casual social contacts rather than in rational individual interpretations of moral issues throws some light upon the latitudinarian ethics of the negro and his amazing lack as a class of a sense of personal moral responsibility. There are countless other innate differences between white and black as well as between other races, perhaps even between peoples and nations, less marked than those just mentioned. They are far too subtle ever to be included in any system of anthropometrics or caught by the processes of the psychological laboratory, and yet they exert, by reason of their persistence and unchangeable character, an influence of the greatest importance in the shaping of national cultures and traditions. They are to be traced ultimately, no doubt, to slight differentiations in racial stocks due to their having been exposed to different selective agencies. We sum them up under the vague terms of "temperament" or "race traits." 1 While individual temperament functions in the life of the individual as such, race temperament appears most clearly where groups of the same race are thrown together. The differences between the crowd psychosis as one sees it on the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, or Naples will illustrate what is meant. For 1 See Fouillée, Esquisse psychologique des Peuples Européens; also Tempérament et Caractère, pp. 323 ff. this reason also the race genius of the negro is nowhere exhibited so unmistakably as in church gatherings, picnics, or in the garrulous, good-natured throngs that meet the trains at the stations of the small towns in the "black belt" of the South. The racial factor is usually a negligible quantity in the isolated individual. The background out of which it arises is social, and hence it is in phenomena of group behaviour that it finds expression under the stimulus of suggestion and the crowd psychosis. It must be observed that it attains its highest pitch in the clash of racially divergent groups. Where there is complete ethnic homogeneity these penchants primordiaux of race are not realised for the same reason that the man adrift in the Gulf Stream in mid ocean is not aware of it. Where groups of widely different racial heredity are brought into close contact friction arises of an intensity that often menaces the integrity of the social order itself, as is illustrated by the race conflicts in Austria, in South Africa, and in the southern states. We can hardly overemphasise the importance of this connection between race-feeling and group-relations for the understanding of the race question. The citizen of Paris or perhaps of Boston cannot comprehend the so-called "race prejudice" against the negro and condemns it most severely. Usually, however, when forced by circumstances to live for some time in communities where the blacks are numerous, such critics undergo a profound change of mind. They become aware of these subtle race differences where they are strongly accentuated through the presence of large numbers of individuals of similar race traditions and heredity-differences they fail entirely to note in the isolated individual. There is little doubt that the radical change of attitude in the North toward the negro which has taken place within the last few years is due in large measure to the presence in centres such as Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and even in Boston of large negro groups which have brought the whites of the North to realise these race differences in a way impossible through contact with scattered individuals.1 One other remark may be made in this connection, although we shall return to this point later, and that is the close connection between race-feeling and race or group persistence. It is not difficult to show that the forms of race-feeling, or esprit de corps, that characterise all the various gregarious insects and animals, are differentiations of the social instincts produced by natural selection. They are of the utmost importance for the preservation of the integrity of the 1 Facts in support of this statement can be found in Baker, Following the Color Line, pp. 216 ff. See also Ovington, Half a Man. group and are forerunners of race-feeling as we find it among men.1 Giddings sees in this group "consciousness of kind" the original and the ultimate ground of all social integrations from the lowest to the highest. That we should act differently toward those whom we feel to be different from us is instinctive and natural. We may not, therefore, lightly ignore or overrule what nature has implanted in us with such infinite pains without running the risk of eliminating that element which has made group progress possible in the past and which alone guarantees group integrity for the future. The races that have been the torchbearers of civilisation have almost without exception manifested strong race pride, and it could easily be proven that their achievements were because of rather than in spite of race-feeling. There is no better illustration than the course of civilisation in the western hemisphere. The Portuguese and Spaniards have peopled the countries to the south with half-breeds, while the English stock to the north refuse to mingle its blood with the Indian. "The net result is that North America from the Behring Sea to the Rio Grande is dedicated to the highest type of civilisation; while for centuries the rest of 1 Woltmann, op. cit., pp. 256 ff. our hemisphere will drag the ball and chain of hybridism."1 Summing up the results of the analysis of the race traits of the negro, we assert that facts tend to show not so much racial inferiority as fundamental racial differences. Racial differences, as they have manifested themselves in standards of morals and group behaviour under peculiar conditions of environment, have been so striking often as to be mistaken for evidences of hereditary mental and moral inferiority. That racial differences do exist may be inferred from our knowledge of the psychophysical organism which leads us to expect psychic differences where we find physiological differences. In the case of the negro these have not yet been scientifically determined, but there is every indication that in time they will be. Furthermore, the effect of natural selection operating upon a group of human beings for thousands of years in a peculiar physical environment, such as we find in the habitat of the negro in Africa, would lead us to expect variations in his fundamental instincts and impulses corresponding to those conditions. After every allowance has been made for the effect of the social heritage and for the generally acknowledged similarity of all mankind, so far as 1 Ross, "The Causes of Race Superiority," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 18, p. 85. |