DEMOCRACY AND RACE FRICTION CHAPTER I THE BASIS OF SOCIAL SOLIDARITY THE difference between the social or political position actually assigned a racial group, such as the negro, and the position to which it is nominally entitled under free institutions is a most prolific source of race friction in American democracy. The legal status of the black as determined by the Constitution and written law is one thing; his actual social status marked out by the "colour line" is something quite different. The students of race questions are coming to recognise in ever increasing measure that the examination of the unwritten laws which give rise to race friction is essentially a psychological matter. It involves the study of hereditary capacities of race as they are exhibited in social activities. It must analyse the process by which the child, at birth little more than a bundle of instincts and reflexes, becomes a complete social and moral being. It must ask especially to what extent heredi-/ 3 tary racial differences influence this process of becoming social and solid with one's fellows. The instincts are undoubtedly the most primitive and powerful factors in all forms of social solidarity. They constitute in man, as well as in the gregarious animals and insects, the hereditary equipment which makes possible the various forms of social activity. They may fitly be called the "cosmic roots" of the social life of man. The complete social and moral ́self is simply the self that results when rational interpretation and direction have been given to original instinctive impulses. If natural selection has brought about differences between races in this hereditary instinctive equipment, they are of fundamental importance for the understanding of phenomena of race friction. "Inasmuch as instinct represents the preformed pathways in the nervous system," says Ellwood, "that is, created by selection, we should not expect to find exactly the same instinctive reactions in the different races of men. Their instinctive reactions, while fundamentally the same, will vary in some degree because the different racial stocks have been exposed to different selective agencies. This explains why race is a factor in social organisation and evolution." 2 1 McDougall, Social Psychology, Chs. I, II. 2 Popular Science Monthly, 1912, p. 267; American Journal of Sociology, VI, p. 735. Such differences in the instinctive reactions of various groups and races exert an indirect rather than a direct influence upon group behaviour. They function in the life of the race very much as temperamental differénces function in the conduct of individuals. Temperament does not enter consciously into the decisions of the individual though it does give them a distinct bias. Likewise hereditary racial traits do not consciously influence group action though undoubtedly they shape its general trend. When friction between race groups is strong, these differences become focal in the group mind. Being essentially irrational and lying very near the springs of action, they easily prevent the free, rational expression of the group will. They reach their highest intensity in the mob psychosis of the lynching bee, which shows that they are essentially phenomena of the group rather than the individual. Race prejudice is unknown between two members of widely divergent races who have been reared apart from their racial groups. Human social solidarity is distinguished from that of the gregarious animals by the extent to which instinctive social capacities have been rationalised. The apparently intelligent coöperation and division of labour observed in a beehive is not rational. It is probably the result of remarkable qualitative differentiations in the sense of smell brought about ) |