It is quite impossible,
at this early date, to say with any decided emphasis what the future of the
colored people will be. Speculations of that kind, thus far, have only
reflected the mental bias and education of the many who have essayed to solve
the problem.
We all know what the
negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two
hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and
qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In
his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty
years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the
marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before
us, to-day, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to
agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is
seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered
his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but
no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy,
cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the
one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass
that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry,
caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which
cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring
his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered. As I have
often said before, we should not measure the negro from the heights which the
white race has attained, but from the depths from which he has come. You will
not find Burke, Grattan, Curran and O'Connell among the oppressed and famished
poor of the famine-stricken districts of Ireland. Such men come of comfortable
antecedents and sound parents.
Laying aside all
prejudice in favor of or against race, looking at the negro as politically and
socially related to the American people generally, and measuring the forces
arrayed against him, I do not see how he can survive and flourish in this
country as a distinct and separate race, nor do I see how he can be removed
from the country either by annihilation or expatriation.
Sometimes I have feared
that, in some wild paroxysm of rage, the white race, forgetful of the claims of
humanity and the precepts of the Christian religion, will proceed to slaughter
the negro in wholesale, as some of that race have attempted to slaughter
Chinamen, and as it has been done in detail in some districts of the Southern
States. The grounds of this fear, however, have in some measure decreased,
since the negro has largely disappeared from the arena of Southern politics,
and has betaken himself to industrial pursuits and the acquisition of wealth
and education, though even here, if over-prosperous, he is likely to excite a
dangerous antagonism; for the white people do not easily tolerate the presence
among them of a race more prosperous than themselves. The negro as a poor
ignorant creature does not contradict the race pride of the white race. He is
more a source of amusement to that race than an object of resentment. Malignant
resistance is augmented as he approaches the plane occupied by the white race,
and yet I think that that resistance will gradually yield to the pressure of
wealth, education, and high character.
My strongest conviction
as to the future of the negro therefore is, that he will not be expatriated nor
annihilated, nor will he forever remain a separate and distinct race from the
people around him, but that he will be absorbed, assimilated, and will only
appear finally, as the Phoenicians now appear on the shores of the Shannon, in
the features of a blended race. I cannot give at length my reasons for this
conclusion, and perhaps the reader may think that the wish is father to the
thought, and may in his wrath denounce my conclusion as utterly impossible. To
such I would say, tarry a little, and look at the facts. Two hundred years ago
there were two distinct and separate streams of human life running through this
country. They stood at opposite extremes of ethnological classification: all
black on the one side, all white on the other. Now, between these two extremes,
an intermediate race has arisen, which is neither white nor black, neither
Caucasian nor Ethiopian, and this intermediate race is constantly increasing. I
know it is said that marital alliance between these races is unnatural,
abhorrent and impossible; but exclamations of this kind only shake the air.
They prove nothing against a stubborn fact like that which confronts us daily
and which is open to the observation of all. If this blending of the two races were
impossible we should not have at least one-fourth of our colored population
composed of persons of mixed blood, ranging all the way from a dark-brown color
to the point where there is no visible admixture. Besides, it is obvious to
common sense that there is no need of the passage of laws, or the adoption of
other devices, to prevent what is in itself impossible.
Of course this result
will not be reached by any hurried or forced processes. It will not arise out
of any theory of the wisdom of such blending of the two races. If it comes at
all, it will come without shock or noise or violence of any kind, and only in
the fullness of time, and it will be so adjusted to surrounding conditions as
hardly to be observed. I would not be understood as advocating intermarriage
between the two races. I am not a propagandist, but a prophet. I do not say
that what I say should come to pass, but what I think is likely to come to
pass, and what is inevitable. While I would not be understood as advocating the
desirability of such a result, I would not be understood as deprecating it.
Races and varieties of the human family appear and disappear, but humanity
remains and will remain forever. The American people will one day be truer to
this idea than now, and will say with Scotia's inspired son:
"A man's a man for
a' that."
When that day shall
come, they will not pervert and sin against the verity of language as they now
do by calling a man of mixed blood, a negro; they will tell the truth. It is
only prejudice against the negro which calls every one, however nearly
connected with the white race, and however remotely connected with the negro
race, a negro. The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to
humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up,
but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary
and hated color line. Men of mixed blood in this country apply the name
"negro" to themselves, not because it is a correct ethnological
description, but to seem especially devoted to the black side of their
parentage. Hence in some cases they are more noisily opposed to the conclusion
to which I have come, than either the white or the honestly black race. The
opposition to amalgamation, of which we hear so much on the part of colored
people, is for most part the merest affectation, and, will never form an
impassable barrier to the union of the two varieties.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.