Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/376

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  • port of men of different sections and races. One of these,

the Southern Education Association, has been promoted by men from the North and East as well as by men from the South, by both Negroes and white people. Soon after the Atlanta riots of two years ago, a conference of Southern white men and Negroes was held at Atlanta, for the purpose of promoting harmony between the races in the South. Within a few months a conference of Northern and Southern white men has met in Washington City to consider the Negro problem. Still more recently a group of Southern students in Harvard University, realizing that the race relations were different in different localities of the South, have organized an informal club to study the practical problems arising out of the presence of the Negro in the South and to exchange ideas formed from observation and experience in their respective localities. There are other indications of a desire to work out a common set of principles by which everyone may be governed.


PROPER PLACE OF RACE DISTINCTIONS

Assuming that it is possible to formulate a platform deserving the approval of all races, it is appropriate for a student of any phase of race relations to suggest a plank for it. A student in the special field of race distinctions in American law may endeavor to show the place that such legal distinctions properly hold, bearing in mind all the while that the whole issue springs out of race consciousness as it actually exists to-day, not as it should be or as it may be in the distant future.

Let one imagine the existence of a Federal statute—waiving the question of its constitutionality—prohibiting