"The mulattoes are rather outside the race, above it. They have not given up the hope of equality with the whites; they are not satisfied to be Negroes and to find their life and their work among the members of the race. They are contemptuous of the blacks who are socially below them and envious of the whites who are socially above them. The accommodation of the races is on horizontal lines with the educated and light-colored mulattoes standing between the blacks and the whites."

99 10

Professor Reuter, however, goes on to say that the caste, or horizontal, status of race relations in the North is giving way to the bi-racial status which obtains in the South through the increasing tendency to identify the Northern mulattoes with the Northern blacks and the resulting increase of racial solidarity. "But curiously enough," he says, "the rebellious attitude of the militant mulattoes against the habitual attitude of the white group and their agitations against discriminations, whether carried on by themselves or by their white sympathizers, which have for their real though seldom openly avowed and sometimes not consciously understood purpose the allowing of the superior, educated mulattoes to escape from the Negro race and to be absorbed into the white race their protests and complaints and campaigns of bitterness and abuse-have an effect quite different from that desired. It tends to defeat its own object and works ultimately to the profit of the Negro group as a whole rather than to that of the protesting group. Instead of influencing the white man to recognize the mulattoes as a superior type of man and to accept them on a rating different from that on which he accepts the mass of the race-as an individual regardless of race or color-the effect is to identify the complaining individuals more closely with the masses of the race; it tends to solidify the race and, in the thinking of the white man, to class the agitators with it. Its effect is not to break down the white man's antipathy and prejudice, but to make the feeling more acute and to make more conscious and distinct the determination of the white people to preserve their ideals of racial and social purity. It results in a stricter and a more conscious and purposeful drawing of the color line and a drawing of the line where it had previously not been drawn. In the effort to escape the race, the mulattoes become more than ever identified with it. The segregation policy which exists in all lines everywhere in the South and less openly and frankly but frequently not less effectively in the North wherever the Negroes are numerous and troublesome, is in large part a reaction 10 Reuter, op. cit., p. 371.

on the part of the white people against the militant mulattoes' efforts to achieve social equality with the whites.

"Both the mulattoes and the Negroes stand to profit in the end by the agitation of the radical mulatto group for social and class recognition. The struggle for abstract rights is not productive of any important results in the way of removing racial prejudice or social discrimination; it has rather the contrary tendency. But it serves to identify the mulatto with the race and this is an advantage both to the black and to the yellow man. The black Negroes are the gainers by having their natural leaders thrust, even though it be against their will, back upon the race. The mulattoes are gainers in that they are thus forced to see and to embrace the great opportunity which the presence of the people of their own race affords them for a useful and a valuable life of real leadership. The horizontal accommodation-the caste system of the North seems destined ultimately to transform itself, as the earlier caste system of the South has already largely done, into a vertical accommodation-a bi-racial system." 11

Assuming that there is a considerable group of Negroes in the United States who still ardently crave the society of white people and look forward to a day of general amalgamation, there are reasons for believing that their interest in racial intermixture is a temporary and artificially cultivated state of mind which is contrary to their natural impulse, and which will either pass away, or linger as an aberration among a class of men whose influence will be negligible.

I have iterated that the tendency of unlike races, when juxtaposed in mass, is to segregate and to prefer social contact and intermarriage within their own race circles. In the United States, if some Negroes crave the society of white people, it is in a large measure because the white people represent a higher culture, the possession of which, with all of its privileges and opportunities, seems impossible outside of that society. Hence it is the aspiration of the Negro for cultural fellowship and opportunity rather than for companionship with white people which inclines him to long for and to imagine that he would enjoy the white man's society. The more we enlarge the opportunities of the Negro, and the more he develops a cultural tradition of his own, the more he will be drawn toward his own people and the less he will feel a desire to mingle socially with the whites.12

"Reuter, op. cit., pp. 372-4.

Dr. Frissell, president of Hampton Institute, says: "I wish our friends in the South could learn the lesson we have learned here, which is that when the

It may be several generations before the highly educated class of Negroes can find a satisfying intercourse in the society of their own people, and, in the meantime, those of them who seem to covet the society of white people should be less viewed as longing for the day of universal miscegenation than as longing for a day of universal culture when the intercourse between races shall be characterized by justice and courtesy.

From the standpoint of each race, therefore, I think there are possibilities of a more sympathetic understanding of each other's point of view, of an agreement on things fundamental, and of a hopeful going ahead toward more open opportunities.

Negro is really cultivated and taught self-respect he prefers to keep to himself, to associate with other cultivated negroes, and does not bother the white people at all." Quoted by Patterson, The Negro and His Needs, p. 191.

CHAPTER 70

SUGGESTED SPHERE OF NEGRO ACTIVITY

Propitiousness for the Survival of the Negro of Conditions Which Minimize Competition with the Whites-Advantages of the Natural Tendency of the Negro to Keep Apart-Need of Training More Negroes for Skilled Labor and for Professional Careers-Need of Education Better Adapted to the Negro's Cultural Status and Spheres of Activity

I

THINK it stands to reason that the survival of the Negro would be favored by the maintenance of conditions which minimize competition with the white race. Without assigning to the Negro the exclusive status of a serving class, or furthering the process of segregation by law, it should be possible to keep open to him sundry spheres of activity upon which the white man would not aggressively encroach. For instance, Negroes are not likely to be hampered in the purchase and operation of farms, and, beside the large sphere which they occupy as tenants, crop-hands and domestic servants, they should be able to hold and enlarge the field, in which they have gained entrance as both skilled and unskilled workers, in the world of mining and manufacturing. Any kind of work which by custom has come to belong to a group of Negroes will be easy to retain as compared to kinds of work in which the Negro has only an individual and precarious foothold.

The natural tendency of the Negro to segregate insures for him a diversity of occupations almost equal to that of the whites. It offers opportunities for nearly every kind of trade and handicraft; it opens a career for the teacher, the doctor, the dentist, the lawyer, and the preacher. There will always be room at the top for men and women of talent.

Among the lines of activity offering the prospect of immediate advancement to the Negroes, I would suggest the training of larger numbers of them for the skilled trades. A great drawback to the Negroes at present is that they furnish an oversupply of raw labor which is everywhere the most irregular in demand or the poorest paid. The best service which could be rendered the Negro would be to provide for him more and better-equipped industrial schools with the view to relieving the pressure in the unskilled trades, and enabling him to earn

better wages, and secure more regular employment. There is a large field for the Negro in the skilled trades in serving his own race. And in a great many kinds of skilled trades, now occupied by the whites, the Negro could find entrance, if he had an efficiency equal to that of the whites. The vast resources yet undeveloped in this country will insure a great demand for labor for many years to come, and the Negro should qualify himself to share in supplying that demand. The exclusion of the Negro from the unions of skilled laborers has been more on account of his inefficiency and objectionable traits than on account of his color. If the Negro were less zealous in raising the race issue on all occasions, and less disposed to follow the lead of men who make a profession of stirring up race prejudice, the opposition to him in industrial circles would be less stubborn. In many manufacturing and mechanical industries there are now large numbers of skilled Negro employes, and in some cases they are admitted to the unions of the whites, and in other cases they belong to unions of their own. The field of the Negro in the skilled trades is by no means occupied, and there are possibilities of greatly enlarging it.

In the line of the professional careers there are extensive opportunities still available for the Negro, both within his own race and in open competition with the whites. In the profession of teacher in the common schools and in colleges, in the ministry, in medicine, dentistry, law, literature, and art, there is a growing demand, made necessary by the increasing Negro population. In most of the professions the services of the Negro are limited almost entirely to his own race, but in some of the professions of the highest rank, such as authorship, music, painting, and sculpture, the Negro can count on a liberal support from the white public. In the fine arts the Negro has a special advantage in the prominence which he gains through the rarity of men of his color found in them. The generous support which the white public has given to Negro artists like Henry O. Tanner, the painter, and Meta Warrick Fuller, the sculptor, and Negro authors like Booker Washington, DuBois, Dunbar, etcetera, shows that there are great possibilities for the Negro in these lines of culture. And these possibilities could be greatly enlarged by building up a more friendly relationship between the races. It is unreasonable to expect the Negroes in the lower walks of life to manifest an ambition to rise if there are not opportunities at the top, where the more gifted of the race may win distinction and serve as inspiring models.

For all the people of the United States there is need of an educa