, etc. Colored newspapers influence my opinion little directly. The items of real news are accepted at face value, there being no appeal, and these are referred to a more or less stable theory of the situation. The theory changes so gradually that I am unable to tell what items exert the greatest influence.

9. I read the dailies and the Crisis, Messenger and Amsterdam News. I accept what all of them say with great reservation, though I naturally give more credence to report of Negro topics in Negro papers than in white papers.

10. I regret to say that the Christian church and the religious press, which should be the chief reliance in shaping public opinion in the moral direction, are all but negligible factors. More race prejudice will be shown in Chicago in the churches on next Sunday morning than in the schools on the following Monday. Religion failing, the chief reliance for the present must be upon the secular agencies such as science, politics, trade, business and the public press and platform. The Negro himself must shape and direct righteous public opinion. Moral reform comes through the public, who feel the need of it. The Negro press is greatly hampered by restrictive and controlling influences, but on the whole it is, perhaps, the most righteous voice in America now crying in the wilderness.

11. I rely on books, magazines and newspapers for facts on which to base opinions. With the exception of a few weeklies, and a few radical newspapers and magazines, I believe the white press is hostile towards the Negro. Whatever I read concerning him, in the daily papers especially, I take with a grain of salt. In matters of race problems the Negro papers usually present the facts of the case fairly. I am inclined to accept their views about such matters. Their opinions about other phases of life, in which race is not predominant concern, I take also with a grain of salt or not at all.

12. Personally we rely on facts, not opinions. Hardly anything in the white press regarding Negroes is to be believed. It rarely, if ever, mentions good about Negroes. The white press is the chief instrument used for fostering the exploitations of Negroes. Most of the news is cooked and doctored to fan race hatred. A few white editors would perhaps write more fairly were they free. Personally very little. Nearly every Negro newspaper that we know, though, aims sincerely to benefit Negroes. While the judgment of the Negro editor is often at fault, his heart is honest. It is infinitely safer for Negroes to accept the judgment of a Negro editor than that of a white one.

Question: Specifically what constitutes the offensiveness in the manner in which the subject "Negro" is handled in some of the local white papers and what sensitive spots do these methods of handling touch?

Answers:

1. There is a suggestion of inferiority and degradation in the usual handling of the subject "Negro" by the local white papers; they generally use the subject in connection with something evil or unlovely; seldom discussed with credit or praise. This affects race honor, race pride, and race love.

2. Withholding the titles Miss and Mrs. from the names of colored women.

Crime headlines, parading Negro crime and criminals.

Printing misstatements of facts but not the denials of them.

Continual suggestions of "proper limitations upon Negro activity" along lines innocent where other races are concerned.

A patronizing attitude toward the Negro and his activities.

3. I detest the use of the word "Negro" as it is spelled with a small n. I shrink from the feminine "Negress." "A colored American" is not distasteful to me at any time.

4. The realization that an inferior man whose face is white can, by appealing to white racial consciousness, outstrip his superior by the utilization of mass cohesion. My feeling is one of thwarted ambition rather than offended sensibilities.

5. Spelling of "Negro" with a small n.

Negro caricatures—always a joke and easily handled.

The Negro as criminal is the general view.

Nothing said about the Negro on the progressive side.

Negro naturally inferior. I need only refer to the Harding episode.

6. The assumption that all Negroes are intellectually and morally inferior. The implication that certain crimes are peculiar to the Negro. The application of opprobrious epithets, so common in some papers. The statement that the race is satisfied with the treatment it receives in public places.

7. Undue prominence and emphasis upon the social aspect of news which is purely personal. Evident failure to obtain or give expression to the Negro point of view.

8. The tendency in my community to connect the Negro in public print with some offensive or boorish or irresponsibly humorous incident is the most annoying use of the word "Negro." By careful emphasis and omissions, the word "Negro" comes to be associated with irresponsible, apish, or silly conduct on the one hand or criminality on the other.

9. Among the other things I take offense at the way the local white papers cannot report crimes committed by Negroes without a big headline, often on the front page, stating that "Brutal Negro Commits Outrage"; I object to the use of the word "Negress," to spelling Negro with a small n; and particularly I object to the sins of omission of these newspapers in that they never attempt any news which may construct better relations, e.g., such as could be obtained if they secured on their reportorial staff an intelligent Negro who knew the needs and aspirations of his people. My sensitiveness upon this results from two things: (1) it wounds my self-respect, and (2) I hate to see race struggle consciously and effectively fomented by the powerful press.

10. The white race as a whole seems to disregard the just sensibilities of the Negro race, and does not scruple to use offensive terms and epithets which would be violently resented by any other group of American citizens. I have no objection to the term Negro used in a descriptive sense for the entire racial group.

11. The word Negro is still printed in many papers with a small n. A general attitude to ridicule Negroes is sometimes evident. Recently a baby contest was held in New York in which there were entered several Negro babes; some of them took prizes. One paper spoke of them as "dusky belles." Very often when a colored woman is mentioned in the papers it is written in this manner: "Katherine Jones, a negress." The recent discussion of Senator Harding's lineage showed that most of the papers considered it a "vile and contemptuous slander"; the possession of Negro blood seemed to be a polluting element which could only mean degradation.

12. The word Negro is wrong, altogether. Prejudice is the only reason for its use. Capitalizing might help, but does it modify the treatment?

The editor of the Crisis, whose opinions are read by millions of Negroes, was one of the five Negroes living outside of Chicago to whom the foregoing questions were put. He sensed in them an insidious attempt to make Negroes confess that they preferred ill treatment, riots, segregation by proscription, and Negro Ghettos. Acting upon this conviction, he warned the Negroes of the country to watch the white members of this Commission. The article is given as it appeared in the January 1921 issue of the Crisis:

Chicago

We would advise our Chicago friends to watch narrowly the work and forthcoming report of the Interracial Commission appointed by the Governor of Illinois after the late riot. The Commission consists of colored men who apparently have a much too complacent trust in their white friends; of white men who are too busy to know; and of enemies of the Negro race who under the guise of impartiality and good will are pushing insidiously but unswervingly a program of racial segregation. They have, for instance, sent a "questionnaire" to prominent colored men, consisting of fifteen questions, which with all their surface frankness and innocence seek to betray black folk by means of the logical dilemma of "segregation" and racial "solidarity." By subtle suggestion these queries say: If you believe in colored churches, why not in colored ghettos? Does not Negro advancement increase anti-Negro hatred? Are not Negroes prejudiced against whites? Are not the mistakes of Negro leaders manifest? And so on.

Indeed, if a professed enemy of black folk and their progress had set out to start a controversy so as to divide the Negroes and their friends in counsel and throw the whole burden of such hasty outbreaks of race hate as the East St. Louis, Washington, and Chicago riots upon them, he would have framed just such a questionnaire as has been sent out by this Commission.

The Crisis' view of the questions is presented in the following contrast:

The Questionnaire The "Crisis" Version

What, to your mind, is the distinction, either in point of view or definite racial aim, between segregation and "racial solidarity"? A large number of Negroes are in agreement in the matter of separate colored churches with colored pastors, and, more recently, colored bishops. Yet this is an argument used by many exponents of the segregation idea, both whole and partial, for other separate institutions. Candidly, what is your opinion on this subject? If you believe in colored churches, why not in colored ghettos?

Do you believe that if Negroes were 100 per cent literate it would make any great difference in race relations? Are general and higher education likely to widen the breach between Negroes and white persons, increase intolerance, resentment, sensitiveness to insults, or can a quieted process of adjustment or complete fusion of interests be expected? Does not Negro advancement increase anti-Negro hatred?

Do you believe Negroes are prejudiced against white persons? Are not Negroes prejudiced against white persons?

Do you believe there should be recognized leaders of Negroes? Are there such persons whom you regard as qualified for leadership? Discuss their merits and demerits. Are not the mistakes of Negro leaders manifest?

What in your opinion, are some of the greatest mistakes of prominent Negroes in their policies or stand on racial issues?

At the time of this article the Commission had made no report of its findings whatever, and there was no possible basis for the accusation of bias. When a Negro living in Chicago explained that the questionnaire was prepared by a Negro member of the Commission's staff, the editor of the Crisis replied that "whoever framed the questionnaire of which I speak in the Crisis or advised its framing had a bias against Negroes. Of that I have not the slightest doubt, and what I was doing was simply to warn the public of this bias."