Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/155

Rh But what has it availed? Nothing absolutely! The negro is neither responsible for his animal nature any more than he is for the opportunities he takes to gratify the normal impulses which are a part of him. It is not a case of changing the spots on the leopard, although some, indeed many, think this to be the case, as, for example, a party who in The New York Evening Telegram of January 28th, 1904, a paper of the widest circulation, claims to have discovered a treatment which, if adopted by the negro, will have the effect of turning his skin as white as the whitest Caucasian that ever lived. Just as though all the savagery, cannibalistic tendencies, thievish propensities, mendacity and the rest were in the skin of this benighted race ! Such an expedient might, if effective, prove to be of some political value, but it would be worse than useless biologically, for, in many instances, the danger sign would be removed and greater would be the opportunity for that semimetamorphosed race to mix its cannibalistic blood with that of the unsuspecting Anglo-Saxon in the United States. Whatever the inventor may think of the skin-bleaching properties of his invention, it can, of course, be nothing more than one of those cheap American nostrums now so frequently introduced into the market with the hope of gaining money, but absolutely valueless in so far as their being able to effect what their exploiters claim for them.

Throughout the country, as a whole, I do not believe that the number of assaults upon white women by negroes are in any way diminishing in number, or in their fiendish brutality as time goes on. Indeed, I believe in some sections they even seem to be on the