Then comes the other excuse, which finds Equality in separation.
Separate hotels, separate conveyances, separate theatres, separate
schools and institutions of learning and science, separate churches,
and separate cemeteries,--these are the artificial substitutes. And
this is the contrivance by which a transcendent right, involving a
transcendent duty, is evaded: for Equality is not only a right, but a
duty.
How vain to argue that there is no denial of Equal Rights when this
separation is enforced! The substitute is invariably an inferior
article. Does any Senator deny it? Therefore, it is not Equality;
at best it is an equivalent only. But no equivalent is Equality.
Separation implies one thing for a white person and another thing
for a colored person; but Equality is where all have the same alike.
There can be no substitute for Equality,--nothing but itself. Even if
accommodations are the same, as notoriously they are not, there is no
Equality. In the process of substitution the vital elixir exhales and
escapes: it is lost, and cannot be recovered; for Equality is found
only in Equality. “Nought but itself can be its parallel”; but Senators
undertake to find parallels in other things.
As well make weight in silver the equivalent for weight in diamonds,
according to the illustration of Selden in his famous “Table-Talk.”
“If,” remarked the learned interlocutor, “I said I owed you twenty
pounds in silver, and you said I owed you twenty pounds of diamonds,
which is a sum innumerable, ’tis impossible we should ever agree.”[180]
But Equality is weight in diamonds, and a sum innumerable,--which is
very different from weight in silver.
Assuming--what is most absurd to assume, and what is contradicted by
all experience--that a substitute can be an equivalent, it is so in
form only, and not in reality. Every such assumption is an indignity to
the colored race, instinct with the spirit of Slavery; and this decides
its character. It is Slavery in its last appearance. Are you ready
to prolong the hateful tyranny? Religion and reason condemn Caste as
impious and unchristian, making republican institutions and equal laws
impossible; but here is Caste not unlike that which separates the Sudra
from the Brahmin. Pray, Sir, who constitutes the white man a Brahmin?
Whence his lordly title? Down to a recent period in Europe the Jews
were driven to herd by themselves, separate from the Christians; but
this discarded barbarism is revived among us in the ban of color. There
are millions of fellow-citizens guilty of no offence except the dusky
livery of the sun appointed by the Heavenly Father, whom you treat as
others have treated the Jews, as the Brahmin treats the Sudra. But,
pray, Sir, do not pretend that this is the great equality promised by
our fathers.
In arraigning this attempt at separation as a Caste, I say nothing
new. For years I have denounced it as such; and here I followed good
authorities, as well as reason. Alexander von Humboldt, speaking
of the negroes of New Mexico when Slavery prevailed, called them a
Caste.[181] A recent political and juridical writer of France uses
the same term to denote not only the discrimination in India, but
that in our own country,--especially referring to the exclusion of
colored children from the common schools as among “the humiliating and
brutal distinctions” by which their Caste is characterized.[182] The
principle of separation on the ground of hereditary inferiority is the
distinctive essence of Caste; but this is the outrage which flaunts in
our country, crying out, “I am better than thou, because I am white.
Get away!”