LEARNING TO BE A NEGRO

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 266, 6 August 1929, Page 12

LEARNING TO BE A NEGRO

A HUMAN STUDY. In the great cities all the world over where black and white men live side by sjde there exists to-day a barrier which has arisen between the two races, exterminating the root of friendship—;the barrier of blood (writes' Frank Wilson, in the “Daily News”). . In America, where I come from, it is nation-wide. When,- nearly seventy years ago, the North and South entered into their bitter war over the abolition of slavery, a seething hatred for the negroes arose in the South, and afterwards spread, though in a lesser degree, to the North, which has only become dimmed witii the passing of years. Every negro child born across the water must eventually and inevitably awake to the fact that he is “different” from the little white children with whom he plays so gaily in the street. As the first few years of his life draw on and he passes to the stage of reasoning, little incidents, almost unnoticed gestures, remarks overhead in the street, or coarser insults, come to him to make him wonder. He runs to his mother, for he cannot understand, and, with the futility of a parent defending her child from the inevitable, she puts off the evil hour of its awakening to the colour consciousness of its inferiority. But sooner or later the truth dawns, and then the child begins the lesson of learning how to be black. For the first few years of my life I played and lived happily, blissfully unconscious of caste distinction. Then my father and mother died, and I became an orphan in a juvenile home. . Every type of child was ensconced within thue walls., but chiefly delinquents—orphans of the storm of humanity. It is impossible to describe how kindly the negro children were treated at that great institution. All through the days when I have felt my race prejudice searing my heart, hai’e had insults hurled at my head, and have felt the deep depression of caste hatred heavy on my soul, the tenderness and justice which we black children received at that home have tided me over such dark shadows. And so, coming' from the North and being given a fair chance that many black children never receive at all. I was ready to learn with courage how to bo black and how to overcome the injustice of its disadvantage. The awakening came gradually. 1 remember when I was little more than six years old being asked. by a little white boy friend to go with him and his parents to listen to a band which used to play every evening in the great Union Square of New York. I went—joyously, to come away sorrowing—for I could not help noticing the mortification and embarrassment of the parents at having to be seen with a black child. . Even here in England there is a little prejudice against our coloured race. When we arrived from New York not long ago we were conducted by arrangement to a certain hotel in London where we were told we would be expected. Whether it was that the sight of a large number of us vias too much for the proprietor, or whether it was that the same race prejudice which, in coming, so far, we had hoped to have left behind was still with us. I cannot tell. At any rate, admission was at first refused. And then, our plight being explained, we were admitted and asked to have our meals in the. basement. 1 must confess that I was disappointed. Perhaps, though, we had expected just a little too much.