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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 9. Making the Peace
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Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads 1019
this time it has to stick to the making and upholding of the peace which
is yet to be written.
Americans also recognize that America has to take world leadership.
The coming difficult decades will be Americans turn in the endless sequence
of main actors on the world stage. America then will have the major
responsibility for the manner in which humanity approaches the long era
during which the white peoples will have to adjust to shrinkage while the
colored are bound to expand in numbers, in level of industrial civilization
and in political power. For perhaps several decades, the whites will still
hold the lead, and America will be the most powerful white nation.
America goes to this task with the best of intentions. Declarations of
inalienable human rights for people all over the world are now emanating
from America. Wilson’s fourteen points were a rehearsal; Roosevelt’s four
freedoms are more general and more focused on the rights of the individual.
The national leaders proclaim that the coming peace will open an age of
human liberty and equality everywhere. This was so in the First World
War, too. This time something must be done to give reality to the glittering
generalities, because otherwise the world will become entirely demoralized.
It will probably be impossible to excite people with empty promises a third
time. It is commonly agreed, and taken as proved by the coming of this
War, that peace cannot be preserved if the development of a democratic
life in every nation is not internationally guaranteed and the possibility of
oppression is not checked. It is anticipated that international agencies will
be created to sanction such a development.
In view of the clarity and unanimity in America on these fundamental
points, few white Americans fully realize all the obvious implications.
I have, for instance, met few white Americans who have ever thought of
the fact that, if America had joined the League of Nations, American
Negroes could, and certainly would, have taken their cases before inter-
national tribunal back in the ’twenties. Some versatile Negro protest leaders
are, however, familiar with the thought. After this War there is bound to
be an international apparatus for appeal by oppressed minority* groups.
In America, Negro organizations like the N.A.A.C.P. are excellently
equipped for such conspicuous litigation. It is, indeed, possible that such
implications of the coming democratic peace, when they become better seen
and publicly discussed, will act as deterrents and as a motive for isolation-
ism in some American circles. But there is no way back. America is irre-
deemably in world politics.
Behind her two protecting oceans America has until now lived an
exuberant and carefree life without having to bother much about its inter-
national reputation. Probably no other modern people has cared less about
what impression it makes on other nations. The ordinary American might
have been interested to know, but has not bothered much about, the fact
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