Papers of the American Negro Academy Part 1
Papers of the American Negro Academy by Archibald H. Grimke, Theophilus G. Steward, Lafayette M.
Hershaw, Arthur A. Schomburg, William Pickens, and John W. Cromwell.
Archibald H. Grimke. The s.e.x Question and Race Segregation
One wrong produces other wrongs as surely and as naturally as the seed of the thorn produces other thorns. Men do not in the moral world gather figs from a thorn-bush any more than they do in the vegetable world.
What they sow in either world, that they reap. Such is the law. The earth is bound under all circ.u.mstances and conditions of time and place to reproduce life, action, conduct, character, each after its own kind.
Men cannot make what is bad bring forth what is good. Truth does not come out of error, light out of darkness, love out of hate, justice out of injustice, liberty out of slavery. No, error produces more error, darkness more darkness, hate more hate, injustice more injustice, slavery more slavery. That which we do is that which we are, and that which we shall be.
The great law of reproduction which applies without shadow of change to individual life, applies equally to the life of that aggregation of individuals called a race or nation. Not any more than an individual can they do wrong with impunity, can they commit a bad deed without reaping in return the result in kind. There is nothing more certain than the wrong done by a people shall reappear to plague them, if not in one generation, then in another. For the consummation of a bad thought in a bad act puts what is bad in the act beyond the control of the actor. The evil thus escapes out of the Pandora-box of the heart, of the mind, to reproduce and to multiply itself a hundredfold and in a hundred ways in the complex relationships of men within human society. And then it returns not as it issued singly, but with its related brood of ill consequences:
"But in these cases, We still have judgment here; that we but teach b.l.o.o.d.y instructions, which being taught return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips."
The ship which landed at Jamestown in 1619 with a cargo of African slaves for Virginia plantations, imported at the same time into America with its slave-cargo certain seed-principles of wrong. As the slaves reproduced after their kind, so did these seed-principles of wrong reproduce likewise after their kind. Wherever slavery rooted itself, they rooted themselves also. The one followed the other with the regularity of a law of nature, the invariability of the law of cause and effect. As slavery grew and multiplied and spread itself over the land, the evils begotten of slavery grew, and multiplied, and spread themselves over the life of the people, black and white alike. The winds which blew North carried the seeds, and the winds which blew South, and wherever they went, wherever they fell, whether East or West, they sprang up to bear fruit in the characters of men, in the conduct of a growing people.
The enslavement of one race by another necessarily produces certain moral effects upon both races, moral deterioration of the masters, moral degradation of the slaves. The deeper the degradation of the one, the greater will be the deterioration of the other, and vice versa. Indeed, slavery is a breeding-bed, a sort of compost heap, where the best qualities of both races decay and become food for the worst. The brute appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions of the two act and react on the moral nature of each race with demoralizing effects. The subjection of the will of one race under such circ.u.mstances to the will of another begets in the race that rules cruelty and tyranny, and in the one that is ruled, fear, cunning and deceit. The l.u.s.t, the pa.s.sions of the master-cla.s.s, act powerfully on the l.u.s.t, the pa.s.sions of the slave-cla.s.s, and those of the slave-cla.s.s react not less powerfully on the master-cla.s.s. The greater the cruelty, tyranny and l.u.s.t of the one, the greater will be the cunning, deceit and l.u.s.t of the other. And there is no help for this so long as the one race rules and the other race is ruled, so long as there exists between them in the state inequality of rights, of conditions, based solely on the race-hood of each.
If two races live together on the same land and under the same government as master and slave, or as superior and inferior, there will grow up in time two moral standards in consequence of the two races living together under such conditions. The master or superior race will have one standard to regulate the conduct of individuals belonging to it in respect to one another, and another standard to regulate the conduct of those self-same individuals in respect to individuals of the slave or inferior race. Action which would be considered bad if done by an individual of the former race to another individual of the same race, would not be regarded as bad at all, or at least in anything like the same degree, if done to an individual of the latter race. On the other hand, if the same offense were committed by an individual of the slave or inferior race against an individual of the master or superior race, it would not only be deemed bad, but treated as very bad.
With the evolution of the double moral standard and its application to the conduct of these two sets of individuals in the state, there grows up in the life of both cla.s.ses no little confusion in respect to moral ideas, no little confusion in respect to ideas of right and wrong. Nor is this surprising. The results of such a double standard of morals could not possibly be different so long as human nature is what it is.
The natural man takes instinctively to the double standard, to any scheme of morals which makes it easy for him to sin, and difficult for a brother or enemy to do likewise. And this is exactly what our American double standard does practically in the South for both races, but especially for the dominant race, for example, in regard to all that group of actions, which grows out of the relation of the s.e.xes in Southern society.
What relations do the Southern males of the white race sustain to the females of both races? Are these relations confined strictly to the females of their own race? Or do they extend to the females of the black race? Speaking frankly, we all know what the instinct of the male animal is, and man after all, is physically a male animal. He is by nature one of the most polygamous of male animals. There goes on in some form among the human males, as among other males, a constant struggle for the females. In polygamous countries each man obtains as many wives as he can purchase and support. In monogamous countries he is limited by law to one wife, whether he is able to maintain a plurality of wives or not.
When he marries this one woman the law defines his relations to her and also to the children who may issue from such a union. But the man-I am talking broadly-is at heart a polygamist still. The mere animal instinct in his blood inclines him to run after, to obtain possession of other wives. To give way to this inclination in monogamous countries he knows to be attended with danger, to be fraught with sundry grievous consequences to himself. He is liable to his wife, for example, to an action for divorce on the ground of adultery. He is liable to be prosecuted criminally on the same charge by the state, and to be sent to prison for a term of years. But this is not the end of his troubles.
Public opinion, society, falls foul of him also in consequence of his misconduct. He loses social recognition, the respect of his fellows, becomes in common parlance a disgraced man. The one-wife country is grounded on the inviolability of the Seventh Commandment. All the sanctions of law, of morals, and of religion conspire to protect the wife against the roving propensities of the husband, combine to curb his male instinct to run after many women, to practice plural marriages.
There thus grows up in the breast of the race, is transmitted to each man with the acc.u.mulated strength of social heredity, a feeling of personal fear, a sense of moral obligation, which together war against his male instinct for promiscuous s.e.xual intercourse, and make for male purity, for male fidelity to the one-wife idea, to the one-wife inst.i.tution. The birth of this wholesome fear in society is the beginning of wisdom in monogamous countries. And unless this sense of moral obligation is able to maintain its ascendancy in those countries, the male s.e.xual instinct to practice plural marriages will rea.s.sert itself, will revert, if not openly, then secretly, to a state of nature, to illicit relations. But every tendency to such rea.s.sertion, or reversion, is effectively checked in a land where national morals are sound, are pure, by wise laws which a strong, an uncompromising public sentiment makes and executes impartially against all offenders.
This is the case in respect to monogamous countries inhabited by a h.o.m.ogeneous population. In such countries where there exist no differences of race, where there is no such thing as a dominant and a subject race, the national standard of morals is single, the s.e.xual problem is accordingly simple and yields readily, uniformly, to the single standard regulation or treatment. The "Thou shalt not" of the law applies equally to all males in their relations to all females in general, and to the one female in particular. No confusion ensues in law or in fact in respect to the subject, to the practical application of the rule to the moral conduct of individuals. Fornication, adultery, marriage and concubinage are not interpreted by public sentiment to mean one thing for one cla.s.s of individuals, and another thing for another cla.s.s under the same law. There are no legal double standards, no moral double standards. The moral eye of society, under these circ.u.mstances, is single, the legal eye of the state is likewise single, and the eye of the whole people becomes, in consequence, full of moral light. Marriage is held to be sacred by the state, by society, and adultery or the breach of the marriage-vow or obligation is held accordingly to be sacrilege, one of the greatest of crimes.
The man who seduces another man's wife in such a society, in such a state, is regarded as an enemy by society, by the state, and is dealt with as such. Likewise the man who seduces another man's daughter. For this crime the law has provided penalties which the wrong-doer may not escape. And it matters not whether the seducer be rich and powerful, or the girl poor and ignorant, the state, society respects not his wealth nor his power. His status in respect to her is fixed by law, and hers also in respect to him. While in the event of issue arising from such a union, the law establishes certain relations between the child and the putative father. It enables the mother to procure a writ against him, and in case of her success he will be thereupon bound to support the child during a certain number of years. The state, society, does not yet compel him to give his name to the innocent offspring of his illicit act, but it does compel him to provide for it proper maintenance. Thus has the state, society, in monogamous countries restrained within bounds the s.e.xual activity of the human male, evolving in the process a code of laws and one of morals for this purpose. These codes are administered impartially, equally, by the state, by society, over all of the males in their relation to all of the females.
In monogamous countries where two races live side by side, one dominant, the other subject, the single legal standard, the single moral standard, yields in practice if not in theory to the double standard in law and morals in respect to the s.e.xual question. In the ensuing confusion of moral ideas, of moral obligations, the male instinct gains in freedom from restraints of law, of social conventions, and reverts in consequence and to that extent to a state of nature, of natural marriage. The legal and moral codes which regulate the relations of the males of one race with the females of the same race are not applicable in regulating the relations of those self-same males with the females of the other race. Marriage in such a country has regard to the males and females of the same race, not to those of different races. The crime of adultery or of fornication undergoes the same gross modification. For in such a land the one-wife idea, the one-wife inst.i.tution has reference to the individuals of the same race only, not to individuals of opposite races. The "Thou shalt not" of the law, public opinion interprets to refer to the s.e.xual conduct of the males and females of the same race in respect to one another, _i. e._, a male member of the dominant race must limit his roving propensities wherever the females of his own race are concerned. He need not under this same law, interpreted by this same public opinion, curb to the same extent those roving propensities where the females of the other race are concerned. He may live in licit intercourse with a woman of his own race and at the same time live in illicit intercourse with a woman of the other race, _i. e._, without incurring the pains and penalties made by the state, by society, against such an offense in case the second woman be of his own race. Neither the law nor public opinion puts an equal value on the chast.i.ty of the women of the two races. Female chast.i.ty in the so-called superior race is rated above that in the so-called inferior race. Hence the greater protection accorded to the woman of the first cla.s.s over that accorded to the woman of the second cla.s.s. The first cla.s.s has well-defined legal and moral rights which the men of that cla.s.s are bound to respect, rights which may not be violated with impunity. Here we encounter one of the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the under race.
Under these circ.u.mstances a male member of the dominant race may seduce the wife of a member of the subject race, or a daughter, without incurring any punishment except at the hands of the man wronged by him.
Such a wrong-doer would not be indicted or tried for adultery or seduction, nor could the wronged husband or father recover from him damages in a suit at law, nor yet could a b.a.s.t.a.r.dy suit be brought by the girl against him with any show of success for the support of his child, were issue to be born to her from such illicit union. The men of the dominant race find themselves thus in a situation where the law, public opinion, provides for their exclusive possession the women of their own race, and permits them at the same time to share with the men of the subject race possession of the women of that race. The s.e.xual activity of the men of the first cla.s.s approaches in these conditions to a state of nature in respect to the women of the second cla.s.s. They are enabled, therefore, to select wives from the stronger race, and mistresses from the weaker one. The natural law of s.e.xual selection determines the mating in the one case as truly as in the other, _i. e._, in the case of concubinage as in that of marriage. The men of the upper cla.s.s fall in love with the women whom they have elected to become their wives, they also fall in love with the women they have elected to become their concubines. They go through all those erotic attentions to the women of each cla.s.s, which are called courtship in the language of s.e.xual love. Only in the case of women of the first cla.s.s this courtship is open, visible to the eye of the upper world of the dominant race, while in the case of the women of the second cla.s.s it is secret, conducted in a corner of the lower world of the subject race.
These men build homes in the upper world where are installed their wives, who beget them children in lawful wedlock; they likewise build homes in the lower world, where are installed their concubines, who beget them children in unlawful wedlock. The wives move, have their being in the upper world and sustain to their husbands certain well-defined rights and relations, social and legal. The children of this union sustain to those fathers equally clear and definite rights and relations in the eye of the law, in the eye of society. The law, society, imposes on them, these husbands and fathers, certain well-defined duties and obligations in respect to these children, these wives, which may not be evaded or violated with impunity. These men cannot therefore disown or desert their wives and children at will.
Whereas, such is not the case, is not the situation, in respect to the unlawful wives hidden away in a corner of the under-world, or of that of the children begotten to those men by these unlawful wives, but quite the contrary. For them the law, society, does not intervene, does not establish any binding relations, any reciprocal rights between those women and children and the men, any more than if the men and the women were living together in a state of nature and having children born to them in such a state, where the will of the natural man is law, where his s.e.xual pa.s.sion measures exactly the extent and the duration of his duties and obligations in respect to his offspring and the mother of them. When he grows weary of the mother he goes elsewhere, and forgets that he ever had children by her.
This is the case, is the situation, in the under-world of the under race. For down there, there is no law, no public opinion, to curb the gratification of the s.e.xual instinct of the men of the upper world, such as exists and operates so effectively to curb those instincts in that upper world. In the upper world these men may have but one wife each, but in the lower one they may have as many concubines as they like, and a different set of children by each concubine. They may have these women and children in succession, or they may have them at the same time. For there is in that under-world no law, no effective power to say to those men, to their l.u.s.t of the flesh: "Thus far and no farther." In the upper world they are members of a civilized society, amenable to its codes of law and morals; in the lower one, they are merely male animals struggling with other male animals for the possession of the females. On the dim stage of the under-world this is the one part that they play. In this one sensual role they make their entrances and their exits. They may have in the upper world achieved distinction along other lines of human endeavor, but in the lower one, they achieve the single distinction of being successful male animals in pursuit of the females.
So much for the males of the dominant race. Now for those of the subject race. How do they conduct themselves at this morally chaotic meeting-place of the two races? What effect does this s.e.xual freedom, sp.a.w.ned under such conditions, produce on their life, on their actions?
Like the men of the upper race, they, too, live in a monogamous country.
But unlike their male rivals, these men of the under-world are not free to seek their mates from the women of both races. The law restricts them, public opinion restricts them, the men of the dominant race restrict them in this regard to the women of their own race. Around the women of the dominant race, law, public opinion, the men of that race, have erected a high wall which the men of the other race are forbidden to climb. What do these men see in respect to themselves in view of this triply-built wall? They see that while they share the women of their own race with the men of the other race, that these same men enjoy exclusive possession of their own women, thanks to the high wall, built by law, by public opinion, and the strong arms of these self-same men. What do the men of the under world? Do they struggle against this s.e.xual supremacy of the men of the upper world, or do they succ.u.mb to circ.u.mstances, surrender unconditionally to the high wall? We shall presently see.
This racial inequality generates heat in masculine b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the under world. And with this heat there ensues that fermentation of thought and feeling which men call pa.s.sion. Those submerged men begin to think sullenly on the subject, they try to grasp the equities of the situation. As thought spreads among them, feeling spreads among them also. About their own women they see no fence, about the women of the other race they see that high wall. They cannot think out to any satisfactory conclusion the justice of that arrangement, cannot understand why the women of the upper race should belong exclusively to the men of that race, and why these self-same men should share jointly with the men of the lower race the women of this race.
The more they strike their heads against this one-sided arrangement, the less they like it, the more they rebel against it. And so they come to grope dimly for some means to oust their rivals from this joint-ownership of the women of the lower race. And when they fail, feeling kindles into anger, and anger into resentment. Against this inequality of conditions a deepening sense of wrong burns hotly within them. Dark questionings a.s.sail their rude understandings. Have the men of the upper race their exclusive preserves, then ought not the men of the lower race to have their exclusive preserves also? Is it a crime, has law, public opinion, the men of the upper race made it a crime for the men of the lower race to poach on those preserves? Then the law, public opinion, the men of the lower race ought to make it equally a crime for the men of the upper race to poach on the preserves of the other race. But law, public opinion, refuses to make the two acts equal in criminality and the men of the lower race are powerless to do so without the help of equal laws and administration, and a just public sentiment. Baffled of their purpose to establish equality of conditions between them and their rivals, they thereupon watch the ways of these rivals. They see them descending into the lower world in pursuit of the women of that world by means that are crooked and ways that are dark. A few of the men in that lower world profiting by that villainous instruction, endeavor to ascend into the upper world by the same crooked means, by the same dark ways. For they affect to believe that what is sauce for one race's goose is sauce for the other race's gander. Thus it is attempted craftily, but, in the main, futilely, to strike a sort of primitive balance between the men of the two races in respect to the women of the two races.
Now no such balance can be struck by the unaided acts of the men of the lower race. Without the co-operation of the women of the upper race these men are helpless to scale the high wall, or to make the slightest breach in it. The law, public opinion, the men of the upper race, render such co-operation very difficult, well-nigh impossible, did there exist any disposition on the part of the women of the upper race to give aid and comfort for such a purpose to the men of the lower race. But as a matter of fact, and speaking broadly, there exists no such disposition.
The law of s.e.xual selection does not operate under the circ.u.mstances to make the men of the lower race sufficiently attractive to the women of the upper race. It is possible that in a state of nature, and under other circ.u.mstances, the case might be different. But under present conditions the s.e.xual gravitation of the women of the upper world toward the men of the lower world may be set down as infinitesimally small, practically a negligible quant.i.ty. Everything in the state, in society, in deep-rooted racial prejudices, in the vastly inferior social and economic standing of the lower race and the ineffaceable dishonor which attaches to such unions in the public mind, together with the actual peril to life which attends them, all combine to discourage, to destroy almost any inclination in that direction on the part of the women of the upper race.
Now, while this is true, speaking broadly, it is not altogether so. For in scattered individual cases, in spite of the difficulties and dangers, the law of s.e.xual selection has been known to operate between those two worlds. A few women of the upper world, on the right side of the high wall have been drawn to a few men in the lower world, on the wrong side of that wall. By the connivance, or co-operation of such women the men of their choice have climbed into the upper world, climbed into it over the high wall by means that were secret and ways that were dark. As one swallow does not, however, make summer, neither can these scattered instances, few and far between, be cited to establish any general affinity between the women of the upper race and the men of the lower race. On examination they will be seen to be exceptions, which only prove the rule of a want of s.e.xual affinity between them under existing conditions at least. Practically a well-nigh impa.s.sable gulf, to change the figure, separates the men of the lower world from the women of the upper one. The men as a cla.s.s can not bridge that gulf, and the women as a cla.s.s have no desire to do so. This, then, is the actual situation: the men of the upper world enjoy practically exclusive possession of the women of that world, while the men of the lower world do not enjoy exclusive possession of the women of their world, but share this possession with the men of the upper world.
The effect that is produced in consequence of this state of things on the morals of the men of the lower world, is distinctly and decidedly bad. Such conditions, such a situation, could not possibly produce a different effect so long as human nature is what it is. And the human nature of each race is essentially the same. The morals of the men of the two worlds will be found at any given time to be almost exactly alike in almost every particular. For the morals of the men of the lower world are in truth a close imitation of those of the men of the upper world-closest not where those morals are at their best, but where they are at their worst. This will be found to be the case every time. So that it happens that where the morals of the men of the upper world are bad, those of the men of the lower world will not be merely bad, but very bad. There follows naturally, inevitably, under these circ.u.mstances and in consequence of these conditions, widespread debauchery of the morals of the women of the lower race. And for this there is absolutely no help, no remedy, just so long as the law and public opinion maintain such a demoralizing state of things.
If there exists no affinity between the men of the lower world and the women of the upper world, there does then exist a vital connection between the masculine morals of the two worlds. These morals are in constant interaction, one upon the other. When the moral barometer falls in the upper world, it falls directly in the lower one also. And as the storm of sensuality pa.s.ses over both worlds simultaneously, its devastating effects will always fall heaviest on the lower one where the women of that world form the center of its greatest activity. Whatever figure the moral barometer registers in the lower world, it will register a corresponding one in the upper, and this whether the barometer be rising or falling. If the moral movement be downward in the lower world, it will be downward in the upper, and if it be upward in the upper, it will be upward in the lower and vice versa.
In view of the vital connection then between the morals of the two races the moral regeneration of either must of necessity include both. At one and the same time the work ought to start in each and proceed along parallel lines in both. The starting-point for each is the abolition of the double moral standard, and the subst.i.tution in law and in public opinion of a single one, applicable alike to the conduct of both.
Otherwise every reformatory movement is from the beginning doomed to failure, to come to naught in the end. For the roots of the moral evil which exists under present conditions and by virtue of them cannot be extirpated without first changing those conditions.
The morals of the two races in default of such change of conditions must sink in consequence from bad to worse. They cannot possibly rise in spite of such conditions.
I have now discussed the subject of the contact of two races living together on the same land and on terms of inequality, in its relations to the morals of the men of those races. It yet remains to consider the same subject in its relations to the conduct of the women. What is the effect of such contact, to be specific, on the women of the two races in the South? And first, what is it on white women? Do these women know of the existence of the criminal commerce which goes on between the world of the white man and that of the colored woman? And if so, are they cognizant of its extent and magnitude. They do perceive, without doubt, what it must have been in the past from the mult.i.tude of the mixed bloods who came down to the South from the period before the war, or the abolition of slavery. Such visible evidence not even a fool could refuse to accept at its full face value. And the white women of the South are not fools. Far from it. They have eyes like other women, and ears, and with them they see and hear what goes on about them. Their intelligence is not deceived in respect to appearance and underlying causes.
Certainly they are not ignorant of the fact that a Negro can no more change his skin than a leopard his spots. When therefore they see black mothers with light-colored children, they need not ask the meaning of it, the cause of such apparent wonder. For they know to their sorrow its natural explanation, and whence have come all the mulattoes and quadroons and octoroons of the South. And to these women this knowledge has been bitterer than death. The poisoned arrow of it long ago entered deep into their souls. And the hurt, cruel and immedicable, rankles in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those women today, as it rankled in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their mothers of a past long vanished.
What, pray, is engendered by all of this widespread but suppressed suffering transmitted, as a bitter heritage for generations, by Southern mothers to Southern daughters? What but bitter hatred of the black woman of the South by the white woman of the South. How is this hatred expressed? In a hundred ways and by a hundred means. One cannot keep down a feeling of pity for a large cla.s.s of women in the South who cannot meet in street, or store, or car, a well-dressed and comely colored girl without experiencing a pang of suspicion, a spasm of fear.
For there arises unbidden, unavoidably, in the minds of such women the ugly question, whose daughter is she, and whose mistress is she to be?
For in the girl's veins may flow the proudest blood of the South. And this possibility, aye, probability, so shameful to both races, no one in the South knows better than the Southern white woman. What happens? The most natural thing in the world, but not the wisest. The hatred, the suspicion, the fear of these women find expression in scorn, in active ill-will, not only toward that particular girl, but toward her whole cla.s.s as well. They are all put under the ban of this acc.u.mulated hatred, suspicion and fear.
A hostility, deep-seated and pa.s.sionate as that which proceeds from white women as a cla.s.s toward black women as a cla.s.s, shoots beyond the mark and attacks indiscriminately all colored women without regard to character, without regard to standing or respectability. It is enough that they belong to the black race; ergo, they are bad, ergo, they are dangerous. All this bitter hatred of the women of one race by the women of the other race has borne bitter fruit in the South in merciless cla.s.s distinctions, in hard and fast caste-lines, designed to limit contact of the races there to the single point where they come together as superior and inferior. Hence the South has its laws against intermarriage, and for separating the races in schools, in public libraries, in churches, in hotels, in cars, in waiting rooms, on steamboats, in hospitals, in poorhouses, in prisons, in graveyards. Thus it is intended to reduce the contact of the races to a minimum, to glut at the same time the hatred of the white women of the South toward the black women of the South, and to shut the men of each race from the women of the other race. But how foolish are all these laws, how futile are all these cla.s.s distinctions!
Do they really effect the separation of the races? They do not, they cannot under existing conditions. What then do they? They do indeed separate the world of the white man and woman from the colored man and woman, but they fail utterly to separate the world of the colored woman from the white man.
The joint fear of the white woman and the white man is incorporated today in every State of the South in laws interdicting marriage between the races. But do these laws put an end to the s.e.xual commerce which goes on between the world of the white man and that of the colored woman? Have they checked perceptibly this vile traffic between these two worlds? They have not nor can they diminish or extinguish this evil. On the contrary, because they divide the two worlds, because they uphold this legal separation of the races, they provide a secret door, a dark way between the two worlds, between the two races, which the men of the upper world open at will and travel at pleasure. For they hold the key to this secret door, the clue to this dark way. Such preventive measures are in truth but a repet.i.tion of the fatal folly of the ostrich when it is afraid. For then while this powerful bird takes infinite pains to cover its insignificant front lines, it leaves unprotected its widely extended rear ones, and falls accordingly an easy victim to the enemy which pursues it. The real peril of an admixture of the races in the South lies not in intermarriage, but in concubinage, lies through that secret door which connects the races, the key to which is in the hands of the white men of the South. It is they who first opened it, and it is they who continue to keep it open. Were it not for the folly of the white women of the South, it might yet be closed and sealed. The folly of the white women of the South is their hatred, their fear of the colored women of the South. They first think to rid themselves of the rivalry of the second cla.s.s by excluding them from the upper world, by shutting them securely within the limits of the lower one. But these women forget the existence of that secret door, of the hidden way. They forget also the hand that holds the key to the one and the clue to the other. That hand is the hand of the white man; it is certainly not the hand of the colored woman.
Is it not the white woman of the South more than any other agency, or than all other agencies put together, who are responsible for the existence of a public sentiment in the South which makes it legally impossible for a colored girl to obtain redress from the white man who betrayed her, or support from him for his b.a.s.t.a.r.d child? The white woman of the South thus outlaws, thus punishes her black rival. But what does such outlawry accomplish, what such punishment? What do they but add immensely to the strength of the white man's temptation by making such illicit intercourse safe for him to indulge in? Thanks to the white woman's mad hatred of the colored woman, to her insane fear of her colored rival, the white man of the South is enabled to practice with singular impunity this species of polygamy. For the penalties against the adulterer, against the fornicator, which the law provides, which public opinion provides, for him in the upper world, he well knows will not be called down on his head were the acts of adultery or fornication committed by him in the lower world. It is a sad fact and a terrible one, sad for both races and terrible for the women of both races in the actual and potential wickedness of it. No colored girl, however, cruelly wronged by a white man in the South will be able to obtain an iota of justice at the hands of that man in any court of law in any Southern State, or to get the slightest hearing or sympathy for her cause at the bar of Southern public opinion. Were she to enter the upper world of the white woman with such a case against some white man, who but the Southern white woman would be the first to drive her back into her world? But unless she is not only allowed but encouraged to emerge out of her world with the shameful fruit of her guilty life and love, and so to confront her white paramour or betrayer in his world, how is the lower world ever to rid itself of such as she, or the upper one of such as he? In the segregation and outlawry of the black woman under such conditions lie the white woman's greatest danger, lie the white race's greatest danger from admixture of the races, lies the South's greatest danger to its morals. For through such segregation and outlawry run the white man's way to the black woman's world, and therefore to miscegenation of the races, to their widespread moral degradation and corruption. Amalgamation is not therefore made hard, but appallingly easy.
But there is another aspect to this side of the subject which must not be entirely ignored, and that is the existence in a few instances of illicit relations between some white women and some colored men in the South. That such relations have existed in the past and do actually exist there at the present time, there is absolutely no doubt whatever.
In certain localities these relations, although known or suspected, have been tolerated, while in general as soon as they are discovered or suspected they have been broken up by mobs who murder the black partic.i.p.ants when they are caught, sometimes on trumped-up charges of having committed the "usual crime." The existence of such relations is not so strange or incredible as may be supposed at first hearing of them. For it is a fact hardly less curious, if not so strange, that there are men who while they would not think of marrying into a cla.s.s beneath them would nevertheless live readily enough in a state of concubinage with women of that cla.s.s. And in this upper cla.s.s there are women, not many, it is true, who would do the same thing. They care enough for the men in the cla.s.s beneath them to enter into illicit relations in secret with them, but not enough to enter into licit relations with these same men in the open, in the gaze of a scornful and horrified world. Has it ever been seriously considered that like father may occasionally produce like daughter in the South? And that such moral lapses by a few white women of that section may be accounted for in part at least by that mysterious law of atavism? The sons are like their fathers in respect to their fondness for colored women, why may not one daughter in, say, ten thousand, resemble those fathers in that same shameful, though not altogether unnatural respect? Do not such instances, few and far between at present though they be, furnish matter for thoughtful people of the South regardless of s.e.x, race or color?
Have the white women of the South considered that under existing conditions they are deprived of effective influence, of effective power, to reform the morals of the men of their race? And that unless the morals of the men are reformed the morals of the whole white race will eventually decline? If the women fail to lift the level of the moral life of their men to their own higher plane, the lower morals of the men will drag downward ultimately to their level that of the women. From this inevitable conclusion and consequence there is no possible escape.
But the white women of the South are powerless to lift the morals of their men without lifting at the same time the morals of the women of the black race. If, however, they steadily refuse to do so in the future, as they have refused to do so in the past, and as they refuse to do so today by the only sure means which can and will contribute mightily to effect such a purpose, viz., by making the black women their equals before the law, and at the bar of an enlightened public sentiment, and these women remain in consequence where they are today, a snare to the feet of white men, when these men trip over this snare into the h.e.l.l of the senses, they will drag downward slowly but surely with them toward the level of these self-same black women the moral ideals if not the moral life of the white women of the South.
And now a final word about the black woman of the South: She holds in her keeping the moral weal or woe, not only of her own race, but of the white race also. As she stands today in respect to the white man of the South, her situation is full of peril to both races. For she lives in a world where the white man may work his will on her without let or hindrance, outside of law, outside of the social code and moral restraints which protect the white woman. This black woman's extra-legal position in the South, and her extra-social status there, render her a safe quarry for the white man's l.u.s.t. And she is pursued by him for immoral ends without dread of ill consequences to himself, either legal or social. If she resists his advances, and in many cases she does resist them, he does not abate his pursuit, but redoubles it. Her respectability, her very virtue, makes her all the more attractive to him, spurs the more his sensual desire to get possession of her person.
He tracks her, endeavors to snare her in a hundred dark ways and by a hundred crooked means. On the street, in stores, in cars, going to and from church, she encounters this man, bent on her ruin. Into her very home his secret emissaries may attack her with their temptation, with their vile solicitation. Nowhere is she safe, free from his pursuit, because no law protects her, no moral sentiment casts about her person the aegis of its power. And when haply dazed by the insignia of his superior cla.s.s, or his wealth, or the magic of his skin, or the creature comforts which he is able to offer her, she succ.u.mbs to his embrace and enters the home to which he invites her, she becomes from that time outlawed in both worlds, a moral plague-spot in the midst of both races.
For she begins then to reproduce herself, her wretched history, her sad fate, in the more wretched history, in the sadder fate of her daughters.
And so in her world of the senses, of the pa.s.sions, she enacts in a sort of vicious circle the moral tragedy of two races. If the white man works the moral ruin of her and hers, she and they in turn work upon him and his a moral ruin no less sure and terrible.
What is the remedy? It is certainly not the segregation of the races in a state of inequality before the law. For such segregation exists today.
It has existed to the hurt of both races in the past. It is the fruitful parent of fearful woes at the present time, and will be the breeder of incalculable mischief for both races, for the South, and for the nation itself, in the future. The remedy lies not then in racial segregation and inequality, for that is the disease, but in interracial comity and equality. The double moral standard has to be got rid of as quickly as possible, and a single one erected in its stead, applicable alike to the men and women of both races. The moral world of the white man and that of the black woman must be merged into one by the ministers of law and religion, by an awakened public conscience, and by an enlightened and impartial public sentiment, which is the great promoter and upholder of individual and national righteousness. The black woman of the South must be as sacredly guarded as a woman by Southern law and public opinion against the s.e.xual pa.s.sion and pursuit of the Southern white man as is the Southern white woman. Such equality of condition, of protection, in the South is indispensable to any lasting improvement in the morals of its people, white or black. If that section persists in sowing inequality instead of equality between the races, it must continue to gather the bitter fruits of it in the darkened moral life, in the low moral standard of both races. For what the South sows, whether it be cotton or character, that it will surely reap.
Theophilus G. Steward. The Message of San Domingo to the African Race