forbear from annexing or settling in the countries inhabited by the colored races is not to be expected. The impulses which move these peoples in the present will not be checked by the prospect of evils in the future. Besides, the work of annexation is practically done already. Neither can it be suggested that one of two disparate races already established should be removed to leave the ground free to the other. No one proposes that the French should quit Algeria, or the English India, or the Russians Western Turkistan, not to add that the mischiefs likely to follow such a withdrawal would be greater than the difficulties which the presence of the conquerors at this moment causes. Men talked at one time of deporting the seven millions of Negroes from the Southern States of America to Africa, but this utterly impracticable scheme has been dropped. The only case in which the question of preventing contact arises in a practical form is where immigrants of a Backward race are found swarming into a country peopled by a European stock. Such a case has arisen in California and British Columbia, whither Chinese have migrated, as also in Australia as respects Chinese, and Japanese, and Indian coolies, and in Natal. In all these cases statutes have been passed intended to arrest or to limit the influx of the Backward race; and in California and Australia, where the methods have been most stringent, the desired result is being attained." 12

In discussing race segregation we need to bear in mind that it has no necessary connection with our notion of racial superiority or inferiority. The tendency of races, occupying the same territory, to live apart is due primarily to the fact that they are visibly and strikingly unlike. For instance, our opposition to Japanese colonization on our Pacific Coast is not due to our belief in the inferiority of the Japanese people. Even if we believed that they were ever so superior to ourselves our opposition to their colonization here, and our disinclination to assimilate them, would be none the less pronounced. And, if the situation were reversed, and the white people should attempt to colonize anywhere in Japanese territory, the Japanese would feel and act towards our intrusion just as we feel and act towards their intrusion into our territory. If the Japanese could understand the fact that racial segregation is due solely to physical differences, and not to notions of superiority or inferiority, they would be able to accept it with good grace, and even to welcome it.

The tendency of the whites and Negroes in the United States to "Bryce, Relation of Advanced and Backward Races of Mankind, p. 70.

live apart would be as ineradicable as it is now if the Negroes were believed to be in all respects superior to the whites. Of course, wherever two dissimilar races come in contact on different levels of culture, the tendency to segregate is intensified; but it is entirely erroneous to suppose that segregation is solely or fundamentally due to differences of culture.

It is very confusing and, I think, very unfortunate that we have come to use the term "social equality" in connection with the discussion of our race problem. The disinclination of the Negroes and whites toward free social intermingling should not be continually associated with the idea that the Negro is inferior and undeserving of social elevation and respect. While most Negroes are, in fact, inferior to most white people, the opposition to the social intermixture of the races is not due fundamentally to the inferiority of the Negroes, but to the fact that the natural differences between the races render social intermixture incompatible with the natural disposition of both races. Opposition to free social intermingling would be the same no matter what might be the culture level of the Negro.

Certainly, it is not good manners to wound the feelings of cultivated Negroes by implying their inferiority when we wish to convey the idea merely that the best interest of both races requires that they move within their respective social spheres. The more enlightened white people of the South want to see the Negro rise to whatever heights are possible to him socially or otherwise among his own people. To say: "We oppose the social intermingling of the races," would, in most cases, better convey the idea in mind than to say: "We oppose social equality."

CHAPTER 61

A FREE STATE IN THE BLACK BELT

Proposal to Create a Colored Free State out of the Southern Black Belt

Possibility That Immigration of Dark Whites from Southern Europe or Mexico May Lead to a Hybrid Race Similar to That of Tropical South America-Supposition That the Political Power of This Hybrid Race Would Be Intolerable to the Northern and Western States, and Lead to the Erection of a Colored Free State

AT

T the joint meeting of the American and British Associations for the Advancement of Science in Canada in 1924, President J. W. Gregory of the Geographical Section of the British Association read a paper on the "Color Line," which he characterized as the problem of the present century.

Referring to the problem in the United States, Dr. Gregory touched briefly upon several of the proposed solutions. In regard to amalgamation, he "quoted some authorities as anticipating the betterment of the human race by interracial fusion, but said that modern students of eugenics supported the view that 'the interbreeding of widely different types produces weak, inferior offspring with a chaotic constitution.' He quoted from a recent detailed study to show that the children of Lapp-Norwegian (Mongolian-Caucasian) unions were inferior physically and mentally to both parents.

""This doctrine,'" he said, "'cannot be regarded as established, but the strong intellectual aversion to such unions among the Teutonic people will doubtless prevent the adoption of race amalgamation between the negro and whites in North America and Northern Europe.'"

He went on to say that he did not regard disfranchisement, or segregation, or deportation as a practicable solution. "No simple measure," he said, "that could be imposed on the country by the Legislature appears to be available, but some solution may be reached by a process of drift. It is for the geographer to search for the factors that are likely to guide this drift.

"One of the most significant movements in the Southern States is for much of the agricultural work to pass into the hands of immigrants from Southern Europe, while the negroes, through the restlessness

which is the weakest element in their character, tend to settle in the towns. Stone, a representative Southerner, remarks that planters must seek more reliable labor than that of the negro who has already been replaced in tobacco cultivation in Kentucky. Booker Washington repeatedly called attention to the seriousness of the danger that the negro would be driven from the skilled occupations. The recent agreement between Italy and Mexico for the settlement of 500,000 Italians in Mexico would provide an additional source for Italian inflow into the Southern States. The feeling against interracial marriage is not so strong among the people of Southern Europe as it is with the Teutons; hence extensive South-European immigration into the cotton districts may lead to their future occupation by a hybrid race similar to that of tropical South America. This process would render impossible the continued refusal of political and municipal rights to any citizen who has a trace of negro blood. The colored people would regain the suffrage, and the political developments of the Southern States on normal American lines would be impossible. If the whites in the Southern States be divided between Republicans and Democrats, the negro vote would hold the balance of power; and owing to the considerable overrepresentation of the Southern States in proportion to population, American policies might be determined by the negro vote. Such a situation would be intolerable to the Northern and Western States. Hence, to avoid it, they might agree to the Southeastern States being formed into a group with a special measure of home rule in some departments of Federal jurisdiction.

"This solution may take a century or more to develop; but the geographical considerations indicate it as the most probable issue from the negro strength in the Southeastern States."

Of all the possible outcomes of the Negro problem, this one of converting a number of Southern commonwealths into a free colored state is the most deplorable to contemplate. In the island of Haiti the Negroes got possession of the territory by massacring the whites. In the Southeastern United States, if Dr. Gregory's prediction comes to pass, the Negroes will gain possession of the territory by the bloodless and easy "process of drift."

The probabilities of conditions arising in the Black Belt which would justify and make necessary the conversion of that section into a free state are not very great.

If the Negroes of the Black Belt continue to drift toward the towns, their places on the farms might, as Dr. Gregory supposes, be

filled by the immigration of the Mexican "greaser" (so-called in the Southwest), who is a mixture of the Indian and South European. In fact, in the Southwestern states, particularly in Texas, the number of Mexican immigrants who have already taken the places of the Negro on the farms and on railroads is quite noticeable. Should this immigration continue for a century it is conceivable that a vast majority of the population of the Black Belt might be made up of miscellaneous hybrids. The Mexicans might intermarry largely with the Negroes, especially with those of the mulatto type, and the average complexion of the colored population would, in consequence, be much lighter than it is now. Then it would be impossible in the Southern states, as in Brazil and Cuba, to draw a color line, for the reason that in many instances it would be impossible to tell whether a slightly colored person had in his veins Negro, Indian, or Mexican blood. The attempt to segregate the colored and white people of the South in schools, churches, railroads, hotels, and other public places, would lead to such confusion as to become entirely impracticable. Also, illiteracy presumably becoming a thing of the past, it would be impracticable to formulate any franchise laws which would exclude the colored voters, who would all stand together, and absolutely dominate the states of the Black Belt. In national politics it is conceivable, as Dr. Gregory surmises, that the colored vote might hold the balance of power, forming a colored bloc which would prove so obstructive to legislation, and so generally obnoxious that the people of the Northeastern and Western states would rather erect a free state for the colored people than to tolerate them as a part of the union. The problem of the Colored Belt would be a repetition of the Irish problem of Great Britain. In view of the increasing trend toward socialistic legislation, it is more than probable that the Colored Belt would make short shrift of the problem of alien ownership of land. Either by means of confiscation or taxation the plantations belonging to the native or alien whites would be speedily transferred to the colored peasant.

The chief fact militating against Dr. Gregory's prophecy of an eventual free colored state is that the proportion of Negroes in that region is not on the increase. The declining birth-rate of the Negroes in the Black Belt, together with their high death-rate and yearly migration, not only give them a diminishing rate of increase but, according to the last census, that of 1920, an actual falling off in numbers. In the decade 1910-20, the Negro population of Mississippi diminished