beautiful words, which usage cannot cheapen, express the wonder I have
often felt at the wealth of imagery, the mental grasp, the wisdom and
the natural dignity in very many untutored natives I have met with, and
it is this experience which makes me believe that the present difference
between the Europeans and the Native race is one of degree and not of
kind, and that, in the fullness of time, achievement will follow the
latent genius with which, as I hold, nature has endowed, in equal degree
with ourselves, the great Bantu branch of the human family.
Yet I am no encomiast of the Natives, for I know them to be no better
than other people, but search as I may, I cannot find that Native
character which is alleged to be inherently different from the white
man's character. Did not Mark Twain find, as the most conspicuous result
of his travels, that "there is a good deal of human nature everywhere,"
and is it not true that human nature is everywhere the same?
We are far too apt to exaggerate both in our disparagement and in our
praise of backward people. Many people still think, if they think at
all, of the South African Native as a being of the kind imagined by
Hobbes when he wrote: "Man in his natural state is towards man as a
wolf," and, on the other hand, there are still many who regard him,
after the fancy of Rousseau, as a sort of primitive man-child existing
in a state of natural innocence from which he is being driven by the
corrupting influence of the civilised invaders. But all this is wrong.
The Native is not a savage. Even before the whites came to South Africa
the Bantu lived in social order under a political system in which the
principles of constitutionalism were clearly recognised. To-day the
Bantu are simply a race of barbarians in various stages of transition
from a crude civilisation to a highly developed civilisation, and we
shall do well to remember that the process of transition which we are
now witnessing is one in which individual mistakes and failures will be
more conspicuous, though no more significant, than the general advance.
MISCEGENATION.
If it is true that the human nature of the Bantu is no whit different
from the human nature of the Europeans then it is a fair question to
ask why the two races should not be able to live together in liberty,
equality and fraternity as people of one nation or body politic. It is
because human nature is governed by laws which, unlike the laws of
mathematics, cannot be laid down with certainty that we find ourselves
unable to give a positive answer to this question. The human nature of
the whites, like the human nature of all races that have been
predominant before, is swayed by the feelings of pride and prejudice
that arise through differences of complexion, physical appearance and
bodily odour, as well as the difference in racial achievement, and these
essentially human feelings, if they remain as strong as they now are in
South Africa, will render impossible the fraternity that implies the
liberty to intermarry, so that there arises for our consideration a
second question, namely, whether without full fraternity and social
equality the two races may yet live together in the land in political
liberty and equality.
We observe from the earliest times a rhythmic play, as it were, of
opposite forces that tends, alternately, to build up and to break down
and mingle human races, but of the laws that underlie and govern these
forces we know little or nothing. On the one hand we see how man has
always and everywhere shown what the advocates of so-called racial
purity have called "a perverse predisposition to mismate" which has made
it exceedingly difficult to classify existing human varieties. On the
other hand we see throughout nature how a pronounced disparity between
varieties of the same species engenders an aversion from one another of
the different varieties which seems to arise, in men and animals alike,
through the instinct of sexual jealousy which is probably bound up with
the primary instinct of self-preservation. Those people who profess
belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race naturally look
upon the tendency towards race-blending as a perverse proclivity, while
those who think that all men are potentially equal regard it as a
wholesome instinct provided by nature to counteract the feebleness and
infertility which cause the dying-out of the race that becomes too
pure.
Racial antipathy seems to depend in the degree of its strength upon the
degree of physical disparity between given races. In the so-called Latin
races of to-day, prejudice against black people is certainly weaker than
in the blond races of Northern Europe. Is this aversion a matter of
absolute instinct or is it an acquired social characteristic and as such
liable to change? I think the answer must be that this racial repugnance
is not naturally inherent in children, nor in women towards the men of a
different kind, nor in men towards the women of another race, but that
it arises naturally and spontaneously and, in this sense, instinctively,
through the feeling of jealousy which is caused, in both men and women,
by fear of losing their natural mates to rivals of both sexes from
another and disparate race.
White children who grow up together with Native children certainly have
no instinctive feeling against their black playfellows; they have to be
taught to look down upon and keep away from the companions of their
childhood, a fact which no candid observer will deny. It is also a
truism of history that the fair-skinned women of a conquered country,
as a rule, will yield themselves easily to the swarthy barbarians who
have killed or overcome their husbands and brothers. The many women who
in British seaports, and in the German towns that were recently occupied
by French coloured troops, have lived and cohabited with African men
have proved by so doing that they have had no instinctive racial sense
of hostility against black men. It has been stated by independent and
competent witnesses, who are corroborated by German newspapers of good
standing, that the black troops have a very marked attraction for a
large number of German women, and that the German men hate the black men
because the German women do not.[22] The fact that white women in South
Africa and in the Southern States of America never associate with black
men does not, I think, prove that they are controlled by instinctive
racial or sexual aversion but rather that women, as a whole, are, by
reason of their physical inability to dispute with men the ultimate
ratio of all order that lies in brute force, thoroughly amenable to the
rule of social conventions imposed upon them by their jealous masters. I
say this because we see that the aversion that has been inculcated from
without tends to disappear wherever the man-established conventions
lapse or cease to govern either through the comparatively small numbers
of black men being insufficient in certain localities to cause fear in
the white men living there, as in some seaport towns, or through the
temporary break-down of the customary standards of society brought about
by war and revolution, as in those parts of Germany that were recently
garrisoned by coloured soldiers.
Nature having cast upon the male the duty of winning and holding the
females of his species it is easy to see why the racial feelings of
jealousy and ill-will are more positive and more active in the man than
in the woman, and this explains, as far as these things can be
explained, why white men will allow themselves to cohabit freely with
black women to whom they feel naturally attracted but will "see red" and
commit murder as soon as they find a black man attempting to gain the
favour of a woman of their own colour. "Un adolescent aime toutes les
femmes" say the French, and it is generally accepted that man is by
nature more inclined to polygamy than woman is towards polyandry, still
man and woman are both swayed and motived by the same elemental jealousy
that is born of fear of losing something valued; the emotion which
Descartes has so well defined as "une espèce de crainte qui se rapport
au désir qu'on a de se conserver la possession de quelque bien."
It is, no doubt, true that the thinking white woman, no less than the
thinking white man, is led to feel dismay and even resentment against
the Natives by apprehension of the possibility of danger to white
civilisation through fusion of white and black, but this is a feeling
caused by intelligent appreciation rather than by instinctive
apprehension, and as such liable to be dispelled by argument tending to
show that no real danger threatens. During a recent agitation against
miscegenation in Rhodesia a number of letters written by white women
appeared in the press from which it was easy to gather that the chief
concern of the writers was not the possible degradation of the whites,
though this was not overlooked, but rather the simple fact that some
white men were cohabiting with black women to the prejudice of the
matrimonial chances of eligible women of their own race.
But it is unwise to dogmatise in the realms of social and racial
psychology; we have not yet discovered the means for analysing with
precision the subtle elements of the human soul. I have used the word
instinct here in the sense given to it by William James, who defines it
as "the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends
without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the
performance," but when we reflect upon the transitoriness of human
instincts, as compared with those of animals, and recognise that the
human instincts are, as James also says, implanted in us for the sake of
giving rise to habits, and then to fade away, we see how difficult it is
to draw a line between the instinctive and the acquired or habitual mood
or feeling.
If we believe that racial antipathy is caused by the feeling of jealousy
that arises instinctively, so to speak, from man's inner nature, then it
is safe to say that it will last as long as the substance from which it
springs, and as long as the racial difference which provokes it remains,
but this belief is not firmly established in the general mind. The
whites, as a whole, feel far from sure about the permanence of their
cherished pride and prejudice of race; they are, more or less
consciously afraid that the antipathy upon which they rely may become
weakened and eventually dissipated by close contact of the two races in
places where economic pressure has reduced both to the same level of
life. We shall do well to remember the words of Renan when we try to
estimate the truth of this matter, "La verité consiste dans les
nuances," for both estimates may be true; the racial instinct may have
to yield here and there to the superior force of economic pressure, and
may yet in the main prove powerful enough to prevent the contact that
tends to render it of no effect.
The racial feeling which we are considering is undoubtedly much stronger
at present in the whites than in the Bantu, but there is reason to
believe that the awakening desire for racial self-assertion which we
call pride of race will grow and increase in the Bantu as it has done
in the Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General
education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism
seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the
strident self-assertion of the newly-constituted little nations in
Europe, and the cult of "Nationalism" in South Africa to-day. It is
natural for birds of feather to flock together and screech together, and
in the same way throughout mankind particular groups of people tend
naturally to keep together and to marry among themselves separately from
the rest of the community by which they happen to be surrounded, and
this ethnic instinct, if so it may be called, is seen to operate even
where, as among the Italian immigrants in America, there is no great
racial difference between them and the Native-born inhabitants, and,
much more markedly, in the Southern States of America where, according
to a recent observer, the present tendency is not towards but away from
miscegenation, so that the ultimate blending of colour is not likely to
take place there in the course of nature.[23]
The normal Native man does not hanker after white women, and the normal
Native woman is not, as a rule, anxious to mate with a white man, but
this normal disposition is apt to be disturbed by the familiarity which
is bred by the close contact that occurs in towns and other centres. It
is not, therefore, safe to deny the possibility that with advancing
industrialism in congested areas there will be some white women ready to
marry or cohabit with Native men who are either in positions of relative
superiority or in possession of more money than their white
fellow-workers or neighbours, making it possible for them to outbid
these in the providing of comparative ease and luxury, which things have
always appealed strongly to women of all races. Yet I think that those
who prophesy the speedy merging of the two races in South Africa do not
give sufficient weight to the fact of the collective consciousness of a
racial entity which, being strongly established in the European section,
is also being fostered and increased in the Natives by the civilisation
which is now spreading among them, so that it seems reasonable to expect
that the European aversion from racial blending will be reciprocated
from the Native side more and more as time goes on, and that this
reciprocal feeling will go far towards keeping the two races
biologically intact. I think, therefore, that despite the conditions
that conduce to miscegenation, the factor of the growing and reciprocal
desire in both races to remain ethnically separate will gain the day.
Many people think that the coloured people in South Africa, who are most
numerous in the vicinity of Cape Town, but are also scattered all over
the country, will form, as it were, a bridge between the two sections of
the population for their eventual coalescence. But when this conclusion
is closely examined it is seen to rest on debatable premises, for it is
admitted that by far the greater part of the miscegenation that is now
going on is between white men and coloured or black women and not
between coloured or black men and white women, from which it follows, as
has been pointed out by Boas,[24] that, as the numbers of children born
does not depend upon the numbers of men but upon the numbers of women,
the result will be a bleaching of the black element, here and there,
and not a darkening of the whites in South Africa.
Statistics have, indeed, been quoted which show that between the year
1904 and the year 1911 the coloured population increased in the Cape
Province by fifteen per cent, while the total population increased by
only six and a half per cent., but these figures do not show how much of
the coloured increase is due to propagation among coloured people
themselves and how much to unions between white men and coloured women.
When it is noted that in the year 1911 the European increase over the
year 1904 in the whole Union of South Africa was 14.28 per cent., and
that of all non-European elements only 15.12 per cent., it will be seen
that although the black increase is on a larger basis it hardly
justifies alarm over an imagined flood of overwhelming coloured numbers.
If the coloured increase is due chiefly to propagation among the
coloured people themselves then it forms a good argument against those
who assert that the half-caste is relatively inclined to sterility,
while if the increase is found to be due to cohabitation of white men
with coloured women then it is a fair illation that the coloured section
is in process of absorption by the whites. This assumed process of
absorption will, no doubt, entail the presence of a certain, even a
large, number of coloured people for many generations to come, but this
number will grow smaller, and not greater, as time goes on because there
is no reason to doubt that the white women of South Africa, as a whole,
will refrain in the future as they have refrained in the past from
cohabiting with black men, so that the observed tendency towards the
diffusion of the coloured element back into the parent streams will be
allowed to continue.
But let us for a moment look calmly, and as far as possible without
prejudice, at the people who in South Africa are said to furnish the
awful example of the alleged evil of the crossing of white and black.
The fact that the denunciation of these people is based on opposite and
contradictory arguments shows that it is not the result of clear
thinking. On the one side it is vehemently asserted that the coloured
man is a physiological misfit, a sort of hybrid unfit for the society
of either white or black and an alleged relative sterility of his kind
is advanced as proof of this assertion. On the other side it is said,
with equal vehemence, that the coloured people are mongrels, unfit to
mingle with the pure parental breeds, and that this is proved by their
excessive fecundity. The coloured people are also accused of being
inferior in physical constitution when compared with either of the
parent races, and therefore undesirable.
My own observations, corroborated by the opinions of many other
observers, leads me to believe that the fecundity of the coloured people
is neither greater nor less than that of other people--white, black or
yellow--whose birthrate is not artificially restricted, and that their
general physical constitution, when not undermined by disease or stunted
by underfeeding, is as strong as that of any other human variety. The
great naturalist, Wallace, has insisted that some degree of difference
favours fertility, but that a little more tends to infertility, and by
applying this hypothesis to the facts as I have observed them I am led
to believe that there is no biological difference between the Bantu and
the European of a degree sufficient to produce any difference, one way
or the other, in the fertility of the offspring of the two races, but
proper statistics, continued over several generations, will, of course,
be required to prove or disprove this conclusion.
The gravest, and, as I think, the most unjust of the many charges
brought against these people by an unthinking public, is that the
half-caste, wherever he is found, partakes of all the vices but of none
of the virtues of his parents. When we remember that in the towns of
South Africa the coloured people of necessity form the class that in the
nature of things is peculiarly exposed to the temptations of
prostitution and crime, then it becomes a matter for wonder that these
people are as good and as law-abiding as indeed they are. People who
know South Africa will admit that the coloured girl is from childhood
exposed to the temptation of loose-living far more than either the
Native girl in the kraal or the European girl in her home, and that the
coloured boys and youths, by reason of the lack of the right kind of
home-influence, which is the result of the unfavourable position in
life of the bulk of their parents, naturally gravitate towards the
levels where it becomes difficult to avoid crime. But despite all these
adverse conditions that press so heavily against them the coloured
people of South Africa, taken as a whole, stand justified of the
calumnies uttered against them. The coloured people as a whole are not
behind the whites in anything except in the lack of opportunity for
education and self-improvement, a lack caused not by themselves, but by
their inimical surroundings.
That many of the coloured people are immoral and shiftless need not be
denied; the same may be said about the "poor whites," who as a class
perplex well-meaning legislators, but neither of these proved
accusations give reason for thinking that either of these classes is
inherently inferior to their more favourably-placed fellow-beings. We
must always remember the tremendous handicap of being reared in the
depressing surroundings of sloth and squalor. I have seen hundreds of
poor whites--as white as any blond German could wish to be--who seemed
utterly unfit for the complexities of civilised life, but I have also
seen many of the children of these people who, after being removed from
their home surroundings, have risen to positions of usefulness and
trust, in which they have earned reputations for integrity and capacity.
The trenchant saying of a British working-man is in point, "Treat a man
like a dog and he will behave like a dog," and the corollary is equally
true, that if you treat a man as a man he will, as a rule, rise and quit
himself like a man.
The familiar cry that once white blood is diluted with black it is "all
up" with our civilisation is not convincing when we remember that the
ground-work of this civilisation was built up by races that were not
"pure white"; that the white civilisation during the dark ages sank to a
very low level through no dilution of African blood, and that it was a
mixed race, the Moors, who brought back into Europe the lost principles
of Aristotelian science on which the crumbling structure of European
culture was rebuilt. To believe that the people of Asia and of Africa
may be capable of attaining to Western civilisation, but that the
offspring produced by the crossing of these races with whites will not
have the necessary capacity therefor is to me impossible. So far from
being deterrent to mental growth it would seem that an infusion of
African blood in the European serves rather to increase mental capacity;
at any rate, those who know South Africa well will not deny that an
unmistakable tincture of African blood in a white family is often
associated with marked intellectual ability. Against this concession it
has indeed been alleged that, while it must be admitted that a small
admixture of black blood in a white race enriches it, a small admixture
of white blood in a black race degrades it, but this fanciful notion has
not been supported by scientific data. The truth of the matter is that
as the blacks are the underdogs, the half-breed becomes a racial and
social bastard, as indeed he is openly named in South Africa, a man
condemned before he is tried, handicapped from birth in a way that would
drag down and keep under most of those who shout loudest about their
racial superiority. It is his condition and not his nature that keeps
the coloured man underneath.
To the man who in face of the facts of history and of to-day believes
that all we have of civilisation we owe to the Teutonic or to the
Nordic type of man, and that nothing good can ever come out of coloured
Nazareths, the possibility of the whites in South Africa becoming
browned by the selective agency of tropical light or by an infusion of
African blood, no doubt, seems an evil to be prevented at any cost, but
those who, like myself, have seen coloured women working in their homes
as thriftily and self-sacrificingly as the best of our own women, and
coloured men labouring steadily against heavy odds to improve their
condition, have become convinced that the coloured people of South
Africa suffer under no inherent disabilities when compared with the
whites, and for this reason we cannot join in the general wail over a
predicted evil which we regard as exaggerated in itself and not,
moreover, likely to happen. I would not, however, be taken to advocate
the inter-breeding of white and black. Those who have witnessed the
misery and suffering which the coloured people have to endure for being
coloured will welcome any fair means of preventing miscegenation in
South Africa. Proscriptive legislation has been advocated by both the
detractors and the defenders of the half-breed, as a means of
preventing what both schools, for their different reasons, regard as
wrong and undesirable, but I cannot agree that it can ever be right or
expedient to penalise and make criminal a natural act which under
existing conditions is in many places unavoidable.