He naturally first winces at the drawing of the colour line, for to insist upon it strictly would result in reading him out of both groups. He thus becomes a social urd.

Naturally, then, it is from the mulatto that the most vigorous protests arise against race discrimination. The negro of pure blood, especially in the far South, is naturally unambitious, tractable, and easily satisfied. He does not lie awake at night brooding over the loss of inalienable human rights. Politics have no great charm for him and "grandfather clauses" or questions of civil rights seldom disturb his primrose path. He does not look upon the "Jim Crow" car as a humiliation and the writer's observation is that the freedom of a car of his own colour is infinitely preferable to one where the presence of members of the white race would be felt as a restraint. When protests do come, they are in the great majority of cases from mulattoes. It has been said that "if the statutes of those states which have been charged with discriminating against the negro were not in any wise enforcible against the mulatto, America's race problem would speedily resolve itself into infinitely simpler proportions.'

The atmosphere in which the mulatto lives is not one that is psychologically healthful. It is an atmosphere of protest; the mulatto is himself an in

1 Stone, op. cit., p. 433.

carnated protest against the racial separation of the colour line. Dr. DuBois has given us a glimpse into the dualism of soul from which this spirit of protest arises. "It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." It would of course be committing the psychologist's fallacy upon a gigantic scale to read the ideas of The Souls of Black Folk into the minds of the masses of the negroes of the South, and yet it doubtless voices the feelings of a cultured few largely of the mulatto class. The state of mind it reflects is not a happy one since it breathes of pessimism and half-concealed race hatred. DuBois tells us how as a boy, when he realised that he lived "within the veil," he was happiest when he excelled his pale-faced mates in his books, at a foot-race, or even when he would "beat their stringy heads." As the years brought widening knowledge and a fuller realisation of the odds that were against him and his race in the fight, he describes how "the shades of the prison house closed round about us all: walls straight

and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half-hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above."1

It is not an unmitigated blessing that those whose thought is so strongly tinged with pessimism and antagonism to the white race should set themselves to be the spiritual leaders of the negro. With increasing education and wealth the negro will inevitably come to read and reflect more upon the problems that concern his group welfare. It is imperative, therefore, that his intellectual leaders supply him with ideals that shall inspire him with honest race pride and encourage more sympathetic relations with the whites. The militant race philosophy preached by a certain group of negro writers and thinkers is not one that the sincere friend of the negro would like to see him adopt. Another great mulatto has written a book called The Future of the American Negro, the characteristic note of which is its buoyant optimism and faith in both white and black. The question as to the presence or absence of friction between the races in the future, so far as the mulatto is concerned, will depend upon the extent to which the one or the other of these two points of view dominates the thought of the negro.

1 The Souls of Black Folk, pp. 2, 3.

CHAPTER VI

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE COLOUR LINE 1

THE term "the colour line" has come to be a comprehensive designation for all the varied means made use of by the white group to effect the racial segregation of the negro. Its ultimate explanation is to be found in those forces making for racial antipathy, the most fundamental of which as we have seen is the refusal of social sanction to intermarriage. The term is particularly obnoxious to many negro leaders and for reasons which can be easily understood. In their criticisms, however, they seem to ignore the deep-lying racial factors involved and inveigh against it as a flagrant violation of the principles of American democracy as defined in our federal constitution. It is viewed as essentially southern in origin and spirit, the aftermath of slavery, and all manifestations of it in the North are explained as infusions of southern prejudices. A typical illustration is the general tendency of the negro press to see in the recent introduction into the legislatures of the northern states of

1 This chapter appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Nov., 1913.

bills against the intermarriage of whites and blacks an indication of southern influence.1 In view of existing differences of opinion, it is perhaps well to raise the question as to just what is involved in the colour line. What is its origin and what its significance as a social phenomenon?

Wherever the white of English stock has been brought into contact with masses of negroes and however the geographic, economic, or political conditions have differed, we find two great outstanding facts always present, namely, the stubborn refusal of the white to sanction race fusion and the strenuous insistence upon the supremacy of his group ideals. Extraneous public sentiment and the demands of a theoretical democracy have never been able to swerve the local white group from settling all interracial questions upon this basis. The attitude of the whites. of the southern states finds a parallel in the bearing of the English toward backward races of the colonies, and particularly in the relations of whites and blacks in South Africa.

Where racial contact without fusion occurs, there are, according to Bryce, three possibilities.

In the

1 See the editorial, "The Race Marriage Question," in the negro paper, the New York Age, Feb. 26, 1913; also the editorial for Feb. 27, "Shall the South Rule the Nation?"

2 Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races, the Romanes Lecture for 1902, pp. 28 ff.