COLOURED MEN’S BELIEF

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2308, 28 November 1925, Page 13

COLOURED MEN’S BELIEF

TREATED AS INFERIORS. In opening the discussion at a conference at Eastbourne, England, Lord Willingdon asked; “What are to be the relations of white and coloured races In future?" Coloured races everywhere, he said, had received eagerly the gospel of self-determination, and the Great War, which had brought Western civilisation so near to ruin, had strengthened the coloured man’s belief that the white man’s civilisation had many defects. To the coloured man’s resentment at the position of inferiority and the determination that democratic ideals should be of universal application, had thus heon added the belief that Oip moral basis of Eastern lift* was In many ways higher and nobler than that of the West.

The white man thus had a difficult task if ho was to bring healing and contentment to the East. It seemed imperative, he said, that we should discover, if possible, some means by which this problem should be solved by peaceful methods -and not by a clash of races, which would be the most ghastly tragedy the world had ever known.

We had given India the full assurance that the aim of British efforts in their country was to advance them, by progressive stages, to the goal of responsible government, but since the war, owing to certain incidents, the educated people of India were beginning to doubt the sincerity of our assurance.

If, he said, the white races would realise the necessity of treating all coloured men in the spirit of absolute equality, he honestly believed that what now appeared an aggressive and unreasonable attitude on the part of coloured races would entirely change. Mr J. H. Oldham said that little or no convincing evidence existed of show that racial feeling was due to any inborn repugnance, and he added: “Let us face the facts squarely. A solid white front inevitably means a solid yellow front and a solid brown front and a solid black front, and that in the end, can have only one meaning. It means war. To prevent this men of true vision should refuse to be entangled in the snares of racialism and the purely racial way of looking at questions.” Mr Shorn Slngha, of the Punjab, an organiser of the Student Christian movement in India, stated that there were churches in his country into which Christians could not go because they were not white. He went on: "Do you realise the ghastliness? The saints and evangelists would find the doors shut In their faces. And wo are talking of the Catholic Church."