Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/14

10 existence, and those opportunities have never been neglected. I have met with in my life-time any number of people who have and are prejudiced against the negro purely on account of his color. This has never been the case with myself, though I confess, that, when taken as a race and as a whole, what that color represents is extremely repugnant to me — by which I mean that color in this particular group of people in the world's anthropofauna. This I am the more certain of, for the reason that the representatives of other black or dark-skinned races do not affect me in a similar manner.

There is another point — with negroes, as with everything else in the world — some are very much better than others. I have met with a good many very worthy negro men in my life; I have met with my full share of the much revered, old-fashioned southern "mammies," also the much venerated "aunties"; picturesque types of negro children, scores of "piccaninies" and the rest,— but I have yet to meet one of these people anywhere, or any of their hybrids, that have not been more or less deeply imbued with superstition, or had the general characters of the race still clinging to them,— characters and characteristics of a kind by no means to be envied or desirable. Superstition alone, whether religious or otherwise, will eventually cause the downfall of any people in the world, no matter what their civilization may be, or to what height they have risen.

In so far as this aspect of my subject is concerned it is quite unnecessary for me to dilate upon it further, that is in a prefatory way, inasmuch as it is fully treated in several of the chapters of the present work.