THE COLOURED RACES.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17384, 21 April 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE COLOURED RACES.

DONT WALK IN FEAR.

(By “Marama.") There must be a dearth of interesting matters before the world to account for the resurrection of that hoary bogey, the menace of the coloured races. The argument always runs on the same lines; the coloured races are more numerous than the white races; their birthrate is much higher; they will soon be sufficiently numerous to control the white races. What exactly is the remedy the scaremongers would propose is not made clear, although one scribe, after solemnly drawing attention to the dangers insists that we should rigidly exclude coloured people from New Zealand, with the idea presumably that they will take the hint and not increase so rapidfy. There can be no doubt that lany people enjoy a good fright. At any dale we can select the coloured races have always been in a great majority over the white races, probably greater than to-day. Their birth rate is very high, but so is their death rate. The movements 1 of whole races which were experienced in the fifth century and again at later dates have ceased; world conditions make them impossible. The outstanding feature of the nineteenth century was the growth in numbers of the white races, and not in numbers only but also in wealth, power and command of resources. We do not know whether the coloured races fear f|ho predominance of the white races, but they have certainly a much better claim to their bogey than we have.

In the Thoughts That Shape Mankind

Sir Leo Chiozza Money, the latest man to raise this bogey, looks forward to the time when coloured men will be employed because white labour is not to be had, and he brings forward this argument at a time when large numbers of men and women are unable to find work in Britain, in the United States, and more or less in any civilised country. At the same lime labour-saving machinery of every kind is constantly coming into use. In civilised countries the percentage of the population occupied in the production of food is steadily shrinking, yet all the food required is produced, and occasionally too much is grown. A smaller number of producers raise the food required by a larger number of consumers, with the aid of labour-saving appliances. The United States has been rigidly restricting the number she will admit into the country and cannot employ those already there, and Sir Leo looks forward to coloured men being employed for want of while men. He would have shouted "fire" in IS'oah's Flood.

In Poverty, Hunger and Dirt

The idea that the coloured races threaten the supremacy of the white races in armed conflict is absurd. There is, however, a possibility of their doing so in the economic sphere. Their standard of life is much lower, and they work for smaller wages. It is true that their work is seldom as efficient, but there arc some f the less skilled occupations in which they might displace white men. We do not want any mixture of races, and should therefore try to prevent coloured labour displacing white labour, but so far our

actions have not tended to prevent it. r We try to stop them going into any

country where white men rule. Shut y up in their own country their standards of life show no improvement. Lack of capital and lack of ideas-hinder any accumulation of wealth, and the disparity between their ideas of fair pay and ours grows greater instead of less. Wc should be better advised to allow a limited number to come here and earn good wages, and then return to their own country and tell their friends what is possible. The Bolshevists have attempted to carry out Communist propaganda, without success. We should borrow a leaf from their book and try to establish labour unions in Asiatic countries. The conditions of labour are deplorable; the wages are miserably small. The only threat they make to our economic supremacy arises from the employment of underpaid labour. Our custom of excluding them tends to perpetuate the underpayment, and helps to create the verydanger we wish to avoid.

Am I My Brother's Keeper? The whole question of our relation to the coloured races is one which should be taken up by the churches. It is a moral question, and possibly the greatest that confronts us at the present time. The white races have the wealth, the power, the knowledge, and the opportunity to turn all these to account. Are we to use these advantages merely to enable us to make

a profit out of those less fortunately situated. Is it not our duty to do jjp something towards raising the condition of our poorer brethren. For in

spite of nationalist ideas we cannot get away from the fact that our lot in *■ life is bound up with that of all other men. So far we have not recognised our duly, in India a great work has been done, and when writers in the coming centuries tell of England's greatness they will lay stress on what has been achieved in that immense country. But against this there is much to be put. In Australia a handful of white men hold a continent,.and make a fetish or a faith of excluding the coloured races who might develop •the tropical portions. In South Africa the native is refused the right to do skilled or semi-skilled work. The recent arrivals in the country condemn him to the most meniaf and lowly-paid tasks. Slavery was once' common, but long after the enslavement of white men had disappeared, negroes in the United States were held in bondage, defrauded of the reward of their labour, bought and sold like cattle. It is over sixty years since slavery disappeared in a welter of blood and hatred, but not yet are negroes treated with justice. The Ku Klux Klan, who burn and torture negroes, are white men. The whites who raise the bogey of black prc-

dominance are not afraid of coloured

races attacking us, and only incidentally do they contemplate their competition in industrial pursuits. What

they really fear is that wc shall not be able in the future to do just what we I like to the coloured man, and that we shall be obliged to recognise that he has rights, and is entitled to justice and to fairplay. There is every indication that this change will take

place, but it wiJ* not be due to any change in the numbers of white men coloured mem It will come about because the people will recognise that great advantages entail great responsibilities, and that. Ihe linder-dng. blank, brown, or yellow, is there to be helpedL