would unfit an individual of the Negro race to take his part in modern
civilization. We do not know of any demand made on the human body or mind
in modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove to be
beyond the powers of the Negro."[68]
"We have every reason to suppose that all races are capable, under proper
guidance, of being fitted into the complex scheme of our modern
civilization, and the policy of artificially excluding them from its
benefits is as unjustifiable scientifically as it is ethically
abhorrent."[69] What is, then, this so-called "instinctive" modern
prejudice against black folk?
Lord Bryce says of the intermingling of blacks and whites in South
America, "The ease with which the Spaniards have intermingled by marriage
with the Indian tribes--and the Portuguese have done the like, not only
with the Indians, but with the more physically dissimilar Negroes--shows
that race repugnance is no such constant and permanent factor in human
affairs as members of the Teutonic peoples are apt to assume. Instead of
being, as we Teutons suppose, the rule in the matter, we are rather the
exception, for in the ancient world there seems to have been little race
repulsion."
In nearly every age and land men of Negro descent have distinguished
themselves. In literature there is Terence in Rome, Nosseyeb and Antar in
Arabia, Es-Sa'di in the Sudan, Pushkin in Russia, Dumas in France, Al
Kanemi in Spain, Heredia in the West Indies, and Dunbar in the United
States, not to mention the alleged Negro strain in AEsop and Robert
Browning. As rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes as Queen
Nefertari and Amenhotep III among many others in Egypt; Candace and
Ergamenes in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ali, and Mohammed Askai in the
Sudan; Diaz in Brazil, Toussaint L'Ouverture in Hayti, Hannivalov in
Russia, Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder Dumas in France, Cazembe
and Chaka among the Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the numberless black
leaders of India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton. In music
and art we recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven, and the
unexplained complexion of Beethoven's own father; Coleridge-Taylor in
England, Tanner in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the actor, and
Johnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopated
music. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of many
of the Catholic African fathers, if not in c
|