The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1908. NEGROES IN AMERICA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2273, 19 August 1908, Page 2

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1908. NEGROES IN AMERICA.

The race riot 6 which have just occurred' in Springfield, Illinois, will not come as a surprise to any who have given attention to the racial question in the United States. The deplorable incidents ' which by their ferocity ’and brutality must have shocked the civilised world are merely tile outward 1 manifestations of a feeling that is ever present in a large aroa of the great. Republic. It is difficult for people in New Zealand to realise how serious and apparently ineradicable is the spirit of antagonism on the part of tin; white citizens in the Southern States of America towards the millions of negroes who form so important a section of. the community. To obtain something of a conception of the real position, one lias only lo picture a million Chinese coolies existing in New Zealand as slaves and performing all the laborious and manual tasks of the community for a bare- keep and a frequent- application of the lash. Carrying the simile further, one imagines these same Chinamen freed a t the bidding of our Australian neighbors, after a bitter and sanguinary conflict, or by the law of the country, and placed on terms of equality with ourselves, with all the instincts and all the ignorance of a people who, for generations, had lived lives of complete subservience and dependence. These Chinamen, arrogant with the knowledge of their legal standing, would quickly demand recognition of social equality. In such a resort it is by no means certain- that New Zealanders would' make any better shape at settling the consequent racial issue than are the Americans at the present time. The southern gentleman, the aristocrat of the United States, and one of the finest types of the Anglo-Saxon race, has had to curb Hi haughty spirit and watch the peo-

pie ,\v]umi ho once held ns slaves, year alter year persist in their objectionable attempts to assert equality' with himself. The Civil War 'in which scarcely a family in the south but lost one or more of its members still remains a bitter memory that will not pass away so long as life remains. It was bad enough to be compelled at the instance of the northerners to reeogn se the legal equality of the negroes, but to find the colored people themselves insisting upon social equality also must have been terribly galling. On the other hand it is but natural that tlio old time slave having once found himself free to exercise the natural instincts of all human bongs and rise to a higher plane should object to being barred from a full enjoyment of life in a civilised community because cU the accident of color, so walks obdig (be streets in tlio SouihornXStates filled with the glow of a free life, with head erect and anxious 'to assort his equality with all men. Any attempt on the part of the whites to maintain, the old lines of distino-, tiou lie views with more or less* of indignation, and given a few glasses of tlio villainous whisky which southern brewers soil, he quickly makes himself obnoxious. Slouching along the sidewalks, a repulsive-looking object, lie bumps against the daughters or wivos of the southerners till the blood of the whites fairly boils within them, and so the old-time hatred is perpetuated. Every now and again sonic particularly aggravating offence, usually an outrage on white women, stirs the community to action, and then, us in the case of the Springfield riots, the always simmering volcano bursts lorth and relievos its long pent-up fury. It was for a long time thought by northerners, and' by Englishmen generally, that tlio spread of education amongst the negroes would gradually isolvo the question, but it must bo admitted the results hitherto have been woefully disappointing. Men like Booker Washington have arisen and demonstrated of what the negro is capable; There are hundreds of others who, as : the , .result of college training, could’ finally take their place amongst tiro '{host cultured member,s of any (Face. Those successes, however, are but rare examples amongst hosts of fdiluros, and the millions of negroes who swarm in the Southern States still show all tlio signs of an inferior people. President Roosevelt dined with Booker Washington at White House, thereby shocking millions of Americans, but the average white of Texas, Virginia, Illinois, or Kentucky would-/as soon think of cutting off his right hand as of permitting himself to shake with friendliness the hand of that gifted negro. Yet to millions of negroes President Roosevelt’s recognition of ono of their own race was hailed with joy as another proof ’of their equality with, the whites. Similarly every advance made by the higher type of negroes, the result of education, is greeted by the hordes of ignorant and indolent darkies as another barrier removed from the old ideal of social equality. Thus it is that millions of colored men who in somo States form a: majority of the population, filled with tlio low, brutal instincts of an inferior type of people, are perpetually encouraged by the success of the Uglier development of their own race to assort a position that they are neither mentally nor morally entitled to occupy. These ideals arc just as fiercely opposed by the whites, who consider tlio salvation of the community, both' whites and blacks, depends upon what they term keeping tlio black in his place. In other words, he can perform menial tasks and engage in certain forms of business, but must never be admitted as an equal in any form of social life. It is easy for outsiders to criticise but it is much more difficult to suggest a remedy for the terrible problem that still faces the Southern States of America, and it must ho noted that the negro population is increasing year by year at a rapid rate. The obvious moral for New Zealanders, and also for Australians, is to maintain at all hazards the policy that has so far freed us from the task of 'maintaining a superior and an inferior typo of peoplo in one community.