The separation of children in the Schools, on account of race or color,
is in the nature of _Caste_, and, on this account, a violation of
Equality. The case shows expressly that the child was excluded from
the school nearest to her dwelling--the number in the school at the
time warranting her admission--"on the sole ground of color." The first
Majority Report presented to the School Committee, and mentioned in the
statement of facts, presents the grounds of this discrimination with
more fulness, saying, "It is one of _races_, not of _colors_ merely.
The distinction is one which the All-wise Creator has seen fit to
establish; and it is founded deep in the physical, mental, and moral
natures of the two races. No legislation, no social customs, can efface
this distinction."[30] Words cannot be chosen more apt than these to
describe the heathenish relation of Caste.
[30] Report to the Primary School Committee, June 15, 1846, on the
Petition of Sundry Colored Persons for the Abolition of the Schools
for Colored Children, p. 7.
This term, which has its prototype in Spanish and French, finds its
way into English from the Portuguese _casta_, which signifies family,
breed, race, and is generally used to designate any hereditary
distinction, particularly of race. It is most often employed in India,
and it is there that we must go to understand its full force. A recent
English writer says, that it is "not only a distinction by birth, but
is founded on the doctrine of an essentially distinct origin of the
different races, which are thus unalterably separated."[31] This is the
very ground of the Boston School Committee.
[31] Roberts on Caste, p. 134.
This word is not now for the first time applied to the distinction
between the white and black races. Alexander von Humboldt, speaking of
the negroes in Mexico, characterizes them as a caste.[32] Following
him, a recent political and juridical writer of France uses the same
term to denote not only the distinctions in India, but those of our own
country, especially referring to the exclusion of colored children from
the Common Schools as among "the humiliating and brutal distinctions"
by which their caste is characterized.[33] It is, then, on authority
and reason alike that we apply this term to the hereditary distinction
on account of color now established in the schools of Boston.
[32] Essai Politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, Liv.
II. ch. 6.
[33] Charles Comte, Traité de Legislation, Tom. IV. pp. 129, 445.
Boston is set on a hill, and her schools have long been the subject of
observation, even in this respect. As far back as the last century,
the French Consul here made a report on our "separate" school;[34] and
De Tocqueville, in his masterly work, testifies, with evident pain,
that the same schools do not receive the children of the African and
European.[35] All this is only a reproduction of the Cagots in France,
who for generations were put under the ban,--relegated to a corner of
the church, as in a "negro pew," and even in the last resting-place,
where all are equal, these wretched people were separated by a line
of demarcation from the rest.[36] The Cagots are called an "accursed
race," and this language may be applied to the African under our laws.
Strange that here, under a State Constitution declaring the Equality
of all men, we should follow the worst precedents and establish among
us a Caste. Seeing the discrimination in this light, we learn to
appreciate its true character. In India, Brahmins and Sudras, from
generation to generation, were kept apart. If a Sudra presumed to sit
upon a Brahmin's carpet, his punishment was banishment. With similar
inhumanity here, the black child who goes to sit on the same benches
with the white is banished, not indeed from the country, but from the
school. In both cases it is the triumph of Caste. But the offence is
greater with us, because, unlike the Hindoos, we acknowledge that men
are born equal.
[34] Grégoire, De la Littérature des Nègres, p. 177.
[35] Democracy in America, Vol. I. p. 461, Ch. XVIII. § 2.
[36] Michel, Histoire des Races Maudites, Tom. I. p. 3.
So strong is my desire that the Court should feel the enormity of
this system, thus legalized, not by the Legislature, but by an
inferior local board, that I shall introduce an array of witnesses
all testifying to the unchristian character of Caste, as it appears
in India, where it is most studied and discussed. As you join in
detestation of this foul institution, you will learn to condemn its
establishment among our children.
I take these authorities from the work of Mr. Roberts to which I have
already referred, "Caste opposed to Christianity," published in London
in 1847. Time will not allow me to make comments. I can only quote the
testimony and then pass on.
The eminent Bishop Heber, of Calcutta, characterizes Caste in these
forcible terms:--
"_It is a system which tends, more than any else the Devil has yet
invented, to destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and to
make nine tenths of mankind the hopeless slaves of the remainder._"
But this is the very system now in question here. Bishop Wilson, also
of Calcutta, the successor of Heber, says:--
"The Gospel recognizes no such distinction as those of Castes,
imposed by a heathen usage, bearing in some respects a supposed
religious obligation, condemning those in the lower ranks to
perpetual abasement, placing an immovable barrier against all
general advance and improvement in society, cutting asunder the
bonds of human fellowship on the one hand, and preventing those of
Christian love on the other. Such distinctions, I say, the Gospel
does not recognize. On the contrary, it teaches us that God 'hath
made of one blood all the nations of men.'"