CHAPTER IX.A FEW BOOKS.The Negro in History and Civilization(From Superman to Man, by J. A. Rogers.)This volume by Mr. Rogers is the greatest little book on the Negro that we remember to have read. It makes no great parade of being “scientific,” as so many of our young writers do who seem to think that science consists solely in logical analysis. If science consists fundamentally of facts, of information and of principles derived from those facts, then the volume before us is one of the most scientific that has been produced by a Negro writer. It sweeps the circle of all the social sciences. History, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics and politics—even theology—are laid under contribution and yield a store of information which is worked up into a presentation so plain and clear that the simplest can read and understand it, and yet so fortified by proofs from the greatest standard authorities of the past and present that there is no joint in its armor in which the keenest spear of a white scientist may enter.Unlike an older type of scholar (now almost extinct) the author does not go to vapid verbal philosophers or devotional dreamers for the facts of history and ethnology. He goes to historians and ethnologists for them and to anthropologists for his anthropology. The result is information which stands the searching tests of any inquirer who chooses to doubt and investigate before accepting what is set before him.From this book the unlearned reader of the African race can gather proof that his race has not always been a subject or inferior race. He has the authority of Professor Reisner, of Harvard; of Felix Dubois, Volney, Herodotus, Finot, Sergi, the modern Egyptologists and the scholars of the white world who assembled at the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, for the belief that his race has founded great civilizations, has ruled over areas as large as all Europe, and was prolific in statesmen, scientists, poets, conquerors, religious and political leaders, arts and crafts, industry and commerce when the white race was wallowing in barbarism or sunk in savagery. Here he can learn on good authority, from St. Jerome and Cicero, Herodotus and Homer down to the modern students of race history, that cannibalism has been a practise among white populations like the Scythians, Scots and Britons; that the white races have been slaves; that here in America the slavery of white men was a fact as late as the 19th century, and “according to Professor Cigrand, Grover Cleveland’s grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish slave in Connecticut.” In short, he will learn here, not that newspaper science which keeps even “educated” Americans so complacently ignorant, but the science of the scientists themselves. He will learn all that this kind of science has to tell of the relative capacity and standing of the black and white races—and much of it will surprise him. But all of it will please and instruct.The book also deals with the facts of the present position of the Negro in America and the West Indies; with questions of religion, education, politics and political parties, war work, lynching, miscegenation on both sides, the beauty of Negro women and race prejudice. And on everyone of these topics it gives a minimum of opinion and a maximum of information. This information flows forth during the course of a series of discussions between an educated Negro Pullman porter and a Southern white statesman on a train running between Chicago and San Francisco. The superior urbanity of the Negro, coupled with his wider information and higher intelligence, eventually wins over the Caucasian to admit that the whole mental attitude of himself and his race in regard to the Negro was wrong and based on nothing better than prejudice.This conversational device gives the author an opportunity to present all the conflicting views on both sides of the Color Line, and the result is a wealth of information which makes this book a necessity on the bookshelf of everyone, Negro or Caucasian, who has some use for knowledge on the subject of the Negro. The book is published by the author at 4700 State Street, Chicago.“Darkwater”By W. E. B. Du Bois.An unwritten law has existed for a long time to the effect that the critical estimates which fix the status of a book by a Negro author shall be written by white men. Praise or blame—. the elementary criticism which expresses only the reviewer’s feelings in reference to the book—has generally been the sole function of the Negro critic. And the results have not been good. For, in the first place, white critics (except in music) have been too prone to judge the product of a Negro author as Dr. Johnson judged the dancing dog: “It isn’t at all like dancing; but then, one shouldn’t expect more from a dog.” That is why many Negro poets of fifth grade merit are able to marshal ecomiums by the bushel from friendly white critics who ought to know better. On the other hand, there is the danger of disparagement arising solely from racial prejudice and the Caucasian refusal to take Negro literary products seriously.In either case the work fails to secure consideration solely on its merits. Wherefore, it is high time that competent appraisal of Negro books should come from “our side of the street.” But, then, the Negro reading public should be taught what to expect, viz., that criticism is neither “knocking” nor “boosting”; but an attempt, in the first place, to furnish a correct and adequate idea of the scope and literary method of the book under review, of the author’s success in realizing his objects, and of the spirit in which he does his work. In the second place, the critic should be expected to bring his own understanding of the subject matter of the book to bear upon the problem of enlightening the readers’ understanding, that at the end the reader may decide whether the work is worth his particular while.This book of Dr. Du Bois’ is one which challenges the swing of seasoned judgment and appraisal. It challenges also free thinking and plain speaking. For, at the very outset, find ourselves forced to demur to the publishers’ assumptions as to its author’s status. “Even more than the late Booker Washington, Mr. Du Bois is now chief spokesman of the two hundred million men and women of African blood.” So say the publishers—or the author. But this is outrageously untrue. Once upon a time Dr. Du Bois held a sort of spiritual primacy among The Talented Tenth, not at all comparable to that of Booker Washington in scope, but vital and compelling for all that. The power of that leadership, however, instead of increasing since Mr. Washington’s death, has decreased, and is now openly flouted by the most active and outspoken members of The Talented Tenth in Negro America. And, outside of the twelve or fifteen millions “of African blood” in the United States, the mass of that race in South and West Africa, Egypt and the Philippines know, unfortunately, very little of Dr. Du Bois. It may be, however, that this is merely a publishers’ rhodomontade.And it is the publishers themselves who challenge for this volume a comparison with “The Souls of Black Folk,” which was published by McClurg in 1903. It is regrettable that they should force the issue, for “The Souls of Black Folk” is a greater book than “Darkwater” in many ways. In the first place, its high standard of craftsmanship is maintained through every chapter and page. There are no fag-ends, as in the chapter “Of Beauty and Death” in the present volume, where the rhetoric bogs down, the author loses the thread of his purpose and goes spieling off into space, spinning a series of incongruous purple patches whose tawdry glitter shows the same reversion to crude barbarism in taste which leads a Florida fieldhand to don opal-colored trousers, a pink tie, pari-colored shirt and yellow shoes. Artistically, that chapter is an awful thing, and I trust that the author is artist enough to be ashamed of it.And, though it may savor of anti-climax, “The Souls of Black Folk” was more artistically “gotten” up—to use the grammar of its author. “Darkwater” is cheaply bound and cheaply printed on paper which is almost down to the level of the Seaside Library. Neither in mechanical nor mental quality does the book of 1920 come up to the level of that of 1903.Yet, in spite of some defects, “Darkwater” (with the exception of chapters six, seven, eight and nine) is a book well worth reading. It is a collection of papers written at different times, between 1908 and 1920, and strung loosely on the string of race. One wishes that the author could have included his earlier essay on The Talented Tenth and his address on the aims and ideals of modern education, delivered some twelve years ago to the colored school children of Washington, D. C.Each paper makes a separate chapter, and each chapter is followed by a rhetorical sprig of symbolism in prose or verse in which the tone-color of the preceding piece is made manifest to the reader. Of these tone-poems in prose and verse, the best are the Credo; A Litany at Atlanta; The Riddle of the Sphinx, and Jesus Christ in Texas. In these the lyrical quality of the author’s prose is lifted to high levels. In these elegance does not slop over into turgid declamation and rhetorical claptrap—which has become a common fault of the author’s recent prose as shown in The Crisis. In this, the first part of the book, the work is genuine and its rhetoric rings true. Nevertheless, the sustained artistic swing of “The Souls of Black Folk,” which placed that work (as a matter of form and style) on the level of Edgar Saltus’Imperial Purple—this is not attained in “Darkwater.”The book may be said to deal largely with the broad international aspects of the problem of the color line and its reactions on statecraft, welt-politik, international peace and international trade, industry, education and the brotherhood of man. Each chapter, or paper, is devoted to one of these reactions. Then there is a charming autobiographical paper, “The Shadow of Years,” which first appeared in The Crisis about three years ago, in which we have the study of a soul by itself. The growth of the author’s mind under the bewildering shadow cast by the color line is tragically set forth. I say tragically with deliberation; for what we see here, despite its fine disguise, is the smoldering resentment of a mulatto who finds the beckoning white doors of the world barred on his approach. One senses the thought that, if they had remained open, the gifted spirit would have entered and made his home within them.Mais, chacun a son gout, and no one has the right to quarrel with the author on that doubtful score.In the chapter on “The Souls of White Folk” we have a fine piece, not so much of analysis, as of exposition. The author puts his best into it. And yet that best seems to have failed to bite with acid brutality into the essential iron of the white man’s soul. For the basic elements of that soul are Hypocrisy, Greed and Cruelty. True, the author brings this out; but he doesn’t burn it in. The indictment is presented in terms of an appeal to shocked sensibilities and a moral sense which exists, for the white man, only in print; whereas it might have been made in other terms which come nearer to his self-love. Nevertheless it is unanswerable in its logic.In “The Hands of Ethiopia,” as in “The Souls of White Folk,” we catch the stern note of that threat which (disguise it as our journals will), the colored races are making, of an ultimate appeal in terms of color and race to the white man’s only God—the God of Armed Force. But the author never reaches the height of that newer thought—an international alliance of Black, Brown and Yellow against the arrogance of White.In “Work and Wealth” and “The Servant in the House” the problems of work and its reward, and the tragedy of that reward, are grippingly set forth in relation to the Negro in America and in the civilized world. “The Ruling of Men” is followed by three papers of very inferior merit and the book ends with a fantastic short story, “The Comet” which, like “The Coming of John” in “The Souls of Black Folk,” suggests that Dr. Du Bois could be a compelling writer of this shorter form of fiction. The touch in this story of incident is light, but arresting.Dr. Du Bois, in the looseness of phrase current in our time in America, is called a scholar—on what grounds we are not informed. But Dr. Du Bois is not a scholar; his claim to consideration rests upon a different basis, but one no less high. And when the Negro culture of the next century shall assay the products of our own it will seem remarkable that this supreme wizard of words, this splendid literary artist, should have left his own demesne to claim the crown of scholarship. Surely, there is honest credit enough in being what he is, our foremost man of culture. And this “Darkwater,” despite its lapses from artistic grace, helps to rivet his claim to that consideration. It is a book which will well repay reading.The Rising Tide of Color Against White World SupremacyBy Lothrop StoddardAbout ten years ago Mr. B. L. Putnam Weale in “The Conflict of Color” tried to open the eyes of the white men of the world to the fact that they were acting as their own grave diggers. About the same time Mr. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press, in an address before the Quill Club on “Race Prejudice in the Far East” reinforced the same grisly truth. Five years later “T. Shirby Hodge” wrote “The White Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast,” and ended it with these pregnant words: “The white man’s burden is—himself.” His publishers practically suppressed his book, which, by the way, should have been in the library of every intelligent Negro. The white world was indisposed then to listen to its voices of warning. But today the physical, economic and racial ravages of the World War have so changed the white world’s mind that within four weeks of its appearance “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy,” by Lothrop Stoddard, has struck the bull’s-eye of attention and has already become the most widely talked-of book of the year. White men of power are discussing its facts and its conclusions with bated breath and considerable disquietude.Here is a book written by a white man which causes white men to shiver. For it calls their attention to the writing on the wall. It proves that the white race in its mad struggle for dominion over others has been exhausting its vital resources and is exhausting them further. It proves to the hilt the thesis advanced in 1917 in my brief essay on “The White War and the Colored Races” that, whereas the white race was on top by virtue of its guns, ships, money, intellect and massed man-power, in the World War it was busy burning up, depleting and destroying these very resources on which its primacy depended. But even though the white capitalists knew all this their mad greed was still their master. This great race is still so low spiritually that it sells even its racial integrity for dollars and cents. Mr. Stoddard’s book may disturb its sense of security for a brief space, but it cannot keep white “civilization” from its mad dance of death. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And the white race will finally find that this is even more true racially than individually.We have noticed for many years that whereas domestic journalism was merely journalism—the passing register of parochial sensations—the journalism of the international publicists like Lord Bryce, Meredith Townsend, Archibald Colquhoon, Putnam Weale and Hyndman was something more solid than journalism. In the writings of these men hard fact and stark reality are wedded to wide reading and deep thinking. They are the real social scientists rather than the stay-at-home, cloistered sociologists who, presuming to know everything, have seen nothing. The present volume is one of the best of the former and is full of the qualities of its class. But at the very outset it suffers from the unwelcome assistance of Dr. Madison Grant, “chairman of the New York Zoological Society and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History.” Dr. Grant has accumulated a large stock of musty ethnological ideas of which he unburdens himself in what he evidently intends as a “learned” introduction, without which freightage the book would be much better. The difference in value and accuracy between Mr. Stoddard’s text and the pseudo-scientific introduction of Dr. Grant would furnish fair material for philosophic satire. Unfortunately we cannot indulge the inclination in the columns of a weekly newspaper.Dr. Grant, in owlish innocence, splutters out the usual futile folly which (in other domains) has brought the white race to the frontiers of the present crisis. He reads back into history the racial values of today and trails the Anglo-Saxon’s crass conceit and arrogance across the pages of its record, finding “contrast of mental and spiritual endowments … elusive of definition,” and other racial clap-trap whose falsity has been demonstrated again and again by warm-hearted enthusiasts like Jean Finot and coldly critical and scientific scholars like Dr. Taylor (“Origin of the Aryans”), Sergi (“The Mediterranean Race”) and J. M. Robertson (“The Evolution of States”). But one can forgive Dr. Grant; he is a good American, and good Americans (especially “scientists” on race) are usually fifty years behind the English, who, in turn, are usually twenty years behind the Germans. Dr. Grant’s annexation of the past history of human culture to the swollen record of the whites sounds good—even if it smells bad. And he is in good Anglo-Saxon company. Sir Harry Johnston does the same thing and gets titles (scientific and other) by so doing. The Englishman takes the very Egyptians, Hindus and tribal Liberians, whom he would call “niggers” in New York and London, and as soon as he finds that they have done anything worth while he tags them with a “white” tag. Thus, to the professional “scientist” like Dr. Grant, living in the parochial atmosphere of the United States, science is something arcane, recondite and off the earth; while to the American like Mr. Stoddard, who has been broadened by travel and contact with the wider world, science, is, as it should be, organized daily knowledge and common sense. Thus journalists, good and bad, are the ones who form opinion in America, because “scientists” are so distressingly stupid.Mr. Stoddard’s thesis starts from the proposition that of the seventeen hundred million people on our earth today the great majority is made up of black, brown, red and yellow people. The white race, being in the minority, still dominates over the lands of black, brown, red and (in the case of China) has assumed a right of dictatorship and disposal even in the yellow man’s lands. In the course of this dictatorship and domination the white race has erected the barrier of the color line to keep the other races in their place. But this barrier is cracking and giving way at many points and the flood of racial self-assertion, hitherto dammed up, threatens to overflow the outer and inner dikes and sweep away the domination of the whites.The author approaches his theme with a curiously graduated respect for other races. This respect, while it is a novelty in the attitude of the blond overlords, is always in direct proportion to the present power and discernible potentialities of the races discussed. For the yellow man of Japan and China he shows the greatest deference. The browns (of India, Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Mohammedan world in general) are, of course, inferior, but must be respected for their militancy. The reds (the original American stock which is the backbone of the population of Mexico, Central and South America) are a source of contamination for white blood and an infernal nuisance, capable of uniting with Japan and China in an onslaught on the land areas reserved for white exploitation in the western world; while the blacks, at the foot of the ladder, have never amounted to anything, don’t amount to anything now, and can never seriously menace the superiority of the whites.The gradation is full of meaning, especially to those fervid theorists who affect to believe that religion, morality, loyalty and good citizenship constitute a good claim to the white man’s respect. For it is Japan’s actual military might and China’s impending military might which have put them in Grade A, while the brown man’s show of resistance in Egypt, India and elsewhere under Islam, and his general physical unrest and active discontent have secured for him a classification in Grade B. The American in Mexico and South America keeps his window open toward the east; but the black man still seems, in our author’s eyes, to be the same loyal, gentle, stupid beast of burden that the white man’s history has known—except in those parts of Africa in which he has accepted the Mohammedan religion and thus become a part of the potential terror of the Moslem world. In this we think our author mistaken; but, after all, it is neither arguments nor logic that will determine these matters, but deeds and accomplishments.But, however his racial respect may be apportioned, Mr. Stoddard holds that his race is doomed. “If the present drift be not changed we whites are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order the doom will sooner or later overtake us all.” The present reviewer stakes his money on “the doom,” for the white race’s disease is an ingrowing one whose development inheres in their very nature. They are so singularly constituted that they would rather tear themselves to pieces parading as the lords of creation than see any other people achieve an equal favor of fortune.In the pages of this book the author presents many chastening truths and wide vistas of international politics which are enlightening when carefully studied. But it is not our intent to cover the entire field of his work, and we think that we have said enough to indicate the high value and suggestiveness of the work. But we may be allowed to point out that all the way through the author, though clear and enlightened, remains an unreconstructed Anglo-Saxon, desirous of opening the eyes of his race to the dangers which beset them through their racial injustice and arrogance; but sternly, resolutely, intent that they shall not share their overlordship with any other of the sons of earth. His book is written in a clear and commendable style; he shows but few defects of temper and a shrewd mastery of his materials. The book should be widely read by intelligent men of color from Tokio to Tallahassee. It is published by Charles Scribner’s Sons at $3, and is well worth the price.
(From Superman to Man, by J. A. Rogers.)
This volume by Mr. Rogers is the greatest little book on the Negro that we remember to have read. It makes no great parade of being “scientific,” as so many of our young writers do who seem to think that science consists solely in logical analysis. If science consists fundamentally of facts, of information and of principles derived from those facts, then the volume before us is one of the most scientific that has been produced by a Negro writer. It sweeps the circle of all the social sciences. History, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics and politics—even theology—are laid under contribution and yield a store of information which is worked up into a presentation so plain and clear that the simplest can read and understand it, and yet so fortified by proofs from the greatest standard authorities of the past and present that there is no joint in its armor in which the keenest spear of a white scientist may enter.
Unlike an older type of scholar (now almost extinct) the author does not go to vapid verbal philosophers or devotional dreamers for the facts of history and ethnology. He goes to historians and ethnologists for them and to anthropologists for his anthropology. The result is information which stands the searching tests of any inquirer who chooses to doubt and investigate before accepting what is set before him.
From this book the unlearned reader of the African race can gather proof that his race has not always been a subject or inferior race. He has the authority of Professor Reisner, of Harvard; of Felix Dubois, Volney, Herodotus, Finot, Sergi, the modern Egyptologists and the scholars of the white world who assembled at the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911, for the belief that his race has founded great civilizations, has ruled over areas as large as all Europe, and was prolific in statesmen, scientists, poets, conquerors, religious and political leaders, arts and crafts, industry and commerce when the white race was wallowing in barbarism or sunk in savagery. Here he can learn on good authority, from St. Jerome and Cicero, Herodotus and Homer down to the modern students of race history, that cannibalism has been a practise among white populations like the Scythians, Scots and Britons; that the white races have been slaves; that here in America the slavery of white men was a fact as late as the 19th century, and “according to Professor Cigrand, Grover Cleveland’s grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish slave in Connecticut.” In short, he will learn here, not that newspaper science which keeps even “educated” Americans so complacently ignorant, but the science of the scientists themselves. He will learn all that this kind of science has to tell of the relative capacity and standing of the black and white races—and much of it will surprise him. But all of it will please and instruct.
The book also deals with the facts of the present position of the Negro in America and the West Indies; with questions of religion, education, politics and political parties, war work, lynching, miscegenation on both sides, the beauty of Negro women and race prejudice. And on everyone of these topics it gives a minimum of opinion and a maximum of information. This information flows forth during the course of a series of discussions between an educated Negro Pullman porter and a Southern white statesman on a train running between Chicago and San Francisco. The superior urbanity of the Negro, coupled with his wider information and higher intelligence, eventually wins over the Caucasian to admit that the whole mental attitude of himself and his race in regard to the Negro was wrong and based on nothing better than prejudice.
This conversational device gives the author an opportunity to present all the conflicting views on both sides of the Color Line, and the result is a wealth of information which makes this book a necessity on the bookshelf of everyone, Negro or Caucasian, who has some use for knowledge on the subject of the Negro. The book is published by the author at 4700 State Street, Chicago.
By W. E. B. Du Bois.
An unwritten law has existed for a long time to the effect that the critical estimates which fix the status of a book by a Negro author shall be written by white men. Praise or blame—. the elementary criticism which expresses only the reviewer’s feelings in reference to the book—has generally been the sole function of the Negro critic. And the results have not been good. For, in the first place, white critics (except in music) have been too prone to judge the product of a Negro author as Dr. Johnson judged the dancing dog: “It isn’t at all like dancing; but then, one shouldn’t expect more from a dog.” That is why many Negro poets of fifth grade merit are able to marshal ecomiums by the bushel from friendly white critics who ought to know better. On the other hand, there is the danger of disparagement arising solely from racial prejudice and the Caucasian refusal to take Negro literary products seriously.
In either case the work fails to secure consideration solely on its merits. Wherefore, it is high time that competent appraisal of Negro books should come from “our side of the street.” But, then, the Negro reading public should be taught what to expect, viz., that criticism is neither “knocking” nor “boosting”; but an attempt, in the first place, to furnish a correct and adequate idea of the scope and literary method of the book under review, of the author’s success in realizing his objects, and of the spirit in which he does his work. In the second place, the critic should be expected to bring his own understanding of the subject matter of the book to bear upon the problem of enlightening the readers’ understanding, that at the end the reader may decide whether the work is worth his particular while.
This book of Dr. Du Bois’ is one which challenges the swing of seasoned judgment and appraisal. It challenges also free thinking and plain speaking. For, at the very outset, find ourselves forced to demur to the publishers’ assumptions as to its author’s status. “Even more than the late Booker Washington, Mr. Du Bois is now chief spokesman of the two hundred million men and women of African blood.” So say the publishers—or the author. But this is outrageously untrue. Once upon a time Dr. Du Bois held a sort of spiritual primacy among The Talented Tenth, not at all comparable to that of Booker Washington in scope, but vital and compelling for all that. The power of that leadership, however, instead of increasing since Mr. Washington’s death, has decreased, and is now openly flouted by the most active and outspoken members of The Talented Tenth in Negro America. And, outside of the twelve or fifteen millions “of African blood” in the United States, the mass of that race in South and West Africa, Egypt and the Philippines know, unfortunately, very little of Dr. Du Bois. It may be, however, that this is merely a publishers’ rhodomontade.
And it is the publishers themselves who challenge for this volume a comparison with “The Souls of Black Folk,” which was published by McClurg in 1903. It is regrettable that they should force the issue, for “The Souls of Black Folk” is a greater book than “Darkwater” in many ways. In the first place, its high standard of craftsmanship is maintained through every chapter and page. There are no fag-ends, as in the chapter “Of Beauty and Death” in the present volume, where the rhetoric bogs down, the author loses the thread of his purpose and goes spieling off into space, spinning a series of incongruous purple patches whose tawdry glitter shows the same reversion to crude barbarism in taste which leads a Florida fieldhand to don opal-colored trousers, a pink tie, pari-colored shirt and yellow shoes. Artistically, that chapter is an awful thing, and I trust that the author is artist enough to be ashamed of it.
And, though it may savor of anti-climax, “The Souls of Black Folk” was more artistically “gotten” up—to use the grammar of its author. “Darkwater” is cheaply bound and cheaply printed on paper which is almost down to the level of the Seaside Library. Neither in mechanical nor mental quality does the book of 1920 come up to the level of that of 1903.
Yet, in spite of some defects, “Darkwater” (with the exception of chapters six, seven, eight and nine) is a book well worth reading. It is a collection of papers written at different times, between 1908 and 1920, and strung loosely on the string of race. One wishes that the author could have included his earlier essay on The Talented Tenth and his address on the aims and ideals of modern education, delivered some twelve years ago to the colored school children of Washington, D. C.
Each paper makes a separate chapter, and each chapter is followed by a rhetorical sprig of symbolism in prose or verse in which the tone-color of the preceding piece is made manifest to the reader. Of these tone-poems in prose and verse, the best are the Credo; A Litany at Atlanta; The Riddle of the Sphinx, and Jesus Christ in Texas. In these the lyrical quality of the author’s prose is lifted to high levels. In these elegance does not slop over into turgid declamation and rhetorical claptrap—which has become a common fault of the author’s recent prose as shown in The Crisis. In this, the first part of the book, the work is genuine and its rhetoric rings true. Nevertheless, the sustained artistic swing of “The Souls of Black Folk,” which placed that work (as a matter of form and style) on the level of Edgar Saltus’Imperial Purple—this is not attained in “Darkwater.”
The book may be said to deal largely with the broad international aspects of the problem of the color line and its reactions on statecraft, welt-politik, international peace and international trade, industry, education and the brotherhood of man. Each chapter, or paper, is devoted to one of these reactions. Then there is a charming autobiographical paper, “The Shadow of Years,” which first appeared in The Crisis about three years ago, in which we have the study of a soul by itself. The growth of the author’s mind under the bewildering shadow cast by the color line is tragically set forth. I say tragically with deliberation; for what we see here, despite its fine disguise, is the smoldering resentment of a mulatto who finds the beckoning white doors of the world barred on his approach. One senses the thought that, if they had remained open, the gifted spirit would have entered and made his home within them.Mais, chacun a son gout, and no one has the right to quarrel with the author on that doubtful score.
In the chapter on “The Souls of White Folk” we have a fine piece, not so much of analysis, as of exposition. The author puts his best into it. And yet that best seems to have failed to bite with acid brutality into the essential iron of the white man’s soul. For the basic elements of that soul are Hypocrisy, Greed and Cruelty. True, the author brings this out; but he doesn’t burn it in. The indictment is presented in terms of an appeal to shocked sensibilities and a moral sense which exists, for the white man, only in print; whereas it might have been made in other terms which come nearer to his self-love. Nevertheless it is unanswerable in its logic.
In “The Hands of Ethiopia,” as in “The Souls of White Folk,” we catch the stern note of that threat which (disguise it as our journals will), the colored races are making, of an ultimate appeal in terms of color and race to the white man’s only God—the God of Armed Force. But the author never reaches the height of that newer thought—an international alliance of Black, Brown and Yellow against the arrogance of White.
In “Work and Wealth” and “The Servant in the House” the problems of work and its reward, and the tragedy of that reward, are grippingly set forth in relation to the Negro in America and in the civilized world. “The Ruling of Men” is followed by three papers of very inferior merit and the book ends with a fantastic short story, “The Comet” which, like “The Coming of John” in “The Souls of Black Folk,” suggests that Dr. Du Bois could be a compelling writer of this shorter form of fiction. The touch in this story of incident is light, but arresting.
Dr. Du Bois, in the looseness of phrase current in our time in America, is called a scholar—on what grounds we are not informed. But Dr. Du Bois is not a scholar; his claim to consideration rests upon a different basis, but one no less high. And when the Negro culture of the next century shall assay the products of our own it will seem remarkable that this supreme wizard of words, this splendid literary artist, should have left his own demesne to claim the crown of scholarship. Surely, there is honest credit enough in being what he is, our foremost man of culture. And this “Darkwater,” despite its lapses from artistic grace, helps to rivet his claim to that consideration. It is a book which will well repay reading.
By Lothrop Stoddard
About ten years ago Mr. B. L. Putnam Weale in “The Conflict of Color” tried to open the eyes of the white men of the world to the fact that they were acting as their own grave diggers. About the same time Mr. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press, in an address before the Quill Club on “Race Prejudice in the Far East” reinforced the same grisly truth. Five years later “T. Shirby Hodge” wrote “The White Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast,” and ended it with these pregnant words: “The white man’s burden is—himself.” His publishers practically suppressed his book, which, by the way, should have been in the library of every intelligent Negro. The white world was indisposed then to listen to its voices of warning. But today the physical, economic and racial ravages of the World War have so changed the white world’s mind that within four weeks of its appearance “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy,” by Lothrop Stoddard, has struck the bull’s-eye of attention and has already become the most widely talked-of book of the year. White men of power are discussing its facts and its conclusions with bated breath and considerable disquietude.
Here is a book written by a white man which causes white men to shiver. For it calls their attention to the writing on the wall. It proves that the white race in its mad struggle for dominion over others has been exhausting its vital resources and is exhausting them further. It proves to the hilt the thesis advanced in 1917 in my brief essay on “The White War and the Colored Races” that, whereas the white race was on top by virtue of its guns, ships, money, intellect and massed man-power, in the World War it was busy burning up, depleting and destroying these very resources on which its primacy depended. But even though the white capitalists knew all this their mad greed was still their master. This great race is still so low spiritually that it sells even its racial integrity for dollars and cents. Mr. Stoddard’s book may disturb its sense of security for a brief space, but it cannot keep white “civilization” from its mad dance of death. “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And the white race will finally find that this is even more true racially than individually.
We have noticed for many years that whereas domestic journalism was merely journalism—the passing register of parochial sensations—the journalism of the international publicists like Lord Bryce, Meredith Townsend, Archibald Colquhoon, Putnam Weale and Hyndman was something more solid than journalism. In the writings of these men hard fact and stark reality are wedded to wide reading and deep thinking. They are the real social scientists rather than the stay-at-home, cloistered sociologists who, presuming to know everything, have seen nothing. The present volume is one of the best of the former and is full of the qualities of its class. But at the very outset it suffers from the unwelcome assistance of Dr. Madison Grant, “chairman of the New York Zoological Society and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History.” Dr. Grant has accumulated a large stock of musty ethnological ideas of which he unburdens himself in what he evidently intends as a “learned” introduction, without which freightage the book would be much better. The difference in value and accuracy between Mr. Stoddard’s text and the pseudo-scientific introduction of Dr. Grant would furnish fair material for philosophic satire. Unfortunately we cannot indulge the inclination in the columns of a weekly newspaper.
Dr. Grant, in owlish innocence, splutters out the usual futile folly which (in other domains) has brought the white race to the frontiers of the present crisis. He reads back into history the racial values of today and trails the Anglo-Saxon’s crass conceit and arrogance across the pages of its record, finding “contrast of mental and spiritual endowments … elusive of definition,” and other racial clap-trap whose falsity has been demonstrated again and again by warm-hearted enthusiasts like Jean Finot and coldly critical and scientific scholars like Dr. Taylor (“Origin of the Aryans”), Sergi (“The Mediterranean Race”) and J. M. Robertson (“The Evolution of States”). But one can forgive Dr. Grant; he is a good American, and good Americans (especially “scientists” on race) are usually fifty years behind the English, who, in turn, are usually twenty years behind the Germans. Dr. Grant’s annexation of the past history of human culture to the swollen record of the whites sounds good—even if it smells bad. And he is in good Anglo-Saxon company. Sir Harry Johnston does the same thing and gets titles (scientific and other) by so doing. The Englishman takes the very Egyptians, Hindus and tribal Liberians, whom he would call “niggers” in New York and London, and as soon as he finds that they have done anything worth while he tags them with a “white” tag. Thus, to the professional “scientist” like Dr. Grant, living in the parochial atmosphere of the United States, science is something arcane, recondite and off the earth; while to the American like Mr. Stoddard, who has been broadened by travel and contact with the wider world, science, is, as it should be, organized daily knowledge and common sense. Thus journalists, good and bad, are the ones who form opinion in America, because “scientists” are so distressingly stupid.
Mr. Stoddard’s thesis starts from the proposition that of the seventeen hundred million people on our earth today the great majority is made up of black, brown, red and yellow people. The white race, being in the minority, still dominates over the lands of black, brown, red and (in the case of China) has assumed a right of dictatorship and disposal even in the yellow man’s lands. In the course of this dictatorship and domination the white race has erected the barrier of the color line to keep the other races in their place. But this barrier is cracking and giving way at many points and the flood of racial self-assertion, hitherto dammed up, threatens to overflow the outer and inner dikes and sweep away the domination of the whites.
The author approaches his theme with a curiously graduated respect for other races. This respect, while it is a novelty in the attitude of the blond overlords, is always in direct proportion to the present power and discernible potentialities of the races discussed. For the yellow man of Japan and China he shows the greatest deference. The browns (of India, Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Mohammedan world in general) are, of course, inferior, but must be respected for their militancy. The reds (the original American stock which is the backbone of the population of Mexico, Central and South America) are a source of contamination for white blood and an infernal nuisance, capable of uniting with Japan and China in an onslaught on the land areas reserved for white exploitation in the western world; while the blacks, at the foot of the ladder, have never amounted to anything, don’t amount to anything now, and can never seriously menace the superiority of the whites.
The gradation is full of meaning, especially to those fervid theorists who affect to believe that religion, morality, loyalty and good citizenship constitute a good claim to the white man’s respect. For it is Japan’s actual military might and China’s impending military might which have put them in Grade A, while the brown man’s show of resistance in Egypt, India and elsewhere under Islam, and his general physical unrest and active discontent have secured for him a classification in Grade B. The American in Mexico and South America keeps his window open toward the east; but the black man still seems, in our author’s eyes, to be the same loyal, gentle, stupid beast of burden that the white man’s history has known—except in those parts of Africa in which he has accepted the Mohammedan religion and thus become a part of the potential terror of the Moslem world. In this we think our author mistaken; but, after all, it is neither arguments nor logic that will determine these matters, but deeds and accomplishments.
But, however his racial respect may be apportioned, Mr. Stoddard holds that his race is doomed. “If the present drift be not changed we whites are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order the doom will sooner or later overtake us all.” The present reviewer stakes his money on “the doom,” for the white race’s disease is an ingrowing one whose development inheres in their very nature. They are so singularly constituted that they would rather tear themselves to pieces parading as the lords of creation than see any other people achieve an equal favor of fortune.
In the pages of this book the author presents many chastening truths and wide vistas of international politics which are enlightening when carefully studied. But it is not our intent to cover the entire field of his work, and we think that we have said enough to indicate the high value and suggestiveness of the work. But we may be allowed to point out that all the way through the author, though clear and enlightened, remains an unreconstructed Anglo-Saxon, desirous of opening the eyes of his race to the dangers which beset them through their racial injustice and arrogance; but sternly, resolutely, intent that they shall not share their overlordship with any other of the sons of earth. His book is written in a clear and commendable style; he shows but few defects of temper and a shrewd mastery of his materials. The book should be widely read by intelligent men of color from Tokio to Tallahassee. It is published by Charles Scribner’s Sons at $3, and is well worth the price.