among men,—that in which the most degrading superstition furnishes the forms of public and private life. His religion was fetichism. But by contact with the Anglo-Saxon race in the very close relation of domestic servitude, living in the same family and governed by the absolute authority which characterizes all family control, the negro, after two and a half centuries, had come to possess what we may call the Anglo-Saxon consciousness. For the negro of the South, with the exception of a stratum of population in the dark belt of large plantations, where he has not been brought into contact with white people through domestic servitude, but segregated as oxen and horses are, the negro of the South, with this exception, I repeat, is thoroughly imbued with nearly all the ideals and aspirations which form the conscious and unconscious motives of action with the white people among whom he lives.[1] It would be very easy to convince one's self of this by free conversation with any specimen of the colored race, and a comparison of his thoughts with those of a newly arrived immigrant from Ireland, Italy, Germany, or Scandinavia. It would be found that the negro is in thorough sympathy, intellectually and emotionally, with our national point of view, while the immigrant looks through the dark glass of his own national presuppositions, and misinterprets most that he sees around him here. Only in the second generation, and after association with the native population in common schools, the workshop, and the political meeting, does the European contingent of our population become assimilated.[2]
Of course I do not say this in disparagement of the European immigrant, for he stubbornly resists our national idea only in proportion to the value of his own. But I do insist on the practical fact that the negro of the South is not an African in his inner consciousness, but an American, who has acquired our Anglo-Saxon consciousness in its American type through seven generations of domestic servitude in the family of a white master. That this has been acquired so completely because of the inherent aptitude of the African race to imitate may be admitted as probable, and it follows from this that the national consciousness assumed by the black race is not so firmly seated as in other races that have risen through their own activity to views of the world more advanced than fetichism. Hence we may expect that the sundering of the negro from
- ↑ It is a matter for discussion whether the negro has come into the possession of what may be called "the Anglo-Saxon consciousness." I cannot see how, so long as the people of this race constitute a distinct and insoluble entity in our political society, it will be possible for them to acquire the characteristics which it has taken such a long period of time to develop in the Caucasian race.—R. L. G.
- ↑ Withdrawn by force from his original physical and moral environment, the negro has adapted himself to his American surroundings, and in doing so has necessarily acquired, so far as his lower intelligence permitted, the ideals and aspirations of the people to whom he was bound so long in slavery; but he is essentially still an African in the controlling tendencies of his character. When left to an exclusive association with his own people, there is a powerful inclination on the part of the Southern negro to revert to all of the distinctive features of his African ancestors. This is a fact of the utmost importance in the consideration of the proper means to be employed for the improvement of his character. The principal cause of the many failures which have been made in the effort to produce this improvement has been the unfortunate misconception that the Southern negro of to-day is simply an ignorant white man with a black skin. The American descendants of European immigrants are, in the second generation, thoroughly assimilated with the surrounding white population. The grandsons of an American, a German, and an Englishman differ but little, if at all, in the basis of their character. It can hardly be said that the negroes even of those Northern communities in which their race has enjoyed freedom for five generatious are so assimilated with the surrounding white population that they are not to be discriminated from it in racial characteristics.—P. A. B.
