CHAPTER VII.OUR INTERNATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS.[The ideas expressed in the title of this chapter were formulated as early as 1915 when I was in the unique position of being the black leader and lecturer of a white lecture forum, organized by white liberals, radicals and others at the old Lenox Casino, at 116th St. & Lenox Ave., New York City. What white people in general thought of the value of my services at this forum can be read in a letter written by a white southerner and appearing in the New York Globe of December 15, 1920. After the closing of this lecture forum the same explanation of the racial significance of the whole process of the war was expressed in other lectures given to white people at a lecture forum which I maintained in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. I make these explanations here because I value somewhat the point of priority in the face of Mr. Lothrop Stoddard’s remarkable book, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy” and the sweeping tide of racial consciousness which found expression subsequently in those Negro newspapers and magazines which have been called radical.]The White War and the Colored WorldThe newspapers which we read every day inform us that the world is at war. Searching the pages of the statisticians, we find that the world is made up of 17 hundred million people of which 12 hundred million are colored—black and brown and yellow. This vast majority is at peace and remains at peace until the white minority determines otherwise. The war in Europe is a war of the white race wherein the stakes of conflict are the titles to possession of the lands and destinies of this colored majority in Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea.There can be no doubt that the white race as it exists today, is the superior race of the world. And it is superior, not because it has better manners more religion or a higher culture; these things are metaphysical and subject to dispute. The white race rests its claim to superiority on the frankly materialistic ground that it has the guns, soldiers, the money and resources to keep it in the position of the top-dog and to make its will go. This is what white men mean by civilization, disguise it how they may. This struggle is a conflict of wills and interests among the various nations which make up the white race, to determine whose will shall be accepted as the collective will of the white race; to decide, at least for this century, who shall be the inheritors of the lands of Africa and Asia and dictators of the lives and destinies of their colored inhabitants.The peculiar feature of the conflict is that the white race in its fratricidal strife is burning up, eating up, consuming and destroying these very resources of ships, guns, men and money upon which its superiority is built. They are bent upon this form of self-destruction and nothing that we can say will stop them.As representatives of one of the races constituting the colored majority of the world, we deplore the agony and blood-shed; but we find consolation in the hope that when this white world shall have been washed clean by its baptism of blood, the white race will be less able to thrust the strong hand of its sovereign will down the throats of the other races. We look for a free India and an independent Egypt;for nationalities in Africa flying their own flags and dictating their own internal and foreign policies.This is what we understand by “making the world safe for democracy.” Anything less than this will fail to establish “peace on earth and good will toward men.” For the majority races cannot be eternally coerced into accepting the sovereignty of the white race. They are willing to live in a world which is the equal possession of all peoples—white, black, brown and yellow. If the white race is willing, they will live at peace with it. But if it insists that freedom, democracy and equality are to exist only for white men, then, there will be such bloodshed later as this world has never seen. And there is no certainty that in such a conflict the white race will come out on top. Not the destinies of the world, but the destinies of the white race are in the hands of the white race. —1917.U-Need-a BiscuitThere is one advertisement which appears in the magazines, on the streets and bill boards which has always seemed to us a masterly illustration of the principle of repetition. When going to work in the morning we look up from our daily newspaper and see the flaring sign which states that U-need-a Biscuit, we may ignore its appeal the first time, but as the days go by the constant insistence reaches our inner consciousness and we decide that perhaps after all we do need a biscuit. At any rate, whenever we have biscuits to buy it is natural that the biscuit which has been most persistently advertised should recur at once to our minds and that we should buy that particular biscuit.We beg to call the above apologue to the attention of the white people of this country who guide the ship of state either in the halls of Congress or through the columns of the white newspapers. They are seemingly at a loss to account for the new spirit which has come over the Negro people in the Western world. Some pretend to believe that it is Bolshevism—whatever that may be. Others tell us that it is the product of alien agitators, and yet others are coming to the front with the novel explanation that it springs from a desire to mingle our blood with that of the white people.Perhaps we are wasting our time in offering an explanation to the white men of this country. It has been proven again and again that the Anglo-Saxon is such a professional liar that with the plain truth before his eyes he will still profess to be seeing something else. Nevertheless we make the attempt because we believe that a double benefit may accrue to us thereby. Does any reader who lived through the years from 1914 to 1919 and is still living remember what “Democracy” was? It was the U-need-a Biscuit advertised by Messrs. Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and thousands of perspiring publicists, preachers and thinkers, who were on one side of a conflict then raging in Europe.Now, you cannot get men to go out and get killed by telling them plainly that you who are sending them want to get the other fellow’s land, trade and wealth, and you are too cowardly or too intelligent to go yourself and risk getting shot over the acquisition. That would never do. So you whoop it up with any catchword which will serve as sufficient bait for the silly fools whom you keep silly in order that you may always use them in this way. “Democracy” was such a catch-word, and the honorable gentlemen to whom we referred above advertised it for all it was worth—to them. But, just as we prophesied in 1915, there was an unavoidable flare-back. When you advertise U-need-a Biscuit incessantly people will want it; and when you advertise democracy incessantly the people to whom you trumpet forth its deliciousness are likely to believe you, take you at your word, and, later on, demand that you make good and furnish them with the article for which you yourself have created the appetite.Now, we Negroes, Egyptians and Hindus, under the pressure of democracy’s commercial drummers, have developed a democratic complex which in its turbulent insistence is apt to trouble the firms for whom these drummers drummed. Because they haven’t any of the goods which they advertised in the first place, and, in the second place, they haven’t the slightest intention of passing any of it on—even if they had.So, gentlemen, when you read of the Mullah, of Said Zagloul Pasha and Marcus Garvey or Casely Hayford; when you hear of Egyptian and Indian nationalist uprisings, of Black Star Lines and West Indian “seditions”—kindly remember (because we know) that these fruits spring from the seeds of your own sowing. You have said to us “U need a biscuit,” and, after long listening to you, we have replied, “We do!” Perhaps next time—if there is a next time—you will think twice before you furnish to “inferior” peoples such a stick as “democracy” has proved for the bludgeoning of your heads. In any case your work has been too well done for even you to obliterate it. The Negro of the Western world can truthfully say to the white man and the Anglo-Saxon in particular, “You made me what I am today, I hope you’re satisfied.” And if the white man isn’t satisfied—well, we should worry. That’s all. —July, 1920.Our Larger DutyThe problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the Color Line. But what is the Color Line? It is the practice of the theory that the colored and “weaker” races of the earth shall not be free to follow “their own way of life and of allegiance,” but shall live, work and be governed after such fashion as the dominant white race may decide. Consider for a moment the full meaning of this fact. Of the seventeen hundred million people that dwell on our earth today more than twelve hundred million are colored—black and brown and yellow. The so-called white race is, of course, the superior race. That is to say, it is on top by virtue of its control of the physical force of the worldships, guns, soldiers, money and other resources. By virtue of this control England rules and robs India, Egypt, Africa and the West Indies; by virtue of this control we of the United States can tell Haytians, Hawaiians and Filipinos how much they shall get for their labor and what shall be done in their lands; by virtue of this control Belgium can still say to the Congolese whether they shall have their hands hacked off or their eyes gouged out—and all without any reference to what Africans, Asiatics or other inferior members of the world’s majority may want.It is thus clear that, as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race must be simply downright lying. The cant of “Democracy” is intended as dust in the eyes of white voters, incense on the altar of their own self-love. It furnishes bait for the clever statesmen who hold the destinies of their people in their hands when they go fishing for suckers in the waters of public discussion. But it becomes more and more apparent that Hindus, Egyptians, Africans, Chinese and Haytians have taken the measure of this cant and hypocrisy. And, whatever the white world may think, it will have these peoples to deal with during this twentieth century.In dealing with them in the past it has been considered sufficient that the white man should listen to his own voice alone in determining what colored peoples should have; and he has, therefore, been trying perpetually to “solve” the problems arising from his own assumption of the role of God. The first and still the simplest method was to kill them off, either by slaughter pure and simple, as in the case of the American Indians and the Congo natives, or by forcibly changing their mode of life, as was done by those pious prudes who killed off the Tasmanians; or by importing among them rum, gin, whiskey and consumption, as has been attempted in the case of the Negroes of Africa and North America. But, unlike the red Indians and Tasmanians, most of these subject peoples have refused to be killed off. Their vitality is too strong.The second method divides itself into internal and external treatment. The internal treatment consists in making them work, to develop the resources of their ancestral lands, not for themselves, but for their white overlords, so that the national and imperial coffers may be filled to overflowing, while the Hindu ryot, on six cents a day, lives down to the level of the imperialist formula:“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kin do;He never achesFor chops and steaksAnd for clothes he makes his skin do.”The external treatment consists of girdling them with forts and battleships and holding armies in readiness to fly at their throats upon the least sign of “uppishness” or “impudence.”Now, this similarity of suffering on the part of colored folk has given, and is giving, rise to a certain similarity of sentiment. Egypt has produced the Young Egypt movement; India, the Swadesha, the All-India Congress, and the present revolutionary movement which has lit the fuse of the powder-keg on which Britain sits in India today; Africa has her Ethiopian Movement which ranges from the Zulus and Hottentots of the Cape to the Ekoi of Nigeria; in short, the darker races, chafing under the domination of the alien whites, are everywhere showing a disposition to take Democracy at its word and to win some measure of it for themselves.What part in this great drama of the future are the Negroes of the Western world to play? The answer is on the knees of the gods, who often make hash of the predictions of men. But it is safe to say that, before the Negroes of the Western world can play any effective part they must first acquaint themselves with what is taking place in that larger world whose millions are in motion. They must keep well informed of the trend of that motion and of its range and possibilities. If our problem here is really a part of a great world-wide problem, we must make our attempts to solve our part link up with the attempts being made elsewhere to solve the other parts. So will we profit by a wider experience and perhaps be able to lend some assistance to that ancient Mother Land of ours to whom we may fittingly apply the words of Milton:“Methinks I see in my mind a mighty and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her like an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full noon-day beam; methinks I see her scaling and improving her sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds—with them also that love the twilight—hover around, amazed at what she means, and in their useless gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.” —The New Negro, August, 1919.Help Wanted for HaytiWhile we were at war our President declared, over and over again, that we were calling upon the flower of our manhood to go to France and make itself into manure in order that the world might be made safe for democracy. Today the deluded people of the earth realize that the accent is on the “moc(k).” Ireland, India and Egypt are living proofs that the world has been lied to. We need not bite our tongues about it. Those who told us that the world would be made safe for democracy have lied to us. All over the world men and women are finding out that when an American President, a British Premier or a French “tiger” speaks of “the world,” he does not include the black and brow: and yellow millions, who make up the vast majority of the earth’s population. And now the sheeted ghost of a black republic rises above the tomb where its bones lie buried and points its silent but accusing finger at American democracy. What can we answer in the case of Hayti? British India and Ireland, Turkish Armenia or Russian Poland have never presented such ruthless savagery as has been let loose in Hayti in a private war for which President Wilson has never had the consent of Congress. The white daily papers speak complacently of the repulse of “bandits.” What is this but a developing disease of the American conscience, to put the blinkers of a catchword over the eyes of the spirit?The people of Hayti are being shot, sabred and bombed, while resisting an illegal invasion of their homes, and, if public decency is not dead in America white and black men and women will insist that Congress investigate this American Ireland.When Ireland feels the pressure of the English heel, the Irish in America make their voices heard and help to line up American public opinion on their side. When Paderewski’s government massacres Jews in Poland, the Jews of America raise money, organize committees, put the U. S. Government on the job—and get results. But when Negroes are massacred—not in Africa, but in Hayti, under American control—what do we American Negroes do? So far, nothing. But that inaction will not last. Negroes must write their Congressmen and Senators concerning the atrocity perpetrated at Port au Prince last week. They should organize committees to go before Congress and put the pitiful facts, demanding investigation, redress and punishment.For as long as such things can be done without effective protest or redress, black people every where will refuse to believe that the democracy advertised by lying white politicians can be anything but a ghastly joke.The Cracker in the Caribbean“Meanwhile the feet of civilized slayers have woven across the fair face of the earth a crimson mesh of murder and rapine. The smoke of blazing villages ascends in lurid holocaust to the bloody god of battles from the altar of human hate in the obscene temple of race prejudice.”These words, which we wrote in 1912, come back to our mind eight years later with no abatement of the awful horror which they express. And what gives a special point to them at this moment is the bloody rape of the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo which is being perpetrated by the bayonets of American sailors and marines, with the silent and shameful acquiescence of 12,000,000 American Negroes too cowardly to lift a voice in effective protest or too ignorant of political affairs to know what is taking place. What boots it that we strike heroic attitudes and talk grandiloquently of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands when we Africans of the dispersion can let the land of L’Ouverture lie like a fallen flower beneath the feet of swine?The facts of the present situation in that hapless land are given in the current issue ofThe Nation(a white American weekly). Taken together with the accounts which we have printed from time to time, it tells a tale of shuddering horror in comparison with which the Putumayo pales into insignificance and the Congo atrocities of Belgium are tame. The two West Indian republics have been murderously assaulted; their citizens have been shot down by armed ruffians, bombed by aeroplanes, hunted into concentration camps and there starved to death. In their own land their civil liberties have been taken away, their governments have been blackjacked and their property stolen. And all this by the “cracker” statesmanship of “the South,” without one word of protest from that defunct department, the Congress of the United States!The Constitution of the United States says that the power to declare war shall belong exclusively to the Congress of the United States. But the Congress of the United States has been shamelessly ignored. In furtherance of the God-given “cracker” mandate to “keep the nigger in his place,” a mere Secretary of the Navy has assumed over the head of Congress the right to conquer and annex two nations and to establish on their shores the “cracker-democracy” of his native Carolina slave-runs.It is high time that the Negro people of the United States call the hand of Josephus Daniels by appealing to the Legislature of the United States to resume its political functions, investigate this high-handed outrage and impeach the Secretary of the Navy of high crimes and misdemeanors against the peace and good name of the United States. The ordinary excuse of cowards will not obtain in this case. We would not be violating any law—wartime or other—but, on the contrary, we should be striving to put an end to a flagrant violation of the Constitution itself on the part of a high officer, who took an oath to maintain, support and defend it. This is our right and our duty. Irishmen, on behalf of Ireland, sell the bonds of an Irish loan to free Ireland from the tyranny of Britain—with whom we are on friendly terms—on the very steps of New York’s City Hall, while we black people are not manly enough to get up even a petition on behalf of our brothers in Hayti.Out upon such crawling cowardice! Rouse, ye slaves, and show that the spirit of liberty is not quite dead among you! You who elected “delegates” to go to a Peace Conference to which you had neither passport nor invitation, on behalf of bleeding Africa, get together and present a monster petition to the American Congress, over which you have some control. Remember that George the Third engaged in a contest with these colonies because he had trouble at home. He could not defeat the Pitts, Burkes and Foxes at home, and wanted to win prestige from the colonials. Had he succeeded in setting his foot on their necks he would have returned home with increased prestige and power to bend the free spirits ofEngland to his will. Pitt knew this, and so did Fox and Burke. That is why they took the side of their distant cousins against the British king. And the British liberals of today thank their memories for it. If the “crackers” of the South can fasten their yoke on the necks of our brothers overseas, then God help us Negroes in America in the years to come!If we were now appealing directly to the white men of America we might dwell upon the moral aspects of the question. But we must leave that to others. Yet we cannot do so without recalling the words of a great poet:“But man, proud man,Drest in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence—like an angry ape,Plays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs make the angels weep.”And we draw some slight consolation from the fact that, even if he should escape impeachment, Josephus Daniels must surrender up his “brief authority” in another twelvemonth.But we who are still free in a measure must not wait twelve months to act. We could not do that and preserve our racial self-respect. For—“Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frameThrough its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.”When Might Makes RightA correspondent whose letter appears elsewhere raises the question of the relation between mental competence and property rights. “Does inability to govern destroy title to ownership?” he asks. The white race assumes an affirmative answer in every case in which the national property of darker and weaker races are concerned and deny it in cases in which their own national property interests are involved. It seems strange that whereas the disturbances occurring in our own southern states are never considered sufficient to justify the destruction of their sovereignty, on the other hand, such disturbances occurring in Hayti or Mexico are considered a sufficient reason for invasion and conquest by white Americans. The same is true of England, France and Italy. A disturbance in Alexandria, Delhi, Ashanti or the Cameroons suffices to fix upon those territories and cities the badge of inferiority and incompetence to rule themselves. The conclusion is always drawn in such cases that the white race has been called by this fortunate combination of circumstances to do the ruling for them. But similar disturbances occurring in Wales, Essen or Marseilles would never be considered as sufficient to justify the dictatorship of foreign powers in the interest of “law and order.”The truth is that “might makes right” in all these cases. White statesmen, however, often deny this at the very moment when they are using “force without stint, force to the utmost” to establish “rights” which they claim over territories, peoples, commerce and the high seas. Their characteristic hypocrisy keeps them from telling the truth as plainly as Von Bernhardi did in his now famous book, “Germany and the Next War.” The “sociological” reason for this hypocrisy is the fact that they need to preach “goodness,” “right” and “justice” to those over whom they rule in order that their ruling may be made easy by the consequent good behavior of the ruled. But they themselves, however good, must practice ruthlessness, injustice and the rule of the strong hand to make their governance go. It is this fact which causes intelligent Negroes, Filipinos, Chinese and Egyptians to spurn with contempt the claims which Caucasian diplomats, statesmen, writers and missionaries make on behalf of their moral superiority. They lie; they know that they lie, and now they’re beginning to know that we know it also. This knowledge on our part is a loss of prestige for them, and our actions in the future, based upon this knowledge, must needs mean a loss of power for them. Which is, after all, the essential fact.Bolshevism in BarbadosAmong the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the name of theBarbados Standard. From time to time this faded creature gets worried about the signs of awakening observable in those Negroes who happen to be living in the twentieth century. Then she shakes and shivers, throws a few fits, froths at the mouth, and, spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is “Bolshevism among Negroes.”Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered evidences of a Bolshevist R–r–r–revolution in Trinidad, and, presumptively, all over the British West Indies. Now the specter which these fools fear is nothing but the shadow cast by the dark body of their own system of stiff-necked pride, stark stupidity and stubborn injustice whenever the sun of civic righteousness rises above the horizon of sloth and ignorance. But, like fools afraid of their own shadows, they point at the thing for which they alone are responsible and shriek for salvation.We shouldn’t care to suggest to them that to lie down and die would be one good way to avoid these fearful shadows, because we see the possibility of another way. Let them resolve that they will cease making a lie of every promise of liberty, democracy and self-determination that they frantically made from 1914 to 1919. Let the white Englishman learn that justice exists not only for white Englishmen, but for all men. Let him get off the black man’s back, stand out of the black man’s light, play the game as it should be played, and he will find very little need for wasting tons of print paper and thousands of pounds in a crusade against the specter of Bolshevism.A New InternationalIn the eyes of our overlords internationalism is a thing of varying value. When Mr. Morgan wants to float a French or British loan in the United States; when Messrs. Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando want to stabilize their joint credit and commerce; when areas like the Belgian Congo are to be handed over to certain rulers without the consent of their inhabitants—then the pæans of praise go up to the god of “internationalism” in the temple of “civilization.” But when any portion of the world’s disinherited (whether white or black) seeks to join hands with other groups in the same condition, then the lords of misrule denounce the idea of internationalism as anarchy, sedition, Bolshevism and disruptive propaganda.Why the difference? It is because the international linking up of peoples is a source of strength to those who are linked up. Naturally, the overlords want to strengthen themselves. And, quite as naturally, they wish to keep their subject masses from strengthening themselves in the same way. Today the great world-majority, made up of black, brown and yellow peoples, are stretching out their hands to each other and developing a “consciousness of kind”—as Professor Giddings would call it. They are seeking to establish their own centers of diffusion for their own internationalism, and this fact is giving nightmares to Downing street, the Quai d’Orsay and other centers of white capitalist internationalism.The object of the capitalist international is to unify and standardize the exploitation of black, brown and yellow peoples in such a way that the danger to the exploiting groups of cutting each other’s throats over the spoils may be reduced to a minimum. Hence the various agreements, mandates and spheres of influence. Hence the League of Nations, which is notoriously not a league of the white masses, but of their gold-braided governors. Faced by such a tendency on the part of those who bear the white man’s burden for what they can get out of it, the darker peoples of the world have begun to realize that their first duty is to themselves. A similarity of suffering is producing in them a similarity of sentiment, and the temper of that sentiment is not to be mistaken.To the white statesmen “civilization” is identical with their own overlordship, with their right and power to dictate to the darker millions what their way of life and of allegiance shall be. To this the aroused sentiment of the world’s darker majority demurs. They want to be as free as England, America or France. They do not wish to be “wards of the nations” of Europe any longer. And the problem for the white statesmen of the future will be to square democracy with the subjection of this dark majority. Can they achieve either horn of this dilemma? Can they effect a junction of the two?Frankly, we doubt it. Continued suppression may be fraught with consequences disastrous to white overlordship. In any case the tendency toward an international of the darker races cannot be set back. Increasing enlightenment, the spread of technical science, and the recently acquired knowledge of the weak points of white “civilization” gained by the darker peoples during the recent World War, are enough to negative such a supposition. The darker peoples will strive increasingly for their share of sunlight, and if this is what white “civilization” opposes, then white “civilization” is likely to have a hard time of it.The Rising Tide of ColorMr. William Randolph Hearst, the ablest white publicist in America, has broken loose, and, in a recent editorial in the New YorkAmerican, has absolutely endorsed every word of the warning recently issued by Lothrop Stoddard in his book, “The Rising Tide of Color.” In justice to Mr. Hearst, it must be pointed out (as we ourselves did in 1916) that he saw this handwriting on the wall long ago. Mr. Hearst is not particularly famous as a friend of the darker races; but one must give him credit for having seen what was involved in the war between the white nations of Europe and America. As far back as 1915, the present writer was engaged in pointing out to white people that the racial aspect of the war in Europe was easily the most important, despite the fact that no American paper, not even Mr. Hearst’s, would present that side of the matter for the consideration of its readers. Now, however, they are beginning to wake up—as people generally do when disaster is upon them—frantically with much screaming and flapping of arms. But, in such cases, the doom approaching is but the ripened result of deeds that have been done, and is, therefore, absolutely inescapable.The white race has lied and strutted its way to greatness and prominence over the corpses of other peoples. It has capitalized, christianized, and made respectable, “scientific,” and “natural,” the fact of its dominion. It has read back into history the race relations of today, striving to make the point that previous to its advent on the stage of human history, there was no civilization or culture worthy of the name. And with minatory finger it admonishes us that if it were to pass off the stage as the controlling factor in the World’s destiny, there would be no civilization or culture remaining. Naturally, we take exception to both these views, because, for the past, we know better and, for the future, we think better of the many peoples who make up the cycle of civilization.But these conditions are not the gravest at present. The fact of most tremendous import is that the white race in trying to settle its own quarrels has called in black, brown and yellow to do its fighting for it, with the result that black, brown and yellow will learn thereby how to fight for themselves, even against those whom they were called in to assist. The white race cannot escape from its dilemma, however. If it were to decree hereafter that wars between whites should be restricted to whites alone, then we should be given the poignant spectacle of the white race continuing to cut its own throat while the increasing masses of black, brown and yellow remained unaffected by that process, “It is to laugh,” as the cynical gods would say. Or, to use a trite Americanism, it is, “heads I win, tails you lose.” It is thumbs down for the white race in the world’s arena, and they are to be the dealers of their own death blow. Such are the consequences of conquest!The analogies between the present situation of the white race and the situation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century of the Christian era are too many and striking to be easily ignored. Now, as then, we have “barbarians” and “super-men.” Now, as then, the super-men are such in their own estimation. Now, as then, they have, as they fondly think, a monopoly of the money power, brain power and political power of the world. Now, as then, the necessities of their own selfishness and greed, constrain and compel them to share their education and their culture with the races whom they exploit. Now, as then, in the crisis of their fortunes, they must utilize the knowledge and abilities of these barbarian folk, and now, as then, this exercising of abilities on behalf of the overlord develops abilities and ambition at an equal rate; and, having given the barbarian tiger its first taste of blood, the unleashed results can not now be restrained.In the Roman days, as in the days of Charlemagne’s successors, those who hold the balances generally also wield the sword; and iftheirblood and sand determine which among the rulers shall get the prizes of victory, then these same qualities must needs urge them to take from such victors-by-proxy so much of the fruits of victory as their own needs may suggest or their own power maintain. Truly “they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.”The White War and the Colored Races[The following article was written in 1918 when the Great War still raged. It was written for a certain well known radical magazine; but was found to be “too radical” for publication at that time. It is given now to the Negro public partly because the underlying explanation which it offers of the root-cause of the war has not yet received treatment (even among socialistic radicals) and partly because recent events in China, India, Africa and the United States have proved the accuracy of its forecasts.]The Nineteenth Christian Century saw the international expansion of capitalism—the economic system of the white peoples of Western Europe and America-and its establishment by force and fraud over the lands of the colored races, black and brown and yellow. The opening years of the Twentieth Century present us with the sorry spectacle of these same white nations cutting each other’s throats to determine which of them shall enjoy the property which has been acquired. For this is the real sum and substance of the original “war aims” of the belligerents; although in conformity with Christian cunning, this is one which is never frankly avowed. Instead, we are fed with the information that they are fighting for “Kultur” and “on behalf of small nationalities.” Let us look carefully at this camouflage.The Sham of “Democracy”In the first place, we in America need not leave our own land to seek reasons for suspecting the sincerity of democratic professions. While we are waging war to establish democracy three thousand miles away, millions of Negroes are disfranchised in our own land by the “cracker” democracies of the Southern States which are more intent upon making slaves of their black fellow-citizens than upon rescuing the French and Belgians from the similar brutalities of the German Junkers. The horrible holocaust of East St. Louis was possible only in three modern States—Russia of the Romanoffs, Turkey and the United States—and it ill becomes any one of them to point a critical finger at the others.But East St. Louis was simply the climax of a long series of butcheries perpetrated on defenseless Negroes which has made the murder rate of Christian America higher than that of heathen Africa and of every other civilized land. And, although our government can order the execution of thirteen Negro soldiers for resenting the wholesale insults to the uniform of the United States and defending their lives from civilian aggressors, not one of the murderers of black men, women and children has been executed or even ferreted out. Nor has our war Congress seen fit as yet to make lynching a Federal crime. What wonder that the Negro masses are insisting that before they can be expected to enthuse over the vague formula of making the world “safe for democracy” they must receive some assurance that their corner of the world—the South—shall first be made “safe for democracy!” Who knows but that perhaps the situation and treatment of the American Negro by our own government and people may have kept the Central Powers from believing that we meant to fight for democracy in Europe, and caused them to persist in a course which has driven us into this war in which we must spend billions of treasure and rivers of blood.It should seem, then, that “democracy,” like “Kultur,” is more valuable as a battle-cry than as a real belief to be practised by those who profess it. And the plea of “small nationalities” is estopped by three facts: Ireland, Greece and Egypt, whose Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, was tumbled off his throne for failing to enthuse over the claims of “civilization” as expounded by Lord Grey.Sir Harry Johnston SpeaksBut this is merely disproof. The average American citizen needs some positive proof of the assertion that this war is being waged to determine who shall dictate the destinies of the darker peoples and enjoy the usufruct of their labor and their lands. For the average American citizen is blandly ignorant of the major facts of history and has to be told. For his benefit I present the following statement from Sir Harry Johnston, in “The Sphere” of London. Sir Harry Johnston is the foremost English authority on Africa and is in a position to know something of imperial aims.“Rightly governed, I venture to predict that Africa will, if we are victorious, repay us and all our allies the cost of our struggle with Germany and Austria. The war, deny it who may, was really fought over African questions. The Germans wished, as the chief gain of victory, to wrest rich Morocco from French control, to take the French Congo from France, and the Portuguese Congo from Portugal, to secure from Belgium the richest and most extensive tract of alluvial goldfield as yet discovered. This is an auriferous region which, properly developed, will, when war is over, repay the hardest hit of our allies (France) all that she has lost from the German devastation of her home lands. The mineral wealth of trans-Zambezian Africa—freed forever, we will hope, from the German menacemis gigantic; only slightly exploited so far. Wealth is hidden amid the seemingly unprofitable deserts of the Sahara, Nubia, Somaliland and Namaqua. Africa, I predict, will eventually show itself to be the most richly endowed of all the continents in valuable vegetable and mineral substances.”There is the sum and substance of what Schopenhauer would have called “the sufficient reason” for this war. No word of “democracy” there, but instead the easy assumption that, as a matter of course, the lands of black Africa belong to white Europe and must be apportioned on the good old principle:—“… the simple plan,That he shall take who has the power,And he must keep who can.”The Economics of WarIt is the same economic motive that has been back of every modern war since the merchant and trading classes secured control of the powers of the modern state from the battle of Plassy to the present world war. This is the natural and inevitable effect of the capitalist system, of what (for want of a worse name) we call “Christendom.” For that system is based upon the wage relationship between those who own and those who operate the gigantic forces of land and machinery. Under this system no capitalist employs a worker for two dollars a day unless that worker creates more than two dollars’ worth of wealth for him. Only out of this surplus can profits come. If ten million workers should thus create one hundred million dollars’ worth of wealth each day and get twenty or fifty millions in wages, it is obvious that they can expend only what they have received, and that, therefore, every nation whose industrial system is organized on a capitalist basis must produce a mass of surplus products over and above, not the need, but the purchasing power of the nation’s producers. Before these products can return to their owners as profits they must be sold somewhere. Hence the need for foreign markets, for fields of exploitation and “spheres of influence” in “undeveloped” countries whose virgin resources are exploited in their turn after the capitalist fashion. But, since every industrial nation is seeking the same outlet for its products, clashes are inevitable and in these clashes beaks and claws—armies and navies—must come into play. Hence beaks and claws must be provided beforehand against the day of conflict, and hence the exploitation of white men in Europe and America becomes the reason for the exploitation of black and brown and yellow men in Africa and Asia. And, therefore, it is hypocritical and absurd to pretend that the capitalist nations can ever intend to abolish wars. For, as long as black men are exploited by white men in Africa, so long must white men cut each other’s throats over that exploitation. And thus, the selfish and ignorant white worker’s destiny is determined by the hundreds of millions of those whom he calls “niggers.” “The strong too often think that they have a mortgage upon the weak; but in the domain of morals it is the other way.”The Color LineBut economic motives have always their social side; and this exploitation of the lands and labor of colored folk expresses itself in the social theory of white domination; the theory that the worst human stocks of Montmartre, Seven Dials and the Bowery are superior to the best human stocks of Rajputana or Khartoum. And when these colored folk who make up the overwhelming majority of this world demand decent treatment for themselves, the proponents of this theory accuse them of seeking social equality. For white folk to insist upon the right to manage their own ancestral lands, free from the domination of tyrants, domestic and foreign, is variously described as “democracy” and “self-determination.” For Negroes, Egyptians and Hindus to seek the same thing is impudence. What wonder, then, that the white man’s rule is felt by them to rest upon a seething volcano whose slumbering fires are made up of the hundreds of millions of Chinese, Japanese, Hindus and Africans! Truly has it been said that “the problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the Color Line.” And wars are not likely to end; in fact, they are likely to be wider and more terrible—so long as this theory of white domination seeks to hold down the majority of the world’s people under the iron heel of racial repression.Of course, no sane person will deny that the white race is, at present, the superior race of the world. I use the word “superior” in no cloudy, metaphysical sense, but simply to mean that they are on top and their will goes—at present. Consider this fact as the pivotal fact of the war. Then, in the light of it, consider what is happening in Europe today. The white race is superior—its will goes—because it has invented and amassed greater means for the subjugation of nature and of man than any other race. It is the top dog by virtue of its soldiers, guns, ships, money, resources and brains. Yet there in Europe it is deliberately burning up, consuming and destroying these very soldiers, guns, ships, money, resources and brains, the very things upon which its supremacy rests. When this war is over, it will be less able to enforce its sovereign will upon the darker races of the world. Does any one believe that it will be as easy to hold down Egypt and India and Persia after the war as it was before? Hardly.The Racial Results of the WarNot only will the white race be depleted in numbers, but its quality, physical and mental, will be considerably lowered for a time. War destroys first the strongest and bravest, the best stocks, the young men who were to father the next generation, The next generation must, consequently, be fathered by the weaker stocks of the race. And thus, in physical stamina and in brain-power, they will be less equal to the task of holding down the darker millions of the world than their fathers were. This was the thought back of Mr. Hearst’s objection to our entering the war.He wanted the United States to stand as the white race’s reserve of man-power when Europe had been bled white. But what will be the effect of all this upon that colored majority whose preponderant existence our newspapers ignore? In the first place, it will feel the lifting of the pressure as the iron hand of “discipline” is relaxed. And it will expand, when that pressure is removed, to the point where it will first ask, then demand, and finally secure, the right of self-determination. It will insist that, not only the white world, but the whole world, be made “safe for democracy.” This will mean a self-governing Egypt, a self-governing India, and independent African states as large as Germany and France—and larger. And, as a result, there will come a shifting of the basis of international politics and business and of international control. This is the living thought that comes to me from the newspapers and books that have been written and published by colored men in Africa and Asia during the past three years. It is what I have heard from their own lips as I have talked with them. And, yet, of this thought which is inflaming the international underworld, not a word appears in the parochial press of America, which seems to think that if it can keep its own Negroes down to servile lip-service, it need not face the world-wide problem of the “Conflict of Color,” as Mr. Putnam-Weale calls it.But that the more intelligent portions of the white world are becoming distressingly conscious of it, is evident from the first great manifesto of the Russian Bolsheviki last year when they asked about Britain’s subject peoples.And the British workingmen have evidently done some thinking in their turn. In their latest declarations they seem to see the ultimate necessity of compelling their own aristocrats to forego such imperial aspirations as that of Sir Harry Johnston, and of extending the principle of self-determination even to the black people of Africa. But eyes which have for centuries been behind the blinkers of race prejudice cannot but blink and water when compelled to face the full sunlight. And Britain’s workers insist that “No one will maintain that the Africans are fit for self-government.” And on the same principle (of excluding the opinion of those who are most vitally concerned) Britain’s ruling class may tell them that “No one maintains that the laboring classes of Britain are fit for self-government.” But their half-hearted demand that an international committee shall take over the British, German, French and Portuguese possessions in Africa and manage them as independent nationalities(?) until they can “go it alone,” would suggest that their eyesight is improving.To sum it all up, the war in Europe is the result of the desire of the white governments of Europe to exploit for their own benefit the lands and labor of the darker races, and, as the war continues, it must decrease the white man’s stock of ability to do this successfully against the wishes of the inhabitants of those lands. This will result in their freedom from thralldom and the extension of political, social, and industrial democracy to the twelve hundred million black and brown and yellow peoples of the world. This, I take it, is what President Wilson had in mind when he wished to make the world “safe for democracy.” But, whether I am mistaken or not, it is the idea which dominates today the thought of those darker millions.
[The ideas expressed in the title of this chapter were formulated as early as 1915 when I was in the unique position of being the black leader and lecturer of a white lecture forum, organized by white liberals, radicals and others at the old Lenox Casino, at 116th St. & Lenox Ave., New York City. What white people in general thought of the value of my services at this forum can be read in a letter written by a white southerner and appearing in the New York Globe of December 15, 1920. After the closing of this lecture forum the same explanation of the racial significance of the whole process of the war was expressed in other lectures given to white people at a lecture forum which I maintained in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. I make these explanations here because I value somewhat the point of priority in the face of Mr. Lothrop Stoddard’s remarkable book, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy” and the sweeping tide of racial consciousness which found expression subsequently in those Negro newspapers and magazines which have been called radical.]
The newspapers which we read every day inform us that the world is at war. Searching the pages of the statisticians, we find that the world is made up of 17 hundred million people of which 12 hundred million are colored—black and brown and yellow. This vast majority is at peace and remains at peace until the white minority determines otherwise. The war in Europe is a war of the white race wherein the stakes of conflict are the titles to possession of the lands and destinies of this colored majority in Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea.
There can be no doubt that the white race as it exists today, is the superior race of the world. And it is superior, not because it has better manners more religion or a higher culture; these things are metaphysical and subject to dispute. The white race rests its claim to superiority on the frankly materialistic ground that it has the guns, soldiers, the money and resources to keep it in the position of the top-dog and to make its will go. This is what white men mean by civilization, disguise it how they may. This struggle is a conflict of wills and interests among the various nations which make up the white race, to determine whose will shall be accepted as the collective will of the white race; to decide, at least for this century, who shall be the inheritors of the lands of Africa and Asia and dictators of the lives and destinies of their colored inhabitants.
The peculiar feature of the conflict is that the white race in its fratricidal strife is burning up, eating up, consuming and destroying these very resources of ships, guns, men and money upon which its superiority is built. They are bent upon this form of self-destruction and nothing that we can say will stop them.
As representatives of one of the races constituting the colored majority of the world, we deplore the agony and blood-shed; but we find consolation in the hope that when this white world shall have been washed clean by its baptism of blood, the white race will be less able to thrust the strong hand of its sovereign will down the throats of the other races. We look for a free India and an independent Egypt;for nationalities in Africa flying their own flags and dictating their own internal and foreign policies.This is what we understand by “making the world safe for democracy.” Anything less than this will fail to establish “peace on earth and good will toward men.” For the majority races cannot be eternally coerced into accepting the sovereignty of the white race. They are willing to live in a world which is the equal possession of all peoples—white, black, brown and yellow. If the white race is willing, they will live at peace with it. But if it insists that freedom, democracy and equality are to exist only for white men, then, there will be such bloodshed later as this world has never seen. And there is no certainty that in such a conflict the white race will come out on top. Not the destinies of the world, but the destinies of the white race are in the hands of the white race. —1917.
There is one advertisement which appears in the magazines, on the streets and bill boards which has always seemed to us a masterly illustration of the principle of repetition. When going to work in the morning we look up from our daily newspaper and see the flaring sign which states that U-need-a Biscuit, we may ignore its appeal the first time, but as the days go by the constant insistence reaches our inner consciousness and we decide that perhaps after all we do need a biscuit. At any rate, whenever we have biscuits to buy it is natural that the biscuit which has been most persistently advertised should recur at once to our minds and that we should buy that particular biscuit.
We beg to call the above apologue to the attention of the white people of this country who guide the ship of state either in the halls of Congress or through the columns of the white newspapers. They are seemingly at a loss to account for the new spirit which has come over the Negro people in the Western world. Some pretend to believe that it is Bolshevism—whatever that may be. Others tell us that it is the product of alien agitators, and yet others are coming to the front with the novel explanation that it springs from a desire to mingle our blood with that of the white people.
Perhaps we are wasting our time in offering an explanation to the white men of this country. It has been proven again and again that the Anglo-Saxon is such a professional liar that with the plain truth before his eyes he will still profess to be seeing something else. Nevertheless we make the attempt because we believe that a double benefit may accrue to us thereby. Does any reader who lived through the years from 1914 to 1919 and is still living remember what “Democracy” was? It was the U-need-a Biscuit advertised by Messrs. Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and thousands of perspiring publicists, preachers and thinkers, who were on one side of a conflict then raging in Europe.
Now, you cannot get men to go out and get killed by telling them plainly that you who are sending them want to get the other fellow’s land, trade and wealth, and you are too cowardly or too intelligent to go yourself and risk getting shot over the acquisition. That would never do. So you whoop it up with any catchword which will serve as sufficient bait for the silly fools whom you keep silly in order that you may always use them in this way. “Democracy” was such a catch-word, and the honorable gentlemen to whom we referred above advertised it for all it was worth—to them. But, just as we prophesied in 1915, there was an unavoidable flare-back. When you advertise U-need-a Biscuit incessantly people will want it; and when you advertise democracy incessantly the people to whom you trumpet forth its deliciousness are likely to believe you, take you at your word, and, later on, demand that you make good and furnish them with the article for which you yourself have created the appetite.
Now, we Negroes, Egyptians and Hindus, under the pressure of democracy’s commercial drummers, have developed a democratic complex which in its turbulent insistence is apt to trouble the firms for whom these drummers drummed. Because they haven’t any of the goods which they advertised in the first place, and, in the second place, they haven’t the slightest intention of passing any of it on—even if they had.
So, gentlemen, when you read of the Mullah, of Said Zagloul Pasha and Marcus Garvey or Casely Hayford; when you hear of Egyptian and Indian nationalist uprisings, of Black Star Lines and West Indian “seditions”—kindly remember (because we know) that these fruits spring from the seeds of your own sowing. You have said to us “U need a biscuit,” and, after long listening to you, we have replied, “We do!” Perhaps next time—if there is a next time—you will think twice before you furnish to “inferior” peoples such a stick as “democracy” has proved for the bludgeoning of your heads. In any case your work has been too well done for even you to obliterate it. The Negro of the Western world can truthfully say to the white man and the Anglo-Saxon in particular, “You made me what I am today, I hope you’re satisfied.” And if the white man isn’t satisfied—well, we should worry. That’s all. —July, 1920.
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the Color Line. But what is the Color Line? It is the practice of the theory that the colored and “weaker” races of the earth shall not be free to follow “their own way of life and of allegiance,” but shall live, work and be governed after such fashion as the dominant white race may decide. Consider for a moment the full meaning of this fact. Of the seventeen hundred million people that dwell on our earth today more than twelve hundred million are colored—black and brown and yellow. The so-called white race is, of course, the superior race. That is to say, it is on top by virtue of its control of the physical force of the worldships, guns, soldiers, money and other resources. By virtue of this control England rules and robs India, Egypt, Africa and the West Indies; by virtue of this control we of the United States can tell Haytians, Hawaiians and Filipinos how much they shall get for their labor and what shall be done in their lands; by virtue of this control Belgium can still say to the Congolese whether they shall have their hands hacked off or their eyes gouged out—and all without any reference to what Africans, Asiatics or other inferior members of the world’s majority may want.
It is thus clear that, as long as the Color Line exists, all the perfumed protestations of Democracy on the part of the white race must be simply downright lying. The cant of “Democracy” is intended as dust in the eyes of white voters, incense on the altar of their own self-love. It furnishes bait for the clever statesmen who hold the destinies of their people in their hands when they go fishing for suckers in the waters of public discussion. But it becomes more and more apparent that Hindus, Egyptians, Africans, Chinese and Haytians have taken the measure of this cant and hypocrisy. And, whatever the white world may think, it will have these peoples to deal with during this twentieth century.
In dealing with them in the past it has been considered sufficient that the white man should listen to his own voice alone in determining what colored peoples should have; and he has, therefore, been trying perpetually to “solve” the problems arising from his own assumption of the role of God. The first and still the simplest method was to kill them off, either by slaughter pure and simple, as in the case of the American Indians and the Congo natives, or by forcibly changing their mode of life, as was done by those pious prudes who killed off the Tasmanians; or by importing among them rum, gin, whiskey and consumption, as has been attempted in the case of the Negroes of Africa and North America. But, unlike the red Indians and Tasmanians, most of these subject peoples have refused to be killed off. Their vitality is too strong.
The second method divides itself into internal and external treatment. The internal treatment consists in making them work, to develop the resources of their ancestral lands, not for themselves, but for their white overlords, so that the national and imperial coffers may be filled to overflowing, while the Hindu ryot, on six cents a day, lives down to the level of the imperialist formula:
“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kin do;He never achesFor chops and steaksAnd for clothes he makes his skin do.”
“The poor benighted Hindoo,He does the best he kin do;He never achesFor chops and steaksAnd for clothes he makes his skin do.”
“The poor benighted Hindoo,
He does the best he kin do;
He never aches
For chops and steaks
And for clothes he makes his skin do.”
The external treatment consists of girdling them with forts and battleships and holding armies in readiness to fly at their throats upon the least sign of “uppishness” or “impudence.”
Now, this similarity of suffering on the part of colored folk has given, and is giving, rise to a certain similarity of sentiment. Egypt has produced the Young Egypt movement; India, the Swadesha, the All-India Congress, and the present revolutionary movement which has lit the fuse of the powder-keg on which Britain sits in India today; Africa has her Ethiopian Movement which ranges from the Zulus and Hottentots of the Cape to the Ekoi of Nigeria; in short, the darker races, chafing under the domination of the alien whites, are everywhere showing a disposition to take Democracy at its word and to win some measure of it for themselves.
What part in this great drama of the future are the Negroes of the Western world to play? The answer is on the knees of the gods, who often make hash of the predictions of men. But it is safe to say that, before the Negroes of the Western world can play any effective part they must first acquaint themselves with what is taking place in that larger world whose millions are in motion. They must keep well informed of the trend of that motion and of its range and possibilities. If our problem here is really a part of a great world-wide problem, we must make our attempts to solve our part link up with the attempts being made elsewhere to solve the other parts. So will we profit by a wider experience and perhaps be able to lend some assistance to that ancient Mother Land of ours to whom we may fittingly apply the words of Milton:
“Methinks I see in my mind a mighty and puissant nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her like an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full noon-day beam; methinks I see her scaling and improving her sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds—with them also that love the twilight—hover around, amazed at what she means, and in their useless gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.” —The New Negro, August, 1919.
While we were at war our President declared, over and over again, that we were calling upon the flower of our manhood to go to France and make itself into manure in order that the world might be made safe for democracy. Today the deluded people of the earth realize that the accent is on the “moc(k).” Ireland, India and Egypt are living proofs that the world has been lied to. We need not bite our tongues about it. Those who told us that the world would be made safe for democracy have lied to us. All over the world men and women are finding out that when an American President, a British Premier or a French “tiger” speaks of “the world,” he does not include the black and brow: and yellow millions, who make up the vast majority of the earth’s population. And now the sheeted ghost of a black republic rises above the tomb where its bones lie buried and points its silent but accusing finger at American democracy. What can we answer in the case of Hayti? British India and Ireland, Turkish Armenia or Russian Poland have never presented such ruthless savagery as has been let loose in Hayti in a private war for which President Wilson has never had the consent of Congress. The white daily papers speak complacently of the repulse of “bandits.” What is this but a developing disease of the American conscience, to put the blinkers of a catchword over the eyes of the spirit?
The people of Hayti are being shot, sabred and bombed, while resisting an illegal invasion of their homes, and, if public decency is not dead in America white and black men and women will insist that Congress investigate this American Ireland.
When Ireland feels the pressure of the English heel, the Irish in America make their voices heard and help to line up American public opinion on their side. When Paderewski’s government massacres Jews in Poland, the Jews of America raise money, organize committees, put the U. S. Government on the job—and get results. But when Negroes are massacred—not in Africa, but in Hayti, under American control—what do we American Negroes do? So far, nothing. But that inaction will not last. Negroes must write their Congressmen and Senators concerning the atrocity perpetrated at Port au Prince last week. They should organize committees to go before Congress and put the pitiful facts, demanding investigation, redress and punishment.
For as long as such things can be done without effective protest or redress, black people every where will refuse to believe that the democracy advertised by lying white politicians can be anything but a ghastly joke.
“Meanwhile the feet of civilized slayers have woven across the fair face of the earth a crimson mesh of murder and rapine. The smoke of blazing villages ascends in lurid holocaust to the bloody god of battles from the altar of human hate in the obscene temple of race prejudice.”
“Meanwhile the feet of civilized slayers have woven across the fair face of the earth a crimson mesh of murder and rapine. The smoke of blazing villages ascends in lurid holocaust to the bloody god of battles from the altar of human hate in the obscene temple of race prejudice.”
These words, which we wrote in 1912, come back to our mind eight years later with no abatement of the awful horror which they express. And what gives a special point to them at this moment is the bloody rape of the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo which is being perpetrated by the bayonets of American sailors and marines, with the silent and shameful acquiescence of 12,000,000 American Negroes too cowardly to lift a voice in effective protest or too ignorant of political affairs to know what is taking place. What boots it that we strike heroic attitudes and talk grandiloquently of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands when we Africans of the dispersion can let the land of L’Ouverture lie like a fallen flower beneath the feet of swine?
The facts of the present situation in that hapless land are given in the current issue ofThe Nation(a white American weekly). Taken together with the accounts which we have printed from time to time, it tells a tale of shuddering horror in comparison with which the Putumayo pales into insignificance and the Congo atrocities of Belgium are tame. The two West Indian republics have been murderously assaulted; their citizens have been shot down by armed ruffians, bombed by aeroplanes, hunted into concentration camps and there starved to death. In their own land their civil liberties have been taken away, their governments have been blackjacked and their property stolen. And all this by the “cracker” statesmanship of “the South,” without one word of protest from that defunct department, the Congress of the United States!
The Constitution of the United States says that the power to declare war shall belong exclusively to the Congress of the United States. But the Congress of the United States has been shamelessly ignored. In furtherance of the God-given “cracker” mandate to “keep the nigger in his place,” a mere Secretary of the Navy has assumed over the head of Congress the right to conquer and annex two nations and to establish on their shores the “cracker-democracy” of his native Carolina slave-runs.
It is high time that the Negro people of the United States call the hand of Josephus Daniels by appealing to the Legislature of the United States to resume its political functions, investigate this high-handed outrage and impeach the Secretary of the Navy of high crimes and misdemeanors against the peace and good name of the United States. The ordinary excuse of cowards will not obtain in this case. We would not be violating any law—wartime or other—but, on the contrary, we should be striving to put an end to a flagrant violation of the Constitution itself on the part of a high officer, who took an oath to maintain, support and defend it. This is our right and our duty. Irishmen, on behalf of Ireland, sell the bonds of an Irish loan to free Ireland from the tyranny of Britain—with whom we are on friendly terms—on the very steps of New York’s City Hall, while we black people are not manly enough to get up even a petition on behalf of our brothers in Hayti.
Out upon such crawling cowardice! Rouse, ye slaves, and show that the spirit of liberty is not quite dead among you! You who elected “delegates” to go to a Peace Conference to which you had neither passport nor invitation, on behalf of bleeding Africa, get together and present a monster petition to the American Congress, over which you have some control. Remember that George the Third engaged in a contest with these colonies because he had trouble at home. He could not defeat the Pitts, Burkes and Foxes at home, and wanted to win prestige from the colonials. Had he succeeded in setting his foot on their necks he would have returned home with increased prestige and power to bend the free spirits of
England to his will. Pitt knew this, and so did Fox and Burke. That is why they took the side of their distant cousins against the British king. And the British liberals of today thank their memories for it. If the “crackers” of the South can fasten their yoke on the necks of our brothers overseas, then God help us Negroes in America in the years to come!
If we were now appealing directly to the white men of America we might dwell upon the moral aspects of the question. But we must leave that to others. Yet we cannot do so without recalling the words of a great poet:
“But man, proud man,Drest in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence—like an angry ape,Plays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs make the angels weep.”
“But man, proud man,Drest in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence—like an angry ape,Plays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs make the angels weep.”
“But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.”
And we draw some slight consolation from the fact that, even if he should escape impeachment, Josephus Daniels must surrender up his “brief authority” in another twelvemonth.
But we who are still free in a measure must not wait twelve months to act. We could not do that and preserve our racial self-respect. For—
“Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frameThrough its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.”
“Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frameThrough its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.”
“Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.”
A correspondent whose letter appears elsewhere raises the question of the relation between mental competence and property rights. “Does inability to govern destroy title to ownership?” he asks. The white race assumes an affirmative answer in every case in which the national property of darker and weaker races are concerned and deny it in cases in which their own national property interests are involved. It seems strange that whereas the disturbances occurring in our own southern states are never considered sufficient to justify the destruction of their sovereignty, on the other hand, such disturbances occurring in Hayti or Mexico are considered a sufficient reason for invasion and conquest by white Americans. The same is true of England, France and Italy. A disturbance in Alexandria, Delhi, Ashanti or the Cameroons suffices to fix upon those territories and cities the badge of inferiority and incompetence to rule themselves. The conclusion is always drawn in such cases that the white race has been called by this fortunate combination of circumstances to do the ruling for them. But similar disturbances occurring in Wales, Essen or Marseilles would never be considered as sufficient to justify the dictatorship of foreign powers in the interest of “law and order.”
The truth is that “might makes right” in all these cases. White statesmen, however, often deny this at the very moment when they are using “force without stint, force to the utmost” to establish “rights” which they claim over territories, peoples, commerce and the high seas. Their characteristic hypocrisy keeps them from telling the truth as plainly as Von Bernhardi did in his now famous book, “Germany and the Next War.” The “sociological” reason for this hypocrisy is the fact that they need to preach “goodness,” “right” and “justice” to those over whom they rule in order that their ruling may be made easy by the consequent good behavior of the ruled. But they themselves, however good, must practice ruthlessness, injustice and the rule of the strong hand to make their governance go. It is this fact which causes intelligent Negroes, Filipinos, Chinese and Egyptians to spurn with contempt the claims which Caucasian diplomats, statesmen, writers and missionaries make on behalf of their moral superiority. They lie; they know that they lie, and now they’re beginning to know that we know it also. This knowledge on our part is a loss of prestige for them, and our actions in the future, based upon this knowledge, must needs mean a loss of power for them. Which is, after all, the essential fact.
Among the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the name of theBarbados Standard. From time to time this faded creature gets worried about the signs of awakening observable in those Negroes who happen to be living in the twentieth century. Then she shakes and shivers, throws a few fits, froths at the mouth, and, spasmodically flapping her arms, yells to all and sundry that there is “Bolshevism among Negroes.”
Recently this stupid old thing and its congeners have discovered evidences of a Bolshevist R–r–r–revolution in Trinidad, and, presumptively, all over the British West Indies. Now the specter which these fools fear is nothing but the shadow cast by the dark body of their own system of stiff-necked pride, stark stupidity and stubborn injustice whenever the sun of civic righteousness rises above the horizon of sloth and ignorance. But, like fools afraid of their own shadows, they point at the thing for which they alone are responsible and shriek for salvation.
We shouldn’t care to suggest to them that to lie down and die would be one good way to avoid these fearful shadows, because we see the possibility of another way. Let them resolve that they will cease making a lie of every promise of liberty, democracy and self-determination that they frantically made from 1914 to 1919. Let the white Englishman learn that justice exists not only for white Englishmen, but for all men. Let him get off the black man’s back, stand out of the black man’s light, play the game as it should be played, and he will find very little need for wasting tons of print paper and thousands of pounds in a crusade against the specter of Bolshevism.
In the eyes of our overlords internationalism is a thing of varying value. When Mr. Morgan wants to float a French or British loan in the United States; when Messrs. Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando want to stabilize their joint credit and commerce; when areas like the Belgian Congo are to be handed over to certain rulers without the consent of their inhabitants—then the pæans of praise go up to the god of “internationalism” in the temple of “civilization.” But when any portion of the world’s disinherited (whether white or black) seeks to join hands with other groups in the same condition, then the lords of misrule denounce the idea of internationalism as anarchy, sedition, Bolshevism and disruptive propaganda.
Why the difference? It is because the international linking up of peoples is a source of strength to those who are linked up. Naturally, the overlords want to strengthen themselves. And, quite as naturally, they wish to keep their subject masses from strengthening themselves in the same way. Today the great world-majority, made up of black, brown and yellow peoples, are stretching out their hands to each other and developing a “consciousness of kind”—as Professor Giddings would call it. They are seeking to establish their own centers of diffusion for their own internationalism, and this fact is giving nightmares to Downing street, the Quai d’Orsay and other centers of white capitalist internationalism.
The object of the capitalist international is to unify and standardize the exploitation of black, brown and yellow peoples in such a way that the danger to the exploiting groups of cutting each other’s throats over the spoils may be reduced to a minimum. Hence the various agreements, mandates and spheres of influence. Hence the League of Nations, which is notoriously not a league of the white masses, but of their gold-braided governors. Faced by such a tendency on the part of those who bear the white man’s burden for what they can get out of it, the darker peoples of the world have begun to realize that their first duty is to themselves. A similarity of suffering is producing in them a similarity of sentiment, and the temper of that sentiment is not to be mistaken.
To the white statesmen “civilization” is identical with their own overlordship, with their right and power to dictate to the darker millions what their way of life and of allegiance shall be. To this the aroused sentiment of the world’s darker majority demurs. They want to be as free as England, America or France. They do not wish to be “wards of the nations” of Europe any longer. And the problem for the white statesmen of the future will be to square democracy with the subjection of this dark majority. Can they achieve either horn of this dilemma? Can they effect a junction of the two?
Frankly, we doubt it. Continued suppression may be fraught with consequences disastrous to white overlordship. In any case the tendency toward an international of the darker races cannot be set back. Increasing enlightenment, the spread of technical science, and the recently acquired knowledge of the weak points of white “civilization” gained by the darker peoples during the recent World War, are enough to negative such a supposition. The darker peoples will strive increasingly for their share of sunlight, and if this is what white “civilization” opposes, then white “civilization” is likely to have a hard time of it.
Mr. William Randolph Hearst, the ablest white publicist in America, has broken loose, and, in a recent editorial in the New YorkAmerican, has absolutely endorsed every word of the warning recently issued by Lothrop Stoddard in his book, “The Rising Tide of Color.” In justice to Mr. Hearst, it must be pointed out (as we ourselves did in 1916) that he saw this handwriting on the wall long ago. Mr. Hearst is not particularly famous as a friend of the darker races; but one must give him credit for having seen what was involved in the war between the white nations of Europe and America. As far back as 1915, the present writer was engaged in pointing out to white people that the racial aspect of the war in Europe was easily the most important, despite the fact that no American paper, not even Mr. Hearst’s, would present that side of the matter for the consideration of its readers. Now, however, they are beginning to wake up—as people generally do when disaster is upon them—frantically with much screaming and flapping of arms. But, in such cases, the doom approaching is but the ripened result of deeds that have been done, and is, therefore, absolutely inescapable.
The white race has lied and strutted its way to greatness and prominence over the corpses of other peoples. It has capitalized, christianized, and made respectable, “scientific,” and “natural,” the fact of its dominion. It has read back into history the race relations of today, striving to make the point that previous to its advent on the stage of human history, there was no civilization or culture worthy of the name. And with minatory finger it admonishes us that if it were to pass off the stage as the controlling factor in the World’s destiny, there would be no civilization or culture remaining. Naturally, we take exception to both these views, because, for the past, we know better and, for the future, we think better of the many peoples who make up the cycle of civilization.
But these conditions are not the gravest at present. The fact of most tremendous import is that the white race in trying to settle its own quarrels has called in black, brown and yellow to do its fighting for it, with the result that black, brown and yellow will learn thereby how to fight for themselves, even against those whom they were called in to assist. The white race cannot escape from its dilemma, however. If it were to decree hereafter that wars between whites should be restricted to whites alone, then we should be given the poignant spectacle of the white race continuing to cut its own throat while the increasing masses of black, brown and yellow remained unaffected by that process, “It is to laugh,” as the cynical gods would say. Or, to use a trite Americanism, it is, “heads I win, tails you lose.” It is thumbs down for the white race in the world’s arena, and they are to be the dealers of their own death blow. Such are the consequences of conquest!
The analogies between the present situation of the white race and the situation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century of the Christian era are too many and striking to be easily ignored. Now, as then, we have “barbarians” and “super-men.” Now, as then, the super-men are such in their own estimation. Now, as then, they have, as they fondly think, a monopoly of the money power, brain power and political power of the world. Now, as then, the necessities of their own selfishness and greed, constrain and compel them to share their education and their culture with the races whom they exploit. Now, as then, in the crisis of their fortunes, they must utilize the knowledge and abilities of these barbarian folk, and now, as then, this exercising of abilities on behalf of the overlord develops abilities and ambition at an equal rate; and, having given the barbarian tiger its first taste of blood, the unleashed results can not now be restrained.
In the Roman days, as in the days of Charlemagne’s successors, those who hold the balances generally also wield the sword; and iftheirblood and sand determine which among the rulers shall get the prizes of victory, then these same qualities must needs urge them to take from such victors-by-proxy so much of the fruits of victory as their own needs may suggest or their own power maintain. Truly “they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.”
[The following article was written in 1918 when the Great War still raged. It was written for a certain well known radical magazine; but was found to be “too radical” for publication at that time. It is given now to the Negro public partly because the underlying explanation which it offers of the root-cause of the war has not yet received treatment (even among socialistic radicals) and partly because recent events in China, India, Africa and the United States have proved the accuracy of its forecasts.]
The Nineteenth Christian Century saw the international expansion of capitalism—the economic system of the white peoples of Western Europe and America-and its establishment by force and fraud over the lands of the colored races, black and brown and yellow. The opening years of the Twentieth Century present us with the sorry spectacle of these same white nations cutting each other’s throats to determine which of them shall enjoy the property which has been acquired. For this is the real sum and substance of the original “war aims” of the belligerents; although in conformity with Christian cunning, this is one which is never frankly avowed. Instead, we are fed with the information that they are fighting for “Kultur” and “on behalf of small nationalities.” Let us look carefully at this camouflage.
In the first place, we in America need not leave our own land to seek reasons for suspecting the sincerity of democratic professions. While we are waging war to establish democracy three thousand miles away, millions of Negroes are disfranchised in our own land by the “cracker” democracies of the Southern States which are more intent upon making slaves of their black fellow-citizens than upon rescuing the French and Belgians from the similar brutalities of the German Junkers. The horrible holocaust of East St. Louis was possible only in three modern States—Russia of the Romanoffs, Turkey and the United States—and it ill becomes any one of them to point a critical finger at the others.
But East St. Louis was simply the climax of a long series of butcheries perpetrated on defenseless Negroes which has made the murder rate of Christian America higher than that of heathen Africa and of every other civilized land. And, although our government can order the execution of thirteen Negro soldiers for resenting the wholesale insults to the uniform of the United States and defending their lives from civilian aggressors, not one of the murderers of black men, women and children has been executed or even ferreted out. Nor has our war Congress seen fit as yet to make lynching a Federal crime. What wonder that the Negro masses are insisting that before they can be expected to enthuse over the vague formula of making the world “safe for democracy” they must receive some assurance that their corner of the world—the South—shall first be made “safe for democracy!” Who knows but that perhaps the situation and treatment of the American Negro by our own government and people may have kept the Central Powers from believing that we meant to fight for democracy in Europe, and caused them to persist in a course which has driven us into this war in which we must spend billions of treasure and rivers of blood.
It should seem, then, that “democracy,” like “Kultur,” is more valuable as a battle-cry than as a real belief to be practised by those who profess it. And the plea of “small nationalities” is estopped by three facts: Ireland, Greece and Egypt, whose Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, was tumbled off his throne for failing to enthuse over the claims of “civilization” as expounded by Lord Grey.
But this is merely disproof. The average American citizen needs some positive proof of the assertion that this war is being waged to determine who shall dictate the destinies of the darker peoples and enjoy the usufruct of their labor and their lands. For the average American citizen is blandly ignorant of the major facts of history and has to be told. For his benefit I present the following statement from Sir Harry Johnston, in “The Sphere” of London. Sir Harry Johnston is the foremost English authority on Africa and is in a position to know something of imperial aims.
“Rightly governed, I venture to predict that Africa will, if we are victorious, repay us and all our allies the cost of our struggle with Germany and Austria. The war, deny it who may, was really fought over African questions. The Germans wished, as the chief gain of victory, to wrest rich Morocco from French control, to take the French Congo from France, and the Portuguese Congo from Portugal, to secure from Belgium the richest and most extensive tract of alluvial goldfield as yet discovered. This is an auriferous region which, properly developed, will, when war is over, repay the hardest hit of our allies (France) all that she has lost from the German devastation of her home lands. The mineral wealth of trans-Zambezian Africa—freed forever, we will hope, from the German menacemis gigantic; only slightly exploited so far. Wealth is hidden amid the seemingly unprofitable deserts of the Sahara, Nubia, Somaliland and Namaqua. Africa, I predict, will eventually show itself to be the most richly endowed of all the continents in valuable vegetable and mineral substances.”
“Rightly governed, I venture to predict that Africa will, if we are victorious, repay us and all our allies the cost of our struggle with Germany and Austria. The war, deny it who may, was really fought over African questions. The Germans wished, as the chief gain of victory, to wrest rich Morocco from French control, to take the French Congo from France, and the Portuguese Congo from Portugal, to secure from Belgium the richest and most extensive tract of alluvial goldfield as yet discovered. This is an auriferous region which, properly developed, will, when war is over, repay the hardest hit of our allies (France) all that she has lost from the German devastation of her home lands. The mineral wealth of trans-Zambezian Africa—freed forever, we will hope, from the German menacemis gigantic; only slightly exploited so far. Wealth is hidden amid the seemingly unprofitable deserts of the Sahara, Nubia, Somaliland and Namaqua. Africa, I predict, will eventually show itself to be the most richly endowed of all the continents in valuable vegetable and mineral substances.”
There is the sum and substance of what Schopenhauer would have called “the sufficient reason” for this war. No word of “democracy” there, but instead the easy assumption that, as a matter of course, the lands of black Africa belong to white Europe and must be apportioned on the good old principle:—
“… the simple plan,That he shall take who has the power,And he must keep who can.”
“… the simple plan,That he shall take who has the power,And he must keep who can.”
“… the simple plan,
That he shall take who has the power,
And he must keep who can.”
It is the same economic motive that has been back of every modern war since the merchant and trading classes secured control of the powers of the modern state from the battle of Plassy to the present world war. This is the natural and inevitable effect of the capitalist system, of what (for want of a worse name) we call “Christendom.” For that system is based upon the wage relationship between those who own and those who operate the gigantic forces of land and machinery. Under this system no capitalist employs a worker for two dollars a day unless that worker creates more than two dollars’ worth of wealth for him. Only out of this surplus can profits come. If ten million workers should thus create one hundred million dollars’ worth of wealth each day and get twenty or fifty millions in wages, it is obvious that they can expend only what they have received, and that, therefore, every nation whose industrial system is organized on a capitalist basis must produce a mass of surplus products over and above, not the need, but the purchasing power of the nation’s producers. Before these products can return to their owners as profits they must be sold somewhere. Hence the need for foreign markets, for fields of exploitation and “spheres of influence” in “undeveloped” countries whose virgin resources are exploited in their turn after the capitalist fashion. But, since every industrial nation is seeking the same outlet for its products, clashes are inevitable and in these clashes beaks and claws—armies and navies—must come into play. Hence beaks and claws must be provided beforehand against the day of conflict, and hence the exploitation of white men in Europe and America becomes the reason for the exploitation of black and brown and yellow men in Africa and Asia. And, therefore, it is hypocritical and absurd to pretend that the capitalist nations can ever intend to abolish wars. For, as long as black men are exploited by white men in Africa, so long must white men cut each other’s throats over that exploitation. And thus, the selfish and ignorant white worker’s destiny is determined by the hundreds of millions of those whom he calls “niggers.” “The strong too often think that they have a mortgage upon the weak; but in the domain of morals it is the other way.”
But economic motives have always their social side; and this exploitation of the lands and labor of colored folk expresses itself in the social theory of white domination; the theory that the worst human stocks of Montmartre, Seven Dials and the Bowery are superior to the best human stocks of Rajputana or Khartoum. And when these colored folk who make up the overwhelming majority of this world demand decent treatment for themselves, the proponents of this theory accuse them of seeking social equality. For white folk to insist upon the right to manage their own ancestral lands, free from the domination of tyrants, domestic and foreign, is variously described as “democracy” and “self-determination.” For Negroes, Egyptians and Hindus to seek the same thing is impudence. What wonder, then, that the white man’s rule is felt by them to rest upon a seething volcano whose slumbering fires are made up of the hundreds of millions of Chinese, Japanese, Hindus and Africans! Truly has it been said that “the problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the Color Line.” And wars are not likely to end; in fact, they are likely to be wider and more terrible—so long as this theory of white domination seeks to hold down the majority of the world’s people under the iron heel of racial repression.
Of course, no sane person will deny that the white race is, at present, the superior race of the world. I use the word “superior” in no cloudy, metaphysical sense, but simply to mean that they are on top and their will goes—at present. Consider this fact as the pivotal fact of the war. Then, in the light of it, consider what is happening in Europe today. The white race is superior—its will goes—because it has invented and amassed greater means for the subjugation of nature and of man than any other race. It is the top dog by virtue of its soldiers, guns, ships, money, resources and brains. Yet there in Europe it is deliberately burning up, consuming and destroying these very soldiers, guns, ships, money, resources and brains, the very things upon which its supremacy rests. When this war is over, it will be less able to enforce its sovereign will upon the darker races of the world. Does any one believe that it will be as easy to hold down Egypt and India and Persia after the war as it was before? Hardly.
Not only will the white race be depleted in numbers, but its quality, physical and mental, will be considerably lowered for a time. War destroys first the strongest and bravest, the best stocks, the young men who were to father the next generation, The next generation must, consequently, be fathered by the weaker stocks of the race. And thus, in physical stamina and in brain-power, they will be less equal to the task of holding down the darker millions of the world than their fathers were. This was the thought back of Mr. Hearst’s objection to our entering the war.
He wanted the United States to stand as the white race’s reserve of man-power when Europe had been bled white. But what will be the effect of all this upon that colored majority whose preponderant existence our newspapers ignore? In the first place, it will feel the lifting of the pressure as the iron hand of “discipline” is relaxed. And it will expand, when that pressure is removed, to the point where it will first ask, then demand, and finally secure, the right of self-determination. It will insist that, not only the white world, but the whole world, be made “safe for democracy.” This will mean a self-governing Egypt, a self-governing India, and independent African states as large as Germany and France—and larger. And, as a result, there will come a shifting of the basis of international politics and business and of international control. This is the living thought that comes to me from the newspapers and books that have been written and published by colored men in Africa and Asia during the past three years. It is what I have heard from their own lips as I have talked with them. And, yet, of this thought which is inflaming the international underworld, not a word appears in the parochial press of America, which seems to think that if it can keep its own Negroes down to servile lip-service, it need not face the world-wide problem of the “Conflict of Color,” as Mr. Putnam-Weale calls it.
But that the more intelligent portions of the white world are becoming distressingly conscious of it, is evident from the first great manifesto of the Russian Bolsheviki last year when they asked about Britain’s subject peoples.
And the British workingmen have evidently done some thinking in their turn. In their latest declarations they seem to see the ultimate necessity of compelling their own aristocrats to forego such imperial aspirations as that of Sir Harry Johnston, and of extending the principle of self-determination even to the black people of Africa. But eyes which have for centuries been behind the blinkers of race prejudice cannot but blink and water when compelled to face the full sunlight. And Britain’s workers insist that “No one will maintain that the Africans are fit for self-government.” And on the same principle (of excluding the opinion of those who are most vitally concerned) Britain’s ruling class may tell them that “No one maintains that the laboring classes of Britain are fit for self-government.” But their half-hearted demand that an international committee shall take over the British, German, French and Portuguese possessions in Africa and manage them as independent nationalities(?) until they can “go it alone,” would suggest that their eyesight is improving.
To sum it all up, the war in Europe is the result of the desire of the white governments of Europe to exploit for their own benefit the lands and labor of the darker races, and, as the war continues, it must decrease the white man’s stock of ability to do this successfully against the wishes of the inhabitants of those lands. This will result in their freedom from thralldom and the extension of political, social, and industrial democracy to the twelve hundred million black and brown and yellow peoples of the world. This, I take it, is what President Wilson had in mind when he wished to make the world “safe for democracy.” But, whether I am mistaken or not, it is the idea which dominates today the thought of those darker millions.