A FEW BOOKS.
_The Negro in History and Civilization_
(From Superman to Man, by J. A. Rogers.)
This volume by Mr. Rogers is the greatest little book on the Negro that
we remember to have read. It makes no great parade of being
“scientific,” as so many of our young writers do who seem to think that
science consists solely in logical analysis. If science consists
fundamentally of facts, of information and of principles derived from
those facts, then the volume before us is one of the most scientific
that has been produced by a Negro writer. It sweeps the circle of all
the social sciences. History, sociology, anthropology, psychology,
economics and politics—even theology—are laid under contribution and
yield a store of information which is worked up into a presentation so
plain and clear that the simplest can read and understand it, and yet so
fortified by proofs from the greatest standard authorities of the past
and present that there is no joint in its armor in which the keenest
spear of a white scientist may enter.
Unlike an older type of scholar (now almost extinct) the author does not
go to vapid verbal philosophers or devotional dreamers for the facts of
history and ethnology. He goes to historians and ethnologists for them
and to anthropologists for his anthropology. The result is information
which stands the searching tests of any inquirer who chooses to doubt
and investigate before accepting what is set before him.
From this book the unlearned reader of the African race can gather proof
that his race has not always been a subject or inferior race. He has the
authority of Professor Reisner, of Harvard; of Felix Dubois, Volney,
Herodotus, Finot, Sergi, the modern Egyptologists and the scholars of
the white world who assembled at the Universal Races Congress in London
in 1911, for the belief that his race has founded great civilizations,
has ruled over areas as large as all Europe, and was prolific in
statesmen, scientists, poets, conquerors, religious and political
leaders, arts and crafts, industry and commerce when the white race was
wallowing in barbarism or sunk in savagery. Here he can learn on good
authority, from St. Jerome and Cicero, Herodotus and Homer down to the
modern students of race history, that cannibalism has been a practise
among white populations like the Scythians, Scots and Britons; that the
white races have been slaves; that here in America the slavery of white
men was a fact as late as the 19th century, and “according to Professor
Cigrand, Grover Cleveland’s grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish
slave in Connecticut.” In short, he will learn here, not that newspaper
science which keeps even “educated” Americans so complacently ignorant,
but the science of the scientists themselves. He will learn all that
this kind of science has to tell of the relative capacity and standing
of the black and white races—and much of it will surprise him. But all
of it will please and instruct.
The book also deals with the facts of the present position of the Negro
in America and the West Indies; with questions of religion, education,
politics and political parties, war work, lynching, miscegenation on
both sides, the beauty of Negro women and race prejudice. And on
everyone of these topics it gives a minimum of opinion and a maximum of
information. This information flows forth during the course of a series
of discussions between an educated Negro Pullman porter and a Southern
white statesman on a train running between Chicago and San Francisco.
The superior urbanity of the Negro, coupled with his wider information
and higher intelligence, eventually wins over the Caucasian to admit
that the whole mental attitude of himself and his race in regard to the
Negro was wrong and based on nothing better than prejudice.
This conversational device gives the author an opportunity to present
all the conflicting views on both sides of the Color Line, and the
result is a wealth of information which makes this book a necessity on
the bookshelf of everyone, Negro or Caucasian, who has some use for
knowledge on the subject of the Negro. The book is published by the
author at 4700 State Street, Chicago.
_“Darkwater”_
By W. E. B. Du Bois.
An unwritten law has existed for a long time to the effect that the
critical estimates which fix the status of a book by a Negro author
shall be written by white men. Praise or blame—. the elementary
criticism which expresses only the reviewer’s feelings in reference to
the book—has generally been the sole function of the Negro critic. And
the results have not been good. For, in the first place, white critics
(except in music) have been too prone to judge the product of a Negro
author as Dr. Johnson judged the dancing dog: “It isn’t at all like
dancing; but then, one shouldn’t expect more from a dog.” That is why
many Negro poets of fifth grade merit are able to marshal ecomiums by
the bushel from friendly white critics who ought to know better. On the
other hand, there is the danger of disparagement arising solely from
racial prejudice and the Caucasian refusal to take Negro literary
products seriously.
In either case the work fails to secure consideration solely on its
merits. Wherefore, it is high time that competent appraisal of Negro
books should come from “our side of the street.” But, then, the Negro
reading public should be taught what to expect, viz., that criticism is
neither “knocking” nor “boosting”; but an attempt, in the first place,
to furnish a correct and adequate idea of the scope and literary method
of the book under review, of the author’s success in realizing his
objects, and of the spirit in which he does his work. In the second
place, the critic should be expected to bring his own understanding of
the subject matter of the book to bear upon the problem of enlightening
the readers’ understanding, that at the end the reader may decide
whether the work is worth his particular while.
This book of Dr. Du Bois’ is one which challenges the swing of seasoned
judgment and appraisal. It challenges also free thinking and plain
speaking. For, at the very outset, find ourselves forced to demur to the
publishers’ assumptions as to its author’s status. “Even more than the
late Booker Washington, Mr. Du Bois is now chief spokesman of the two
hundred million men and women of African blood.” So say the
publishers—or the author. But this is outrageously untrue. Once upon a
time Dr. Du Bois held a sort of spiritual primacy among The Talented
Tenth, not at all comparable to that of Booker Washington in scope, but
vital and compelling for all that. The power of that leadership,
however, instead of increasing since Mr. Washington’s death, has
decreased, and is now openly flouted by the most active and outspoken
members of The Talented Tenth in Negro America. And, outside of the
twelve or fifteen millions “of African blood” in the United States, the
mass of that race in South and West Africa, Egypt and the Philippines
know, unfortunately, very little of Dr. Du Bois. It may be, however,
that this is merely a publishers’ rhodomontade.
And it is the publishers themselves who challenge for this volume a
comparison with “The Souls of Black Folk,” which was published by
McClurg in 1903. It is regrettable that they should force the issue, for
“The Souls of Black Folk” is a greater book than “Darkwater” in many
ways. In the first place, its high standard of craftsmanship is
maintained through every chapter and page. There are no fag-ends, as in
the chapter “Of Beauty and Death” in the present volume, where the
rhetoric bogs down, the author loses the thread of his purpose and goes
spieling off into space, spinning a series of incongruous purple patches
whose tawdry glitter shows the same reversion to crude barbarism in
taste which leads a Florida fieldhand to don opal-colored trousers, a
pink tie, pari-colored shirt and yellow shoes. Artistically, that
chapter is an awful thing, and I trust that the author is artist enough
to be ashamed of it.
And, though it may savor of anti-climax, “The Souls of Black Folk” was
more artistically “gotten” up—to use the grammar of its author.
“Darkwater” is cheaply bound and cheaply printed on paper which is
almost down to the level of the Seaside Library. Neither in mechanical
nor mental quality does the book of 1920 come up to the level of that of
1903.
Yet, in spite of some defects, “Darkwater” (with the exception of
chapters six, seven, eight and nine) is a book well worth reading. It is
a collection of papers written at different times, between 1908 and
1920, and strung loosely on the string of race. One wishes that the
author could have included his earlier essay on The Talented Tenth and
his address on the aims and ideals of modern education, delivered some
twelve years ago to the colored school children of Washington, D. C.
Each paper makes a separate chapter, and each chapter is followed by a
rhetorical sprig of symbolism in prose or verse in which the tone-color
of the preceding piece is made manifest to the reader. Of these
tone-poems in prose and verse, the best are the Credo; A Litany at
Atlanta; The Riddle of the Sphinx, and Jesus Christ in Texas. In these
the lyrical quality of the author’s prose is lifted to high levels. In
these elegance does not slop over into turgid declamation and rhetorical
claptrap—which has become a common fault of the author’s recent prose as
shown in The Crisis. In this, the first part of the book, the work is
genuine and its rhetoric rings true. Nevertheless, the sustained
artistic swing of “The Souls of Black Folk,” which placed that work (as
a matter of form and style) on the level of Edgar Saltus’ _Imperial
Purple_—this is not attained in “Darkwater.”
The book may be said to deal largely with the broad international
aspects of the problem of the color line and its reactions on
statecraft, welt-politik, international peace and international trade,
industry, education and the brotherhood of man. Each chapter, or paper,
is devoted to one of these reactions. Then there is a charming
autobiographical paper, “The Shadow of Years,” which first appeared in
The Crisis about three years ago, in which we have the study of a soul
by itself. The growth of the author’s mind under the bewildering shadow
cast by the color line is tragically set forth. I say tragically with
deliberation; for what we see here, despite its fine disguise, is the
smoldering resentment of a mulatto who finds the beckoning white doors
of the world barred on his approach. One senses the thought that, if
they had remained open, the gifted spirit would have entered and made
his home within them. _Mais, chacun a son gout_, and no one has the
right to quarrel with the author on that doubtful score.
In the chapter on “The Souls of White Folk” we have a fine piece, not so
much of analysis, as of exposition. The author puts his best into it.
And yet that best seems to have failed to bite with acid brutality into
the essential iron of the white man’s soul. For the basic elements of
that soul are Hypocrisy, Greed and Cruelty. True, the author brings this
out; but he doesn’t burn it in. The indictment is presented in terms of
an appeal to shocked sensibilities and a moral sense which exists, for
the white man, only in print; whereas it might have been made in other
terms which come nearer to his self-love. Nevertheless it is
unanswerable in its logic.
In “The Hands of Ethiopia,” as in “The Souls of White Folk,” we catch
the stern note of that threat which (disguise it as our journals will),
the colored races are making, of an ultimate appeal in terms of color
and race to the white man’s only God—the God of Armed Force. But the
author never reaches the height of that newer thought—an international
alliance of Black, Brown and Yellow against the arrogance of White.
In “Work and Wealth” and “The Servant in the House” the problems of work
and its reward, and the tragedy of that reward, are grippingly set forth
in relation to the Negro in America and in the civilized world. “The
Ruling of Men” is followed by three papers of very inferior merit and
the book ends with a fantastic short story, “The Comet” which, like “The
Coming of John” in “The Souls of Black Folk,” suggests that Dr. Du Bois
could be a compelling writer of this shorter form of fiction. The touch
in this story of incident is light, but arresting.
Dr. Du Bois, in the looseness of phrase current in our time in America,
is called a scholar—on what grounds we are not informed. But Dr. Du Bois
is not a scholar; his claim to consideration rests upon a different
basis, but one no less high. And when the Negro culture of the next
century shall assay the products of our own it will seem remarkable that
this supreme wizard of words, this splendid literary artist, should have
left his own demesne to claim the crown of scholarship. Surely, there is
honest credit enough in being what he is, our foremost man of culture.
And this “Darkwater,” despite its lapses from artistic grace, helps to
rivet his claim to that consideration. It is a book which will well
repay reading.
_The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy_
By Lothrop Stoddard
About ten years ago Mr. B. L. Putnam Weale in “The Conflict of Color”
tried to open the eyes of the white men of the world to the fact that
they were acting as their own grave diggers. About the same time
Mr. Melville E. Stone, president of the Associated Press, in an address
before the Quill Club on “Race Prejudice in the Far East” reinforced the
same grisly truth. Five years later “T. Shirby Hodge” wrote “The White
Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast,” and ended it with these pregnant
words: “The white man’s burden is—himself.” His publishers practically
suppressed his book, which, by the way, should have been in the library
of every intelligent Negro. The white world was indisposed then to
listen to its voices of warning. But today the physical, economic and
racial ravages of the World War have so changed the white world’s mind
that within four weeks of its appearance “The Rising Tide of Color
Against White World Supremacy,” by Lothrop Stoddard, has struck the
bull’s-eye of attention and has already become the most widely talked-of
book of the year. White men of power are discussing its facts and its
conclusions with bated breath and considerable disquietude.
Here is a book written by a white man which causes white men to shiver.
For it calls their attention to the writing on the wall. It proves that
the white race in its mad struggle for dominion over others has been
exhausting its vital resources and is exhausting them further. It proves
to the hilt the thesis advanced in 1917 in my brief essay on “The White
War and the Colored Races” that, whereas the white race was on top by
virtue of its guns, ships, money, intellect and massed man-power, in the
World War it was busy burning up, depleting and destroying these very
resources on which its primacy depended. But even though the white
capitalists knew all this their mad greed was still their master. This
great race is still so low spiritually that it sells even its racial
integrity for dollars and cents. Mr. Stoddard’s book may disturb its
sense of security for a brief space, but it cannot keep white
“civilization” from its mad dance of death. “What shall it profit a man
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And the white race
will finally find that this is even more true racially than
individually.
We have noticed for many years that whereas domestic journalism was
merely journalism—the passing register of parochial sensations—the
journalism of the international publicists like Lord Bryce, Meredith
Townsend, Archibald Colquhoon, Putnam Weale and Hyndman was something
more solid than journalism. In the writings of these men hard fact and
stark reality are wedded to wide reading and deep thinking. They are the
real social scientists rather than the stay-at-home, cloistered
sociologists who, presuming to know everything, have seen nothing. The
present volume is one of the best of the former and is full of the
qualities of its class. But at the very outset it suffers from the
unwelcome assistance of Dr. Madison Grant, “chairman of the New York
Zoological Society and trustee of the American Museum of Natural
History.” Dr. Grant has accumulated a large stock of musty ethnological
ideas of which he unburdens himself in what he evidently intends as a
“learned” introduction, without which freightage the book would be much
better. The difference in value and accuracy between Mr. Stoddard’s text
and the pseudo-scientific introduction of Dr. Grant would furnish fair
material for philosophic satire. Unfortunately we cannot indulge the
inclination in the columns of a weekly newspaper.
Dr. Grant, in owlish innocence, splutters out the usual futile folly
which (in other domains) has brought the white race to the frontiers of
the present crisis. He reads back into history the racial values of
today and trails the Anglo-Saxon’s crass conceit and arrogance across
the pages of its record, finding “contrast of mental and spiritual
endowments … elusive of definition,” and other racial clap-trap whose
falsity has been demonstrated again and again by warm-hearted
enthusiasts like Jean Finot and coldly critical and scientific scholars
like Dr. Taylor (“Origin of the Aryans”), Sergi (“The Mediterranean
Race”) and J. M. Robertson (“The Evolution of States”). But one can
forgive Dr. Grant; he is a good American, and good Americans (especially
“scientists” on race) are usually fifty years behind the English, who,
in turn, are usually twenty years behind the Germans. Dr. Grant’s
annexation of the past history of human culture to the swollen record of
the whites sounds good—even if it smells bad. And he is in good
Anglo-Saxon company. Sir Harry Johnston does the same thing and gets
titles (scientific and other) by so doing. The Englishman takes the very
Egyptians, Hindus and tribal Liberians, whom he would call “niggers” in
New York and London, and as soon as he finds that they have done
anything worth while he tags them with a “white” tag. Thus, to the
professional “scientist” like Dr. Grant, living in the parochial
atmosphere of the United States, science is something arcane, recondite
and off the earth; while to the American like Mr. Stoddard, who has been
broadened by travel and contact with the wider world, science, is, as it
should be, organized daily knowledge and common sense. Thus journalists,
good and bad, are the ones who form opinion in America, because
“scientists” are so distressingly stupid.
Mr. Stoddard’s thesis starts from the proposition that of the seventeen
hundred million people on our earth today the great majority is made up
of black, brown, red and yellow people. The white race, being in the
minority, still dominates over the lands of black, brown, red and (in
the case of China) has assumed a right of dictatorship and disposal even
in the yellow man’s lands. In the course of this dictatorship and
domination the white race has erected the barrier of the color line to
keep the other races in their place. But this barrier is cracking and
giving way at many points and the flood of racial self-assertion,
hitherto dammed up, threatens to overflow the outer and inner dikes and
sweep away the domination of the whites.
The author approaches his theme with a curiously graduated respect for
other races. This respect, while it is a novelty in the attitude of the
blond overlords, is always in direct proportion to the present power and
discernible potentialities of the races discussed. For the yellow man of
Japan and China he shows the greatest deference. The browns (of India,
Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Mohammedan world in general) are, of
course, inferior, but must be respected for their militancy. The reds
(the original American stock which is the backbone of the population of
Mexico, Central and South America) are a source of contamination for
white blood and an infernal nuisance, capable of uniting with Japan and
China in an onslaught on the land areas reserved for white exploitation
in the western world; while the blacks, at the foot of the ladder, have
never amounted to anything, don’t amount to anything now, and can never
seriously menace the superiority of the whites.
The gradation is full of meaning, especially to those fervid theorists
who affect to believe that religion, morality, loyalty and good
citizenship constitute a good claim to the white man’s respect. For it
is Japan’s actual military might and China’s impending military might
which have put them in Grade A, while the brown man’s show of resistance
in Egypt, India and elsewhere under Islam, and his general physical
unrest and active discontent have secured for him a classification in
Grade B. The American in Mexico and South America keeps his window open
toward the east; but the black man still seems, in our author’s eyes, to
be the same loyal, gentle, stupid beast of burden that the white man’s
history has known—except in those parts of Africa in which he has
accepted the Mohammedan religion and thus become a part of the potential
terror of the Moslem world. In this we think our author mistaken; but,
after all, it is neither arguments nor logic that will determine these
matters, but deeds and accomplishments.
But, however his racial respect may be apportioned, Mr. Stoddard holds
that his race is doomed. “If the present drift be not changed we whites
are all ultimately doomed. Unless we set our house in order the doom
will sooner or later overtake us all.” The present reviewer stakes his
money on “the doom,” for the white race’s disease is an ingrowing one
whose development inheres in their very nature. They are so singularly
constituted that they would rather tear themselves to pieces parading as
the lords of creation than see any other people achieve an equal favor
of fortune.
In the pages of this book the author presents many chastening truths and
wide vistas of international politics which are enlightening when
carefully studied. But it is not our intent to cover the entire field of
his work, and we think that we have said enough to indicate the high
value and suggestiveness of the work. But we may be allowed to point out
that all the way through the author, though clear and enlightened,
remains an unreconstructed Anglo-Saxon, desirous of opening the eyes of
his race to the dangers which beset them through their racial injustice
and arrogance; but sternly, resolutely, intent that they shall not share
their overlordship with any other of the sons of earth. His book is
written in a clear and commendable style; he shows but few defects of
temper and a shrewd mastery of his materials. The book should be widely
read by intelligent men of color from Tokio to Tallahassee. It is
published by Charles Scribner’s Sons at $3, and is well worth the price.
THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN
(A Reply to Rudyard Kipling.)
By HUBERT H. HARRISON
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
Send forth the worst ye breed,
And bind our sons in shackles
To serve your selfish greed;
To wait in heavy harness
Be-devilled and beguiled
Until the Fates remove you
From a world you have defiled.
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
Your lies may still abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check our racial pride;
Your cannon, church and courthouse
May still our sons constrain
To seek the white man’s profit
And work the white man’s gain.
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
Reach out and hog the earth,
And leave your workers hungry
In the country of their birth;
Then, when your goal is nearest,
The end for which you fought,
Watch other’s trained efficiency
Bring all your hope to naught.
Take up the Black Man’s burden
Reduce their chiefs and kings
To toil of serf and sweeper
The lot of common things:
Sodden their soil with slaughter,
Ravish their lands with lead;
Go, sign them with your living
And seal them with your dead.
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
And reap your old reward:
The curse of those ye cozen,
The hate of those ye barred
From your Canadian cities
And your Australian ports;
And when they ask for meat and drink
Go, girdle them with forts.
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
Ye cannot stoop to less.
Will not your fraud of “freedom”
Still cloak your greediness?
But, by the gods ye worship,
And by the deeds ye do,
These silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the Black Man’s burden—
Until the tale is told,
Until the balances of hate
Bear down the beam of gold.
And while ye wait remember
That justice, though delayed,
Will hold you as her debtor
Till the Black Man’s debt is paid.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
consultation of external sources.
Except for the changes noted below, misspelling in the text, and
inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
In Chapter 3, “Emmet” has been replaced with “Emmett”.
“posiiton” has been replaced with “positon”.
In Chapter 5, “conquences” has been replaced with “consequences”; “lke”
has been replaced with “like”; “whch” has been replaced with “which”.
In Chapter 6, “Chanler” has been replaced with “Chandler”.
In Chapter 7, “behaf” has been replaced with “behalf”; “perpertrated”
has been replaced with “perpetrated”; “delibertaely” has been replaced
with “deliberately”; “whtie” has been replaced with “white”;
“sovereignity” has been replaced with “sovereignty”.
In Chapter 8, “anthroplology” has been replaced with “anthropology”.
“preceeding” has been replaced with “preceding”; In Chapter 9,
“resoures” has been replaced with “resources”. Additionally, the header
“CHAPTER NINE” has been replaced with “CHAPTER IX” to match with other
chapter headings in the book.