Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 45 Years.] MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1919. THE COLOUR PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 13986, 24 November 1919, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [ Established 45 Years.] MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1919. THE COLOUR PROBLEM.

The lynching recently in Geogria of another negro by an infuriated mob of whites, together with the recent racial riots in Washington, St. Louis and Chicago, brings again into prominence one of the most intricate and perplexing problems which confront the citizens of the United States of America. In days not far distant ebullitions of racial animosity took place almost exclusively, in the old slave States of the south, and the citizens of the northern States looked upon them as deplorable local incidents not affecting the other parts of their great nation. During the period when slavery was a legal institution the negro populations were confined to the south, where the climate is warm and the cotton plant flourishes, and a sinuous line might have been drawn, to the north of which no coloured communities could be found. But after the Civil War had brought to the negro the constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which the embattled farmers who founded the Republic had declared to be the self-evident right of

every man, the black fronti3r began, slowly to move northward. In addition, enterprising individuals and families quietly penetrated into the northern States, and having spied out the land and found it to be good, sent for their friends and neighbours. Thus colonies of coloured people became scattered over a wide area. At first these newcomers into the territory of the northerners, who had fought for their frtedom, were received as men and brothers. Trained to servitude by generations of slavery, they made excellent servants'" and labourers, and had little difficulty in obtaining employment. The great cities attracted them particularly. The less pretentious residential areas of American towns are built on the Continental system of lofty tenements, so that under one roof a dozen or more families may be housed. Once a family of colour succeeded in obtaining entrance to one of these huge hives, the white families moved out. Their places were immediately taken by people of colour, until, by this progressive displacement of the whites by the blacks, it came about that extensive districts were monopolised by the negroes and ''near negroes.'' The number of coloured citizens in the whole Republic rapidly increased, and at the, present time there arc about eleven millions. After the era of reconstruction had finished the southern negro began in many places slowly to rise, in the social scale. Enthusiastic emaneipatists in the north subscribed to build colleges for their brethren in the south. ' So successful was this philanthropic activity that the old slave States are dotted with schools, universities and hospitals run by negroes for negroes. The coloured communities have their own lawyers, doctors, surveyors, and, indeed, professional men of every kind. But in the old "black belt,';' where the negro population has always been densest, the whites have never ceased to regard the blacks as creatures of an inferior order. They compel theni to travel in the "Jim Crow" compartment of train or trolley, and to consort only with their kind in eating houses or in hotels devoted solely to the "nigger." The average southerner, who is usually a man of instinctively tender and chivalrous feelings in anything which does not touch the colour question, contends that the the negro is dishonest, hypocritical, insolent, and licentious. He honestly believes that when a negro is caught com mitting some crime against a white, and especially against a. white woman, the ordinary processes of law are too uncertain'and slow to be effective, either in punishment or in prevention. He considers that the negro, who has a vivid imagination and an emotional psychology, must be made to realise the enormity of the crime by some act of tragic and terrible retribution. Hence it is that crowds whose constituent units are in private, life good husbands and exemplary citizens, become inflamed with mass excitement and burn wretched creatures at the stake. There has also been a slow change of attitude in parts of the north. The rapid increase of the negro, and the fear of the workers that he would become a formidable competitor, has gradually undermined the old feeling. The richer classes also have begun to share this feeling of contempt and fear. The negroes themselves are not without blame. In the big cities many of them have made money. They have built elaborate mansions in fashionable neighbourhoods and have comported themselves ostentatiously and arrogantly. But it is among the masses, both white and black, that the leaven of internecine discord works. Coloured agitators harangue mobs and exhort them to show the whites that they are his equal. The success of Jack Johnson sent a wave of race consciousness throughout millions of his fellow "coons." It helped exceedingly to embitter the relations of the two peoples in America. Sociologists are at their wits' end to think out a solution of the problem.