WHAT DOES THE NEGRO WANT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13903, 3 November 1919, Page 6

WHAT DOES THE NEGRO WANT.

(By J. W. T. Mason, New York.) Negro riots in Washington and Chicago, and the refusal of the National Democratic Club in New York to permit members of the Abyssinian Peace "Mission to dine in their restaurant, have suddenly brought home to Americans the fact that the United States is facing a racial problem in many ways more serious than the rivalries of European races which have so persistently confused the Peace Conference. Wherever negroes congregate amid whites, a racial problem in America automatically arises. The riots themselves, and also the color line, as New York is drawing it, are symptomatic of a new insistence bv. the blacks upon'their full economic rights. This- means that the negroes are now entering upon the second phase of their development from long generations of slavery. It is less than 60 years since the blacks were freed from their white masters in the Southern States. 'TheHrsfc 50 years of their freedom was spent in accustoming themselves to standing on their feet, feebly and, rather dazed, after their hereditary dependence upon others for support and leadership. Now, the blacks' have found a cer- : tain equilibrium. They do not have to spend all their time balancing themselves economically to keep from falling over. They have developed new appetites for comforts and even luxuries. They want their part in the world. They do not know what that part is, but "they want si part. They are becoming educated, at least to acertain degree. Their high .imitative quality permits them to absorb readily, but does not develop any large sense of originality. Their education, threfore, is limited by this fact. Nevertheless, they are acquiring fully as much schooling, as the working classes of eEurope. A spirit of restlessness in the negroes is a new trait- A popular American story is about a negro who blamed his employer for so frequently appearing worried. . ", :• "Bixt what do you do when you have troubles, Sam?" asked the employer. , "Ah jes' naitcher'lly goes to sleep," replied the negro. $ The negroes no longer are jes nateher'llv" going to sleep over their troubles. They are stating their, complaints vociferously and with increasr courage. . . ...,.,' A new courage is coming to the blacks. It manifests itself in an insistent demand that the blacks bd given a. show. But, as yet, the demand has become no more specific than that. The negroes bavo riot yet reached the third phase, of "their development, where they can fully explain what kind of a show they want.