Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/373

 New York Times of November 19, 1909, refers to a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Iowa as holding that a coffee company licensed under the State laws, being a private concern, has the right to refuse to serve a Negro.

Perhaps, as a whole, actual race distinctions in the United States are not increasing; but distinctions, formerly sanctioned only by custom, are now either permitted or required by law, and the number of recent suits in States outside the South indicates that actual discriminations are as prevalent as they have been at any time since 1865.

DISTINCTIONS NOT BASED ON RACE SUPERIORITY

What is the fundamental cause of race distinctions? No comparison of laws can formulate an answer to that question; but the personal observation of the writer leads to the belief that race distinctions are not based fundamentally upon the feeling by one race of superiority to the other, but are rather the outgrowth of race consciousness. If Negroes were in every way equally advanced with white people, race distinctions would probably be even more pronounced than now; because, in addition to physical differentiation, there would be the rivalry of equally matched races. Thus, the widespread prejudice entertained by Gentiles toward Jews, resulting in actual, if not legal, distinctions, is due, not to any notion that Jews are intellectually or morally inferior to any people, but to a race consciousness which each possesses. The exclusion of the Japanese was due, not so much to an intellectual or moral inferiority of that race to the white race, as to a difference in their racial ideals. So long as two races living side by side have each an amour propre, the