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 World_
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.
_U-Need-a Biscuit_
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.
_Our Larger Duty_
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 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.
_Help Wanted for Hayti_
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.
_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 of _The 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 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 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.”
_When Might Makes Right_
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.
_Bolshevism in Barbados_
Among the newspapers in Barbados there is a charming old lady by the
name of the _Barbados 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 International_
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.
_The Rising Tide of Color_
Mr. William Randolph Hearst, the ablest white publicist in America, has
broken loose, and, in a recent editorial in the New York _American_, 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 if _their_ blood
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 Speaks_
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.”
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 War_
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.”
_The Color Line_
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.
_The Racial Results of the War_
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.