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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 - 8. International Aspects
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Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads 1017
And she assures her compatriots:
We cannot . . . win this war without convincing our colored allies—who are most
of our allies—that we are not fighting for ourselves as continuing superior over
colored peoples. The deep patience of colored peoples is at an end. Everywhere
among them there is the same resolve for freedom and equality that white Americans
and British have, but it is a grimmer resolve, for it includes the determination to be
rid of white rule and exploitation and white race prejudice, and nothing will weaken
this will.^®
This is perhaps an exaggeration. Perhaps the War can this time be won
even without the colored people’s confidence. But the absence of their full
cooperation, and still more their obstructive activities, will be tremendously
costly in time, men and materials. Caste is becoming an expensive luxury
of white men.
It seems more definitely certain that it will be impossible to make and
preserve a good peace without having built up the fullest trust and good-
will among the colored peoples. They will be strong after the War, and
they are bound to become even stronger as time passes. For one thing, this
is certain in so far as numbers are concerned. During the short span of the
last three centuries, which include almost the entire epoch of white power
expansion, the peoples of European stock increased sevenfold, while the
others increased only threefold. The whites grew from a bare 100 millions,
or a fifth of the globe’s total, to over 700 millions, or a third of all man-
kind. The increase for the whites was fastest during the last century when
they gradually became able to control deaths but had not as yet brought
births under control. The whites are, however, now in the second phase
of this dynamic sequence: the white birth rate is falling so fast that it is
catching up with the relatively stable death rate. The population expansion
of the whites is now slowing down, absolutely and relatively. Many of the
Western nations, including America and all those other peoples on the
highest level of industrial civilization, will probably start to shrink in
population numbers within a few decades. The colored nations, on the
other hand, are just entering the first stage where expansion is likely to be
pushed by an increasingly improved control over death, and it is unlikely
that the increase in birth control will keep pace with the improvement of
the control over death. The whites will, therefore, from now on become a
progressively smaller portion of the total world population. If we except
the Russian peoples, who are still rapidly increasing, the rapid change in
proportion stands out still more dramatically.
Another broad trend is almost as certain, namely, that the ^^backward”
countries, where most colored people live, are going to become somewhat
industrialized. The examples of Japan and, more recently, of Russia and
China give support to the view that in the future we shall see many back-
ward countries industrialized at a tremendously more rapid rate than were
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