General Introduction

"There is No Lamp by which my feet may be guided but the lamp of experience." This declaration is found in that eventful oration of Patrick Henry which brought the Southern colonies to the aid of the Northern and resulted in the establishing of the United States of America. It is a tribute to the inestimable value of experience as a guide to conduct, individual and social. Experience is knowledge, and, by having knowledge of the past, we are able to avoid the mistakes of the past. Experience charts the oceans, determines dangerous currents, places beacons upon the rocks, marks the safe passages. A well known British statesman, when contemplating the perilous position of sixty million British Whites who rule nearly four hundred million colored subjects, said that the problems arising from the White man's contact with the colored races were the most difficult confronting civilization, problems upon which history casts no light. There is an element of gloom in this observation. Practical statesmen seek light from the past by which to proceed int he present and in the future. If civilization's chief problem is not to be made clearer by light from history, there is reason for doubt and gloom. Were the problems arising from the contact of races temporary problems, there would not be cause for uncertainty, but aggressions on the part of the modern White man have placed the White race in contact with all colored peoples, and race friction is to increase rather than grow less. Happily for the world, the practical statesman is wrong when asserting that history furnishes no light by which our feet may be guided in the situation which confronts us. Light from history is obtainable, both as to the fundamental problem underlying race friction and the practical problems arising out of the White man's control of the colored races. Such light is available as a result of the labors of the biologist and especially as a result of the advancement of the science ethology. Up to the present, the White man in contact with colored races has generally ignored light from history; it may even be said that he has been unaware that there is light from history by which he may be guided. The work of ethnologists, many unknown to fame and believed to be dealing with not very important matters, is at hand to give the practical statesman that light for which he seeks and the need of which he so deeply feels. Ethnology has not said its last word, but it has spoken in authoritative tone those things upon which we may construct a race sociology; and it is this more than all else of which the White world stands in need. It may surprise the practical man of affairs to learn that scientific research has revealed to us a record of more than six thousand years of race contact. In Africa, the White man's dealing with the Negro dates back this far in authentic history, and in Asia we have at our disposal some forty centuries of the White man's dealing with the colored races of that continent. While sixty centuries are but a short period of the life of a race, yet they are sufficient from which to judge the results of race contact. The science of ethnology, if properly restricted, will not deal with mankind as such, but with the various races. Its province is not to determine the origin of man and his development, but to trace the origin and development of the several races. Ethnology may properly be concerned with the results arising from contact of races. It is this phase of that science with which we deal in this volume. A study of the results arising from the contact of races is to have a practical influence upon the White man and his civilization. It will give knowledge that may be considered the imperative need of civilization. Race friction is not local, not confined to one continent; it is world wide. We cannot escape it though we make the attempt. But there is no evidence whatever that either the White man or the colored seeks to avoid race contact. Contact is the source of friction. Steam, steel and electricity prevent isolation of any race or breed. We must look forward to a continuation of race contact. From the White man's standpoint, the color problem may be defined as the difficulty of determining the extent and intent of race contact to the end that the colored races may benefit and the White may not be endangered either in race stock or culture. That the White race retain ethnic purity is not a superficial desire; it is a primary necessity if civilization, as we understand it, is to continue. By preserving itself, the White race is to promote its own progress and impart its achievements to the backward races. A study of the following pages will revels that the White race, as White, has outdistanced the other races in cultural attainments, spiritual and material. This will constitute light from history. We shall also see that the White race, become hybrid, has not been able to continue its cultural progress. This, too, is light from history. We confess that we do not know how to convince or even disturb that once large but constantly dwindling group of White theorists who, when confronted by indisputable facts, past and present, simply reply, "it might have been different, or it may yet be different." This group of non-scientific thinkers grudgingly acknowledges the age-long ascendency of the White race, but will tell one that it might have been otherwise and it may yet be so. Those who construct a race sociology upon "ifs," "mays" and "mights," dwell in the realm of fancy and are secure, for there is no method by which they may be reached. To them the ethnologist may reply, "When your ifs,' mays' and mights' come true, you are entitled to consideration." In constructing a program by which the White race is to be guided in its future contact with the colored races, we are to be influenced by facts only. Suppositions and hopes have their place, but not properly so in determining the future of the White man and his civilization. What is needed is the light of experience, not the halo of prospect and prophecy. The results of past contact of White with colored are to be relied upon as imperative suggestions which are to determine the purpose and limits of future contact. By knowing the past, we may profit by reason of such knowledge, whether it reveals success or failure. It may be necessary that some consider the fact that the races as such are not of recent origin. At the dawn of history, they were constituted very much as they are today. The earliest records reveal the White race in ascendency, just as that race is foremost at the present time. The relative position of the races has not changed for many thousands of years. Some ethnologists have asked: if the races have retained relative positions for six thousand years, what reason have we to suppose that long before the dawn of history, say fifty thousand years ago, they were in different relation one to the other? Contact of the White race with a colored produces that which is popularly called a color problem. But it is necessary for us to understand that a color problem is not merely a problem of color. A color problem rightfully understood goes deeper than the skin. It is that problem, or problems, arising from the culturally advanced White man's contact with the lesser advanced non-White. It is this and yet it is more. Culture is the product of a peculiar mentality acting upon environment and being in some degree responsive to the influences of environment. But races placed under similar environment do not produce similar culture. If advantage and opportunity be equal and the results widely different, we have cause of inquiry whether the various races have not evolved difference in mentality just as they have evolved difference in skin color, hair texture, and other less obvious, though equally material, physical distinctions. Is it not reasonable to believe that if evolution has given to the various races well defined markings in skin, hair, and head form, that the same forces may have established coordinated differentiations in brain quantity and quality? This is a plausible theory and to it we cannot refrain from inviting the consideration of the remaining members of that one time world-dominating host who seek to show that the African is a youthful Mongolian and a child Caucasian. Environment has played an important part in determining the differences between the races, but it has done so only in conjunction with an immense period of time. Race traits and potentialities were determined at that remote period when the races were young and plastic. Succeeding centuries have but accentuated the differences in racial trends which were determined countless centuries ago. Those who have held that the difference between the White and the colored is a temporary environmental difference merely have, in effect, held that evolution has qualified every organ of the human body except the brain, which organ remains the same in all races. Such a conclusion is rankly uncritical, and that it at one time was seriously considered is ample evidence of the low state of biological knowledge prevailing among a large proportion of White people. If brain matter is identical among all the races of mankind, why is the mental response to environment so clearly demarked among races subject to similar environment? Why are the Indians of Brazil sullen and melancholy while the Negro in Brazil, after four centuries of identical environment, remains loud-mouthed and boisterous even as he is in his African home? In Brazil, the Negro and the Indian intermarry readily and consequently experience similar social environment, but neither social nor natural surroundings are able to make the Negro more like the Indian. Similar illustrations may be multiplied indefinitely, but it is not necessary, for we have ample evidence that there is such a thing as race and heredity as well as environment. The White race in recent centuries has modified its environment rather than been modified by environment. Both for scientific observation and for practical dealing with the color problem we must accept the races as such, hopelessly differentiated from each other and conditioned to development in accord with their respective instincts and tendencies. Practical politics no more than scientific research may ignore organic race traits. To do so is to bungle affairs hopelessly, as has been done in many parts of the world during the past century. We cannot act toward the Negro as if he were a White child, for he is not a White child, but a full grown black whose hope for the future lies in his development of himself as a Negro, and not in his pathetic and ludicrous aping of the White man. We cannot ignore race. It is written large in human history. It has left its visible trace upon every continent. We may specify a single race that biologically is but a portion of mankind, but by virtue of race instincts and capacities has contributed all the higher human achievements. This race, the White race, has not had advantage over other races in time, climate, country, or other environment, but to its fertile brain and restless activity humanity owes its all. From our knowledge of history, we are safe in assuming that if the White race were effaced from the earth, civilization, as we know it, would perish. The cultural debit of the colored peoples to the White race is such as to make the preservation of the White race a chief aim of the colored, if these latter but understood their indebtedness. By keeping the White man White, the colored may look forward to a future in which they may enjoy cultural surroundings superior to their own racial contributions. The inventions of the White man are to become world possessions. This is so at the present, has been so in the past, and apparently is to continue to be so. The insane desire of the colored to blot out the color line and bridge the evolutionary chasm between the races by the process of inter-racial marriage ignores the fact that the White race as White is the source of progress. That the colored races should seek to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg" is further proof that their inferiority, demonstrated so clearly in cultural attainments, extends to their rational processes in general. While the future of the colored races is concerned so deeply with the purity of the White, we are not for a moment to consider it proper to permit their judgment to determine whether the White is to remain White. This is a question for the White to decide, but it would seem that light from history on this matter ought to reach even the mind of the colored. The White man founded the cultures of Egypt and India and eventually interbred with his colored subjects, leaving a mixbreed population heir to the culture of the pure White. With what result? Arrested development! Stagnation! This is light from history that should penetrate the densest intellect. The African Negro was raised from a brute-like condition by White Egypt; what influence for good has mongrel Egypt had upon the Negro? The African Negro's knowledge of the present civilized arts has come from the pure Whites of Europe, not from the mix-breed Whites contiguous to his domain. While science may deal with experience only and may not take authoritative cognizance of events that have not happened, yet the results of the experience are all that we have form which to construct a program for the future; and in this respect it may be Said that a program for the future based upon experience is a program based upon science. The light of experience will reveal that, regardless of the consequence, the colored races will gladly avail themselves of opportunity to inter-bred with the White; and if the White is to remain White, since that raced is now in contact with all races, such result shall depend entirely upon the attitude of the White man. A gloomy consideration with regard to this matter is that sixty centuries of race history have proved that the White man has at no time or place remained White when in prolonged contact with colored races. This, then, is the essence of the color problem; the difficulty of preserving the culturally fit when in contact with the culturally unfit. There are, incidental to race contact, economic and political problems which are constantly manifest; but the fundamental problem is to preserve the breed from which progress issues. In dealing with the world-wide color problem, great stress should be placed upon the fundamental, rather than the incidental phase of the problem, for the question of color is a mooted and vexed question. Yet, strange to say, the White man seems always to have grasped the essential phase of the problem, but has been greatly confused in his practical dealing with the less important phases. Those who are familiar with the history of race contact, or those who have considered the situation today, will readily admit that racial inter-breeding is one irredeemable phase of race contact and that other problems, so-called, are of but minor importance. There is an omen of hope in the fact that the leading White nations at present are united in opposing inter-breeding of the White man with the colored races. This much the White peoples of the world, theoretically, hold in common; opposition to miscegenation. With this in common, White men, regardless of nationality or geographical location, should be able to formulate a program upon which all Whites may agree, and by such agreement become a unit in dealing with the backward races. Any analysis of the colored problem should be stated in unequivocal terms, for the future of the White man in contact with the colored races is to be determined by the attitude of the many of the White race rather than by the conceptions of a few. The White world is a democratic world and the people, rather than the specialists, have the deciding influence in national policies. The color problem must be resolved into a few simple propositions so very clear that the average man will not have doubt in comprehending their meaning nor difficulty in testing their merits. The author of this treatise wishes to do his share in simplifying this problem, and he is quite conscious that if his analysis is wrong it will be disproved. Our color problem is primarily that arising from the presence and the increase of the African in our midst. We have an Asiatic color problem and also one arising from an ever closer contact with the mix-breeds of Latin America; but the Negro problem overshadows all others, both in gravity and in interest. This book is written with our Negro problem in mind, but the problems arising from contact with the yellow and mix-breed races differ only in degree from those arising from contact with the Negro. Scientific research has done much toward establishing the following propositions: The White race(*) has founded all civilizations. The White race remaining White has not lost civilization. The White race become hybrid has not retained civilization. (* For definition of "White Race," see notes at end of Chapter 1) The data presented in the succeeding chapters seem to justify the above conclusions. In one form or another they will be often repeated. Inquiries and objections have been anticipated to a considerable extent and will be answered as the reader follows the subject matter. It is well to state at this point that the writer is fully aware that the term "White Race" is not a satisfactory ethnological term. The term is used in its popular sense and is practically synonymous with the term "Caucasian Race." We know that the "White Race" in reality includes three or more "races." The ancient civilizations whose origins have been ascribed to colored races will be shown to have developed directly or indirectly as the result of the creative ingenuity of one or more branches of the White Race. Just as the modern White man carried his culture to India, China, and the continent of Africa, the early White man conquered these centers and established there his culture. Civilized institutions have not issued from the White race because the race is White but because the race is possessed of creative intellect and great energy. The retention of the color of the skin will not within itself insure progress in civilization. The individuals of superior heredity, those who initiate the successive stages in cultural progress, are few indeed and are the product of superior strains within the race. If the superior strains cease to multiply and the race increase is from the inferior strains, civilization will decay just as surely as if the White race should mix its blood with that of the colored races, though the decay will not be as rapid or as complete. (the influence upon civilization of the increase of the inferior strains is well set forth by Lothrop Stoddar in his Revolt Against Civilization (1922).) In this general introduction, the author cannot refrain from calling attention to a matter that should greatly clarify the White man's attitude to the color problem, namely, that a most disturbing phase of the problem is not in reality a part of the problem of color, but is incidental to it, arising from a difference of opinion among groups of the White race as to the proper attitude of the White man towards the colored. Such division among the Whites cannot but work harm to the White man and certainly it has never given permanent advantage to the colored. Any seeming advantages the colored races have derived from inter-group conflicts within the White race concerning the colored are merely temporary, and do not have substance. The results of such conflicts have not extended to the evolutionary differentiations between the races. But they have promoted blood admixture of the races; and by so doing, created a type divergent from the parent races. Possibly it is necessary only to point out the geographical demarcations of those groups of the White race which have come into conflict regarding the colored in order to show that such difference of opinion and policy is temporary and is not to abide. A study of the world-wide color problem during the past eight or nine decades will reveal the White race divided into two schools of teaching with regard to a proper attitude towards the colored. One school is constituted generally of those portions of the White race that live apart from the colored, while the other school is made up of those portions of the White race that live in contact with the colored. The Whites who dwell apart from the Negro have advocated one policy towards the Negro, while those Whites who dwell with the Negro have advocated another policy. There is a general agreement among the Whites who live apart from the Negro, whether these Whites live in Europe or in America. There is also a general agreement among the Whites who live in contact with the Negro, whether these Whites live in the Southern States of the American Union, in the European colonies of Africa, Asia, Australasia, or in Latin America. The teachings of the Whites who live apart from the Negro have placed great emphasis upon environment, rather than upon race and heredity, whilst those Whites who live in daily contact with the colored races are agreed that there is a difference between the White and the colored which cannot be bridged by present environment and that the development of the various races is conditioned by their respective race traits and tendencies. It is safe to prophesy that there will be no further serious; certainly not armed, conflicts between the White groups over the colored races; for the perilous position of the White race in the world of today and tomorrow will compel that race to seek race unity, rather than division, which can only weaken the White man and artificially elevate the colored. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency on the part of the Whites who dwell apart from the colored to recognize that race traits and tendencies not only permanently adhere to the races, but that such potentialities must be taken into consideration in the White man's dealing with the colored. It may readily be seen that the Negro problem is a part of the greater problem of heredity. When eugenics seeks to eliminate the unfit and establish the fit it has for its purpose not the betterment of physical types merely, but the establishment of those types of greatest value to progressive civilization. A race which has not shown creative genius may be assumed to be an unfit type so far as progress in civilization is concerned and is a matter of concern for the eugenist. Those who seek to maintain the White race in its purity within the United States are working in harmony with the ideals of eugenics. Asiatic exclusion and Negro repatriation are expressions of the eugenic ideal. The latter chapters are given to a consideration of those problems which arise when civilization is in contact with the colored races, and to the only possible solution of the color problem if the White man is to remain white and retain his culture. The American Negro problem has already given rise to more volumes than has any other similar problem. Justification for this publication lies chiefly in the attempt to indicate the conditions in the rest of the world at present, and the results of race contact in the past, and present this knowledge as supplementary information to the many and capable works upon our Negro problem, which is more acute today than in the past and the intensity of which is ever increasing. EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT The Selective Age Principle In implementing a repatriation movement to restore Africans to their ancestral continent, Col. Cox liked the "Selective Age Principle" for transferring vigorous youths. He quoted Lord Melchett, a distinguished British Jew, who, when discussing the application of this principle in removing Jews from Poland to reduce race pressure there, as saying in regard to the annual removal of marriageable youth: "The effects of such transferences would be to nearly halve the original population in 20 years and in about 40 years to reduce it to about 14% of its former size." As to such a policy, Col. Cox stated, in a lecture in Germany, in 1959: "A leisurely, sustained repatriation program would give to Negroes a nation of their own, or settle such as desire in African nations that may request such settlement."