Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/220

196 powerful novels. Whether this sense of degradation is peculiar to Americans and due to slavery is dis- puted. Certainly the revulsion in Europe is not so marked as here, but in the most cosmopolitan capitals the negro is not persona grata. Black is not a badge of inferiority, because Cubans, Brazilians, Spaniards, and Hindoos are of dusky hue, but the African is not considered an equal or kindred race. No white man ever wanted to be a negro. Probably every edu- cated and intelligent negro would prefer to be white. That the condition of the African has been improved in many respects by freedom and education needs no arguments, but his progress has been toward segre- gation. The great gulf fixed between the races has widened and deepened since emancipation. As de- pendents and subordinates the blacks were asso- ciates of the whites. As political equals they are strangers. Their children are no longer playmates. They are taught in separate schools, they worship in separate churches, they are buried in separate cemeteries. If possible, the barrier is more insupera- ble at the North than at the South, and the prescrip- tion more contemptuous and intolerant. Wherever the negro appears in considerable numbers the irritation is violent. Their settlement in any locality depresses the value of real estate and repels white occupation. Immigrants avoid, contact with them and shun the South as an infected region. Places of trust, honor, and emolument are shut against them inexorably. With confessed majorities in many districts and the balance of power in others they have no positions of high rank in the State or National governments. Al- though more than two hundred thousand enlisted in the Union armies no full-blood negro holds a commis- sion in the army or navy and in the militia their or- ganization is distinct. The learned professions, busi- ness, commerce, and manufactures, are open to all, but except with his own people the African has no function. His occupations are menial. In their em- ployments he finds toleration and is content. The