intensify their natural gregarious tendency. Hence, although it may be that most white people do regard the Negro as inferior, the fundamental cause of the color line, nevertheless, is that the two races are incompatible because of their unlikeness. For example, while the white people of California admire the Japanese for their capability and achievements, they tend to draw away from them socially as the white people of Mississippi draw away from the Negro; and, if the Japanese preponderated in the population of California as the Negro preponderates in Mississippi, the color line would probably be as rigidly drawn in the former state as in the latter.

Physical difference, together with pride of tradition, tends more or less to separate all races, and the degree of separateness depends upon the degree of difference. The main idea to grasp is that in cases where the separateness is complete, or where it is partial or varying, there need be no lack of mutual respect, good feeling, and coöperation.

A recognition of the fact that the social segregation of white and black in the United States is due primarily to their unlikeness, and that the segregating tendency is natural to both races, would have the happy effect of removing from the mind of the Negro the idea that the white man's part in the segregation is due to a race hatred or to a culpable race prejudice.

When we come to an understanding on the social question we can turn our energies to the important and practical task of establishing customs, standards, and institutions which will insure to both races fair opportunities under the varying conditions of race contact in the different sections of the United States. Our ideal should be, not a régime of castes, but one of parallel culture with opportunity for each race to flower according to its genius.

Would it be possible to win the whole-hearted adherence of the white and colored people of our country to an ideal of this kind? Many people of both races doubt it. Some colored people regard the issue of breaking down the social barriers as paramount, and on this issue accept no compromise. And some white people are skeptical of the sincerity of those colored people who profess to have no desire for white society.

Back in 1896, when Booker Washington said that the races could be as separate as the fingers in social matters and one as the hand in all that is essential to the welfare of each, a large section of the Northern Negroes denounced this figure of speech as a compromise.

And, when President Harding used substantially the same figure in his Birmingham speech, October 26, 1921, a similar chorus of protests arose from the Negroes of the North.

William Archer, the English student of our race problem, does not believe that the Negroes who profess indifference to social separation are sincere; he thinks that they hope by insisting upon social contact to wear down the white man's race-pride and force him finally to accept amalgamation. He quotes the statement of the Negro Kelly Miller that "two races cannot live indefinitely side by side, under the same general régime, without ultimately fusing," and adds the comment that between looking forward to amalgamation as inevitable and hoping and dreaming for it is not greatly different.

Professor Reuter remarks that: "The desire of the mixed-blood man is always and everywhere to be a white man; to be classed with and become a part of the superior race." 2

In reference to the question of social intermingling with the whites, Professor Reuter notes the contrast of attitude between the Negro leaders of the North and South.

He tells us that in the South: "The bi-racial arrangement-the separation of the Negroes from the whites and their independence in many of the affairs of life-created a need and supplied a place for the superior men of the race. . . .

"To the extent that the races became separated and the Negroes gained in independence and developed a sense of racial pride and selfreliance, there was a place for an educated class within the race; there was a need for teachers and preachers, for physicians and lawyers, for business men and entertainers, and for all the host of other parasitic and semi-parasitic classes that go to make up a modern community. With the rise of a middle-class, the race was able to support a professional and leisure class; previously the educated Negro was an idler and a parasite. The isolation of the race forced the Negroes to depend upon their own educated men and so made a place for such men.3 "The separation of the races freed the Negro professional and business men from the competition of the better trained and more efficient white men and consequently gave them an opportunity to rise out of all proportion to their native ability and training. The plane of competition became one on which they could hope to succeed. The olderthe slave and reconstruction plan of adjustment—was an accommodation 'Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States, p. 315.

3 Ibid., p. 359.

on horizontal lines. The white man was at the top, the black man was at the bottom. It was a caste distinction that prevented the rise of the capable individual out of his group. In the newer arrangement, the opportunity to rise was limited only by the ability and the industry of the individual man. There was no superior caste above him.

"As has been previously pointed out in detail, the superior men of the race are, with scarcely the proverbial exception, mulattoes. The segregation of the Negroes, the rise of a middle-class, and the consequent bi-racial adjustment of the races thus have made a place and furnished a vocation for the mulattoes. Unable to escape the race and unable to constitute a caste above the race, they remained with the race and became its real leaders. They are the professional and business men of the race. They are the leaders in all the racial and inter-racial affairs. The bi-racial arrangement gives the mulatto the opportunity for a useful life and, at the same time, it allows him to remain superior to his black fellows.

"These Southern mulatto leaders, however, are men who, at least outwardly, consider themselves Negroes. They are men who have given up, in practice if not in theory, the hopeless struggle for social recognition by the whites and identified themselves with the black group. Their status is fixed; they are members of the Negro race. Social equality with the whites is out of the question and the denial of it ceases to disturb them. The success they make in life is in another direction and the amount of it depends upon themselves. They are men who have concealed, if they have not succeeded in overcoming, their aversion for the black man. They do not openly flaunt their superiority because of their white blood, and they find their life and their work among their darker and more backward fellows. The mulattoes, for the most part Southern mulattoes, have, in this new adjustment of the races, found their place as the real and natural leaders of the race. They are the men who teach the black man in the schools and in the Negro colleges, who preach to him from the pulpits, who manage his banks and business enterprises, who rise to prominence in all the social, political, and economic affairs of the race. . . .

"The mulatto feels himself in alliance with the group and in the coöperation of common activities there arises a sympathetic understanding and appreciation which fuses the mulatto, in sentiments and attitudes, with the larger whole. He is identified with the black group, feels the mute longing of the common folk, feels himself a part of it, is Reuter, op. cit., pp. 359-62.

moulded by it, and comes, little by little, to realize himself as a factor in the common life and purpose of the group. He ceases to be, in thought and feeling, a stranger among his people; he learns to appreciate them, ceases to be ashamed of his relationship to them, ceases to resent being classed with them. Their problems become his problems; their life, his life. The mulatto thus ceases to be a problem within a problem; he becomes a functioning unit in the social life of an evolving people."

Turning to the aspects of the question in the North, Professor Reuter says that: "where the Negroes are relatively less numerous, they have in general not been legally assigned a definite racial status in the community life. . . .

"There is among the Negroes in the North an absence of unity and race solidarity. The numbers of the race are relatively small, widely scattered, unorganized, and without a common interest. It is predominantly an urban population and stands for the most part as a population of unskilled laborers dependent for the means of livelihood upon white employers. Their tendency to congregate in one or a few sections of the cities and towns gives an appearance of unity which in reality does not exist; the residential segregation is a matter of economic necessity rather than a matter of choice. The race is divided. into innumerable antagonistic groups, societies, orders, factions, cliques, and what not, endless in number and puzzling in complexity, whose mutual jealousy and distrust prevent any united, coöperative action. There is no leadership that has any considerable following and no program for racial progress that has the assent of more than a faction of the Negro group; there is nothing to hold the various factions together and the group is without any semblance of organized unity.

"The superior men of the race, even more than in the South, are mulattoes.

"The Northern mulattoes are, however, in spite of their superior education and position, without a definite rôle in the inter-racial life of the community. More than in the Southern section of the country, the mulattoes are separated in fact and in sympathy from the mass of the race. They are proud of their European blood, their smoother features, their 'better' hair and their higher economic status; they are not always careful to conceal the fact. Frequently they live apart from the Negro community, find their social life among others of their kind, at"Reuter, op. cit., p. 362.

Ibid., p. 366.

tend white churches or form congregations of their own class and color. The upper class mulattoes are frequently without much acquaintance with the real Negroes. In their professional or business life, they are separated from the mass of the race and come often into very little contact with them even in a business way. Their idea of the Negro and their attitude toward him, is the idea and the attitude of the white man. The attitude is one of more or less kindly toleration and mild contempt which changes to active discrimination and positive hatred when the Negro assumes the attitude of an equal and seeks the privilege of social equality. In their public utterances the Negro may be idealized, but there is no desire or disposition on the part of the mulatto to have any intimate association with him.

"Yet the mulattoes assume the rôle of spokesman for the race; they undertake to represent the Negro and to speak for him. Their superior education, their higher economic status as well as their greater individual success, and their more prominent position give plausibility to their assumption of leadership and allow them, rather than men who are closer to the race and better able to voice the feelings and attitudes of the inarticulate mass, to get themselves accepted as representatives of the Negroes. They appear as champions of the Negro at all times when there is profit or notoriety to be gained by so doing. They make incendiary speeches, draw up petitions and protests, appear before legislative and executive committees as the representatives of a people they only imperfectly represent. . . .”7

"The agitations of the mulatto groups and individuals are, for obvious reasons, carried on in the name of the Negro, not in the name of the mulatto. The ends to be reached are such as concern the real Negroes very little. The agitations voice the bitterness of the superior mulattoes, of the deracialized men of education, culture, and refinement who resent and rebel against the intolerant social edict that excludes them from white society and classes them with the despised race.8

"The inter-racial situation in the North is thus, in very large part, a caste arrangement. The mulattoes are the superior men and form or tend to form, a separate and exclusive class above the race. They assume the rôle of spokesman for the race but they are not an integral part of it as are the mulatto leaders of the South. . .