We feel and know that there are many delicate differ-
ences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude
social measurements are not yet able to follow minutely,
which explain much of history and social development. At
the same time, too, we know that these considerations have
never adequately explained or excused the triumph of brute
force and cunning over weakness and innocence.
It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth
century to see that in the future competition of races the
survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the
beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve for
future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong,
and not continue to put a premium on greed and impudence
and cruelty. To bring this hope to fruition, we are compelled
daily to turn more and more to a conscientious study of the
phenomena of race-contact,--to a study frank and fair, and
not falsified and colored by our wishes or our fears. And we
have in the South as fine a field for such a study as the world
affords,--a field, to be sure, which the average American
scientist deems somewhat beneath his dignity, and which the
average man who is not a scientist knows all about, but
nevertheless a line of study which by reason of the enormous
race complications with which God seems about to punish
this nation must increasingly claim our sober attention, study,
and thought, we must ask, what are the actual relations of
whites and blacks in the South? and we must be answered,
not by apology or fault-finding, but by a plain, unvarnished
tale.
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