AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 197, 18 August 1908, Page 4

AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM.

To judge by the cabled accounts of the race riots that have just occurred at Springfield, it does not seem as if the great "colour" problem" is getting much nearer a solution in the United States. The brutal excesses perpetrated by the mob appeal to have surpassed anything that has happened in this way since the shocking Atlanta riots two years ago. We hear of innocent negroes lynched, of harmless citizens hunted down and beaten and robbed, of white men seriously injured in the vain attempt to protect the helpless victims of these outrages; and we may well ask, what is the value of law and liberty, or even of civilisation in America, if such crimes can be committed under its sanction? At the same time, we must not forget that it is extremely difficult for us to realise the feelings with which even the best intentioned and most highly educated and cultured Americans in the Southern States regard the negro. The old slave system has left behind it the ineradicable conviction that the negroes are necessarily a dependent and inferior caste. And whatever their possibilities may be under favourable conditions, there is no doubt that their circumstances usually tend to bring out the least estimable a-nd attractive characteristics of the race. The rapid increase in their numbers, and their consequent political weight and influence, have naturally roused apprehensions among the whites; and the prejudice against intermarriage between the two races keeps them socially apart. Admitting all this, we do not need to attach much importance to the sensational stories of outrage and sexual crime freely circulated in the Southern States at their expense to understand that the most casual incident may sometimes precipitate a violent ftutbreak of antagonism against the negro, and may easily produce the deplorable results that our cable messages have described.

It is of course impossible to say whether in the present instance the charge of outrage which was the excuse for this racial demonstration wai well founded or not. In a district where, as in many Southern States, au ignorant, shiftless, and poverty-stricken negro population is largely in the majority, it is inevitable that crimes of this sort should occasionally be committed: and race prejudico naturally fastens upon such episode? and exaggerates thorn to the discredit of the whole negro community. We venture to doubt, however, if there is any valid proof that the negroes have really displayed any extraordinary propensity for crimes of this type; for the monstrous conduct of the whites in murdering indiscriminately the innocent and the guilty entirely discounts the value of their evidence" against them. But allowing for the occasional reversion of the low-class negro to something like the primitive condition of savagery, we can understand how quickly the commission oi one such crime uoul-J rouse the white, population to frenzy against them all; And there can be no doubt that in most of the Southern -Stales the dread and horror of .'-uch crimes is perfectly genuine. The majority of the white** appear honestly to believe that their wives and daughters and sisters are never safo while there aro negroes about: and though such a fear may be in most cases entirely groundless, it affords a reason —though, of course, no escuse —for tho shocking outbursts of racial fury that have disgraced the history of the Southern States in recent years.

But, as we havp already said, the attitude of the whites towards the negroes is due, for the most part, not to fear of their criminal tendencies but to the instinctive sense of their inferiority which has come down as a sacred tradition from the old slave days. Everybody knows how carefully the whites emphasise their inherent contempt for the negro. The "jim crow" traincars, the separate lodging-houses and hotels, the notices warning negroes away from shops aud even from public domains— all these signs of aversion anl disgust at personal contact with the despised race have constantly aggravated the bitter feelings that keep them apart. And it is well known that prominent politicians in the Southern States have for the last forty years deliberately set themselves to exclude the negro from political life, and to rob him, as far as possible, of his constitutional privileges. Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, with his stirring appeals to the Southern whites at all costs to keep the negro down, cannot believe that "the negvo has any rights that the white man is bound to respect," and so in the eyes of such men as he, riots and mob-law," lynching, and wholesale murder follow as a matter of course whenever any real or fancied rights of the white people are assailed. To the convinced negrophobe, the example of Booker Washington and other eminont leadcr3 of the race proves nothing. The ability of the negro to elevate himself and even to stand on the same level of culture and civilisation as the white does not settle the question.

Oace a coon, always a coon," is the grotesquely brutal formula with which the Southern whites meet this argument; and at present it seems as if the success of the few men and women of negro blood who have displayed conspicuous ability in rising above their social and racial disadvantages serves only to intensify the dislike and the fear with which the great majority of their peop c are regarded. In any case, it would take many years \.o raise the level of education and general intelligence for the whole race. Meantime, the negroes are growing more rapidly in numbers than the whites: and the prejudice against miscegenation or intermarriage between the races seems stronger than ever. What to do with these millions of aliens is the most pressing problem that American statesmen have to face; £or the question will not solve itself, and no practicable expedient has yet been suggested th.it offers even a reasonable hope of solution