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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 3. Facets of the Negro Problem - 4. The “Rank Order of Discriminations”
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64 An American Dilemma
obviously encounters some difficulties in the minds of intellectual Negroes.
They can hardly be expected to accept it as a just rule of conduct. They
tend to accept it merely as a temporary expedient necessitated by human
weakness. Kelly Miller thus wrote:
• . . you would hardly expect the Negro, in derogation of his common human
qualities, to proclaim that he is so diverse from God’s other human creatures as to
make the blending of the races contrary to the law of nature. The Negro refuses to
become excited or share in your frenzy on this subject. The amalgamation of the
races is an ultimate possibility, though not an immediate probability. But what have
you and I to do with ultimate questions, anyway?^®
And a few years later, he said:
It must be taken for granted In the final outcome of things that the color line
will be wholly obliterated. While blood may be thicker than water, It does not possess
the spissitude or Inherency of everlasting principle. The brotherhood of man is
more fundamental than the fellowship of race. A physical and spiritual Identity of
all peoples occupying common territory is a logical necessity of thought. The clear
seeing mind refuses to yield or give its assent to any other ultimate conclusion. I’his
consummation, however, is far too removed from the sphere of present probability
’ to have decisive influence upon practical proccdure.^^
This problem is, of course, tied up with the freedom of the individual.
’^Theoretically Negroes would all subscribe to the right of freedom ol
choice in marriage even between the two races, wrote Moton. And Du
Bois formulates it in stronger terms:
... a woman may say, I do not want to marry this black man, or this red man, or
this white man. . . . But the impudent and vicious demand that all colored folk
shall write themselves down as brutes by a general assertion of their unfitness to
marry other decent folk is a nightmare.^®
Negroes have always pointed out that the white man must not be very
certain of his woman’s lack of interest when he rises to such frenzy on
behalf of the danger to her and feels compelled to build up such formid-
able fences to prevent her from marrying a Negro.
With these reservations both Negro leadership and the Negro masses
acquiesce in the white anti-amalgamation doctrine. This attitude is noted
with satisfaction in the white camp. The writer has observed, however,
that the average white man, particularly in the South, does not feel quite
convinced of the Negro’s acquiescence. In several conversations, the same
white person, in the same breath, has assured me, on the one hand, that the
Negroes are perfectly satisfied in their position and W’ould not like to be
treated as equals, and on the other hand, that the only thing these Negroes
long for is to be like white people and to marry their daughters.
Whereas the Negro spokesman finds it possible to assent to the first
rank of discrimination, namely, that involving miscegenation, it is more
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