A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race
with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and
thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists
gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul
of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow
of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly
explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism,
learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the "higher"
against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen!
and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is
founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness,
and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance.
But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this
he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before
that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic
humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of
fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous
welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate
disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,
--before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm
and discourage any nation save that black host to whom
"discouragement" is an unwritten word.
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