Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/465

 RACE AND MARRIAGE 451

War for the deportation of the negroes to Africa has been continued, with varying degrees of insistence, in the plea for their segregation in a separate state. In Basutoland and Bechuanaland whites are forbidden to hold land or settle permanently, and several other South African colonies re- serve certain districts wholly for the native inhabitants. The ^ South African Native Races Committee has recently recom- mended that, in order to prevent race friction, the blacks be totally excluded from particular white districts, chiefly the urban centers.'*^ There is at present a notable agitation in Australia for the exclusion of all colored immigrants to the end that this continent may be reserved as a field for the working-out of a distinctive white civilization.^^ Even if cross-breeding could be prevented in any region where the races meet, there remains the difficulty of devising a satisfactory plan of administration for the government of heterogeneous types. The South African colonies have not hesitated frankly to adopt a complex and burdensome system of class legislation to meet the needs of their perplexing situation.^® Every state must take into account the fact that contact of diverse races is almost certain to occur under the least favorable circumstances. It is chiefly the lawless elements among the whites that cross with the darker races, and it is exactly among the least socialized class — "the poor whites" of all the world — that the most intractable race antagonism is usually found.

The present era of colonial expansion by the great culture nations has called forth a good deal of twaddle about the "mission" of the white race to pilot backward peoples along the path to civilization by a kind of forced guardianship. This plea is often a specious belated apology for a conquest which has already become a fait accompli. But, even accepting the idea that the newly gained regions are to be held in trust for civiliza-

Capital and Colored Labor, chap. ix.
 * The South African Natives, especially pp. 68-79. See also Olivier, White

•See Pearson, National Life and Character, 16, 17; also Law and Gill, "A White Australia; What It Means," Nineteenth Century, January, 1904.


 * The South African Natives, as cited above, chaps, iv and v.