I have often wondered why someone has not written as a supplement to
Lowell an essay entitled “On a Certain Condescension in Americans”.
Such an effort, in some small measure at least, might serve to give us
a clearer estimate of ourselves.
When the drums beat we are not likely to recall that we are the most
inconsistent people in the world. We pride ourselves on spending
millions for education, but the draft showed us where we stood,
and we have recently been informed that we are merely a nation of
sixth-graders. We still value buildings more than brains, and if
you will ask the average college student to read aloud a page of
Newman or Pater you will see how literate we are. We are aghast at
Armenia--naturally, for in Texas we lynch ten men in twice as many days.
We have been accused of intolerance, and a finger has been pointed at
the Puritan. As a matter of fact we are exceedingly long suffering.
We tolerate everything from sixteen dollar coal to our most recent
Congress. We tolerate the Ku Klux Klan. A score of men were killed in
Herrin in cold blood, and the authorities are paralyzed. For a sensible
liberty loving people we are the most easily browbeaten and bamboozled
on this planet, and no one knows this better than the politician.
Our powerlessness, our utter futility in the face of a concrete
situation is sometimes amazing. We intend well, but either we
ourselves or our machinery are at fault. In our courts the conviction
of a man of means does not necessarily imply a real conviction but
simply a new trial. We are torn by industrial and social unrest, and
for a whole session our statesmen discuss the bonus and ship subsidy
with an eye to the next election. Sometimes our national honor is
involved. If occasion demands we can send a million men to Europe, but
not until we have been trampled upon and our rights flouted for months.
Is it any wonder that our flag is not always respected abroad?
Sometimes in our leisurely democracy we develop kindliness at an
astonishing rate. Nothing can surpass our real generosity and charity.
A few months ago, however, we read that the President of the United
States and the Governor of Pennsylvania both interceded for the life of
a dog that had been condemned to death. Dick, it appeared, was owned
by an alien contrary to law. I could not help wondering about this
animal that was able to call forth such remarkable weight of executive
clemency. Was it white or black or brown? Did its ancestors come over
in the “Mayflower”? Could its grandfather vote? Mark you this, however:
you have not for these many years heard of any president’s writing to
a governor about a citizen who was sliced or burned to death within
these United States.
Our inconsistency does not mean that as a nation we have lost sight
of our port. It does mean, however, that we wander needlessly at sea
before finding it. Democracy does not always move in a straight line,
and sometimes when far off its course it has to make a violent effort
to find its way. While moreover we talk about democracy, the fact is
that there are always with us those who want something else. In the
good old days Rhode Island was the most offensive little slave dealer
in the country, and we do not always stop to think that there was a
time when the students at Harvard were registered in the catalogue on
the basis of their social standing. Among the rockribbed families of
Boston there was ever a welcome for the courtly southerner with whom
trade was good and behind whom was the romance of plantations and
slaves. It is not an accident that in recent discussion of the Jew and
the Negro New England has again beckoned to the south. Sooner or later
in such a civilization the worm turns; the underdog wriggles out of our
grasp; and, the glory of democracy is that it gives him a chance to
work out his freedom--and live.
In the new day to which we have come it is necessary first of all
then that we keep our faith--faith in our country, in ourselves, in
humanity. Let us also as never before honor Truth--not propaganda,
not the flattery of a demagogue, and not the jaundice of a hectic
journalism, but simple, clear eyed Truth. This will mean that we
shall have to readjust many old values and beware of all outgrown
shibboleths. Our country is changing, and those persons who insist on
abiding by the opinions formed twenty years ago simply insist on living
in another age and another world.
With nothing shall we have to be more careful about hasty judgment
than with subjects relating to the Negro. Today there is no telling
what an individual Negro may or may not do. At the close of the Civil
War hardly more than one in ten could read; today illiteracy has been
reduced to nearly twenty per cent, and instead of his being your tenant
you may even find that the Negro you know is your landlord. The race is
increasingly complex, and in some matters of music and other forms of
art it is just now among the most “advanced” in the country. The Negro
is naturally such an artist and he has such an innate appreciation of
acting that, keeping his essential faith unchanged, he is likely to
take on a new form of worship quite as easily as a new garment. Just
now Bahaism is popular with the esoteric, and since the war cynicism
has been developed almost to a cult.
This, however, is only one phase of the matter. The other is that of
the strange prominence of the Negro throughout the whole course of
American history. In the colonial era it was the economic advantage of
slavery over servitude that caused it to displace this institution as
a system of labor. Two of the three compromises that entered into the
making of the Constitution were prompted by the presence of the Negro
in the country; the expansion of the southwest depended on his labor;
and the question or the excuse of fugitives was the real key to the
Seminole Wars. The Civil War was simply to determine the status of the
Negro in the Republic, and the legislation after the war determined for
a generation the history not only of the south but very largely of the
nation as well. The later disfranchising acts have had overwhelming
importance, the unfair system of national representation controlling
the election of 1916 and thus the attitude of America in the World War.
Here then are two great themes--that of the Negro’s aspiration and
striving, and that of his influence on the American body politic--that
might reasonably engage the attention of any writer who desires
seriously to base a contribution to American literature on this general
topic. The first would call for treatment primarily subjective, the
second for treatment largely objective; but in any case the work should
be sympathetic in the broadest sense. Such treatment I regret the
Negro has not had. With our bigotry and conceit on this subject as no
other we have been moved by the condescension of which I spoke in the
beginning. Two great fallacies still most frequently recur as major
premises. One is that the education of the Negro has been a failure,
and the other is that the integrity of the womanhood of the race is
always open to question. It makes no difference how much evidence there
may be to the contrary, any writer of the day is still likely to start
off with these two assumptions. The Negro himself moreover must be
either a brute or a villain; no rôle more flattering can be thought
of. “Othello” is not yet a popular play with American audiences, and
I cannot help recalling that some years ago a Shakespearian company
performing “The Merchant of Venice” in Atlanta found it advisable to
leave out even the Prince of Morocco, because of local conditions.
Literature is supposed to be the reflection of the national life.
Unfortunately much of our recent literature is not complimentary to
the country’s life. We have the best printers and publishers in the
world, but the books that they are asked to produce--tales of scandal
sicklied o’er with sentimentalism--should make the nation blush.
A generation ago people smiled at E. P. Roe; but Roe was at least
harmless. More recently we have arrived at Harold Bell Wright, but
even he has been out-Heroded. If we today go over the list of writers
of fiction--especially the women--and consider only those who are most
outstanding, the extent to which many will be found to have declined
from the ideals with which they started is astonishing. In all this
welter of commercialism and sensationalism the Negro’s one request of
literature so far as he is concerned, is that it be fearlessly and
absolutely honest. Let it portray life, realistically--just as it is,
idealistically--as it ought to be, but let it cease to exploit outworn
theories or be the vehicle merely of burlesque. A new age--a new
world--is upon us, with new men, new visions, new desires. As never
before patriotism demands that we see life clearly and see it whole.
It is now a little more than six years ago that I contributed to
“The Dial” (then in Chicago) a paper entitled “The Negro in American
Fiction”. In that discussion I endeavored to deal at some length with
the work of several authors--notably George W. Cable, Joel Chandler
Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Dixon--as well as with that of
representative short story writers of the day who had introduced Negro
characters into their work. In general I advanced the proposition that
in our literature as in our social life we were largely dominated by
the mob spirit. Much has happened within six years, and now that the
war is four years behind us and we are trying to find the “normalcy”
of which we have heard, we may not unreasonably ask if there has
been any advance. At once we come face to face with the stories and
sketches of E. K. Means and Octavus Roy Cohen, and these we find
to be burlesque. Five other works of fiction also come to mind,
however--“His Own Country” by Paul Kester, “The Shadow” by Mary White
Ovington, “Birthright” by T. S. Stribling, “White and Black” by H.
A. Shands, and “J. Poindexter, Colored” by Irvin S. Cobb. The last
three of these books, it is interesting to observe, have all appeared
within the present year, and practically every one of the five is,
if not the only book, at least the first novel by its author. Taken
together these books mark an advance, but one would hardly assert that
they give an adequate reflection of the Negro problem in a treatment
at once faithful, powerful, and tragic. “The Shadow” is honest in
purpose and method. “His Own Country” and “White and Black”, however,
while containing much of the machinery of tragedy, both fail to be
genuine epics. “Birthright”, brilliant in some of its details, begs
the whole question with which it undertakes to deal by its attitude
on fundamentals, and the treatment of its hero is especially open to
attack. J. Poindexter of Paducah, who awakens our interest and who is
so thoroughly equal to the wiles and pitfalls of New York, himself
advises us not to bother with the race problem. “I ain’t no problem,
I’s a pusson,” he says; “I craves to be so reguarded.” To that extent
he marks an advance.
As for the race itself, because of the pressing questions incident
to and resultant from the war, its literary energy has recently been
given mainly to journalistic work rather than to that more imaginative.
Within the last few years we have had W. E. Burghardt DuBois’s
collection of essays, “Darkwater”, and Claude McKay’s striking volume
of poems, “Harlem Shadows”, but in fiction nothing as poignant as
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Sport of the Gods” has recently appeared.
Several capable writers are appearing on the horizon, however, and
within the next few years we may not unreasonably expect more than one
work of enduring quality.
It has well been said that to be as good as our fathers were we must
be better. As the heirs of the ages it ill becomes us to represent
anything but the highest standards of efficiency and the noblest
ideals of faith. Our patriotism is too much capitalized; “100 per cent
Americanism” too often becomes a specious cry to cover wrong. Has our
melting pot been boiling too fast? Very well; let it simmer. Let us
not, however, remove the ancient landmark. Let us not be so swept by
the fires of bigotry or even by the glamour of industrialism that we
fail to take note of men’s souls. Those who have been prosperous and
happy can never tell what divine gift may not be in the hands of those
who have yearned and suffered. The Negro and the Jew, the Italian and
the Pole--“inferior races”, “scum of the earth”--exalted and uplifted,
purified as we all must be, each brings something peculiar and eternal
to the making of our country.
But, say we, they have not culture. No, they have not; none of us have.
Those who think they have most are likely to be the most provincial in
their outlook. I think I remember hearing Professor Kittredge remark
some years ago that culture is a by-product. We tabulate a certain
number of facts, reflect upon a few ideas of our own, add a little
religion, and incidentally it may be that after a while we impress
those about us as--cultured. As a nation, however, we are still in the
making, and when we have all so far to go it ill becomes any of us to
scorn any man who is struggling toward the light.
Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record
of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. Let us
have the forward as well as the backward look. In England we speak of
the Liberalism of Lloyd George as distinct from the old Liberalism of
Gladstone. Some such distinction needs to be made in our own country.
The disfranchisement of any number or group of citizens, real or
attempted, in the United States of America in the third decade of the
twentieth century, is an anachronism. We may try to turn back the
clock, but the hands of Time move inexorably forward. Let us be worthy
of the new day.
The Negro himself as the irony of American civilization is the supreme
challenge to American literature. Like Banquo’s ghost he will not down.
All faith and hope, all love and longing, all rapture and despair, look
out from the eyes of this man who is ever with us and whom we never
understand. Gentle as a child, he has also the strength of Hercules.
The more we think we know him the more unfathomable he is. No wonder a
well known senator who maligned the Negro felt that he was paralyzed
because the race prayed that God might afflict him. No wonder is it
that, submerged and enthralled, the Negro still rises from the depths
to cast by his magic an irresistible spell over the American mind.