nt are very often married to
light-complexioned men; the effect is a tendency toward lighter
complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race.
Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people
among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line. I
do not think so. What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all,
most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might
be called an economic necessity. So far as racial differences go, the
United States puts a greater premium on color, or, better, lack of
color, than upon anything else in the world. To paraphrase, "Have a
white skin, and all things else may be added unto you." I have seen
advertisements in newspapers for waiters, bell-boys, or elevator men,
which read: "Light-colored man wanted." It is this tremendous pressure
which the sentiment of the country exerts that is operating on the
race. There is involved not only the question of higher opportunity,
but often the question of earning a livelihood; and so I say it is not
strange, but a natural tendency. Nor is it any more a sacrifice of
self-respect that a black man should give to his children every
advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries than that the
new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages
which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry. I once heard a
colored man sum it up in these words: "It's no disgrace to be black,
but it's often very inconvenient."

Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his
worst. As I drove around with the doctor, he commented rather harshly
on those of the latter class which we saw. He remarked: "You see those
lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies; they're not worth digging
graves for; yet they are the ones who create impressions of the race
for the casual observer. It's because they are always in evidence on
the street corners, while the rest of us are hard at work, and
you know a dozen loafing darkies make a bigger crowd and a worse
impression in this country than fifty white men of the same class. But
they ought not to represent the race. We are the race, and the race
ought to be judged by us, not by them. Every race and every nation
should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the
worst."

The recollection of my stay in Washington is a pleasure to me now.
In company with the doctor I visited Howard University, the public
sc