Darkwater

human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but

Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny m

tion. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy

ss or tan leads to curious acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse with me on

y on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, pra

m quite straight-fa

ways, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understan

iteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous enthusiasm in what we once counte

to make children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man's soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white man's thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white man's deed; that every great dream the world ever s

appreciation by the humble-born. So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites, there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. But when the black man begins to dispute the white man's title to certain alleged bequests of the Fathers in wage and position, au

itting by herself in a Pullman car. He was a white man. I have seen a great, grown man curse a little child, who had wandered into the wrong waiting-room, searching for its mother: "Here, you damned black-" He was white. In Central Park I have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black folk rode by in a motor car. He was a white man. We have seen, you and I, city after city drunk and furious with ungover

s of my people no misfortune could happen,-of death and pestilence, failure and defeat-that would not make the hearts of millions of their fellows beat with fierce,

somehow, above the suffering, above the shackled anger that beats the bars, above the hurt that crazes there surges in me

trocities in Armenia, while the Turks are silent about mobs in Chicago and St. Louis; what is Louvain compared with Memphis, Waco, Washington, Dyersburg, and Estill Sp

y is best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by." Say this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if no

s involved is our defense of right nation-wide and prompt. Murder may swagger, theft may rule and prostitution may flourish and the nation gives but spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be black or the thief brown o

ng, and murdering us the white world turned temporarily aside to

o others, over wide area, it brought the Schaden Freude of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, I judg

ss with such disconcerting seriousness as the modern white man. We whose shame, humiliation, and deep insult his aggrandizement so often involved we

soul and more primitive type, have been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of white religion. We have curled our lips in something like contempt a

, and have rejected many a Buddha, even as you have denied Christ; but we acknowledge ou

nday supplements and in Punch, Life, Le Rire, and Fliegende Bl?tter. In her foreign mission work the extraordinary self-deception of white religion is epitomized: solemnly the white world sends fiv

Is it necessary to ask how much of high emprise and honorable conduct has been found here? Something, to be sure. The establishment of world credit systems is built on splendid and realizable faith in fellow-men. But it is, after all, so low and elementary a step that sometimes it looks merely

, bigger thieves, deeper injustice, and more calloused selfishness in well-being? Be that as it may,-certainly the nicer sense of honor that has risen ever and again in groups of forward-thinking men has been curiously and broadly blunted. Consider our chiefest industry,-fighting. Laboriously th

ble, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equa

n French and Spanish Morocco, in China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen

one to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880. Down the dark forests of inmost Africa sailed this modern Sir Galahad, in the name of "the noble-mi

he in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, t

; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on deaf ears because th

s not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture-back of all culture,-stripped and visible today. This is where the world

e or would do better than this if you had today the world rule? Paint with all riot of hateful color

an soul who cannot be matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia, Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus

he has builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than that of other days and races. In other words, the deepe

t and science of the "dago" Mediterranean shore, east, south, and west, as well as north. And where she has builded securely upon this great past and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more

has done more to break down national barriers than any preceding culture. Was it fear of the balance of power in Europe? Hardly, save in the half-Asiatic problems of the Balkans. What, then, does Hauptmann mean when he says: "Our jealous enemies f

which explains, and alone adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe which is white,

k otherwise, cries the cultured world, with stronger and shriller accord. The supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary: Darker peoples are dark in mind as wel

n" in the sense that Europeans are men. To the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton

eive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and

te, while white America whetted her sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America, lynching her own Negroes the while. Temporary halt in this program was made by little Japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of such "yellow" presumption!

e world. But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former

near future. The day of the very rich is drawing to a close, so far as individual white nations are concerned. But there is a loophole. There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. It is here that the golden hand beckons. Here are no

te"; everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is "yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." The changes of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in ne

nclean canaille of the world-these dogs of men. All through the world this gospel is

and copper-they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay

orld where this golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the whipping and shooting. It was this competition for the labor of yellow, brown, and black folks that was the cause

s, wield the lash of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream. They belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with it

possession of colonies of darker peoples. To South America, to China, to Africa, to Asia Minor, she turned like a hound quivering on the leash, impatient, suspicious, irritable, with blood-shot eyes and dripping fangs, ready for the awful word. England and France crouched watchfully over their bones, growling and wary, but gnawing industriously, while the blood of the d

ht, and time her preparation for wholesale murder. The only adequate cause of this preparation was conquest and conquest, not in Europe, but primarily among the darker people

to the world's highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another. Then came that curious chorus of challenges, thos

Lorraine; not even in the neutrality of Belgium. No! But in the possession of land overseas, in the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker

breath of king and kaiser. Indeed, the flying had been foreshadowed when in Germany and America "international" Socialists had all but read yellow and black men out of the kingdom of industrial justice. Subtly had they been brib

nough portion of it to insure as big profits as the next nation. Where sections could not be owned by one dominant nation there came a policy of "open door," but the "door" was open to "white people only." As to the darkest and weakest

men may walk the way of white workingmen and climb by votes and self-assertion and education to the rank of men, he is howled out of court. They cannot do it and if they could, they shall not, for they are the enemies of the white race and the whites shall rule forever and forever a

d Japanese they form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is a belief in colored men. If the up

at fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the ha

raped peoples. Today Japan is hammering on the door of justice, China is raising her half-manacled hands to knock next, India is writhing for the freedom to knock, Egypt is sullenly muttering, the Negroes of South and West Africa, of the West Indies, and of the United States are just awakeni

rence, however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympa

this r?le. For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,-making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of mil

unparalleled in history. But what of this? America, Land of Democracy, wanted to believe in the failure of democracy so far as darker peoples were concerned. Absolutely without excuse she established a caste system, rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical colonies. She stands today shoulder to shoulder with Europe in Europe's worst sin against civilization. She aspires to sit among the great nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser breeds without the law" and she is at times heartily asha

d-swept stars. Eastward and westward storms are breaking,-great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable. I

ust my cry be in vain, because it is but a cry

n binding, tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his mighty cry reverberating through the world, "I am white!" Well and good, O Prometheus, divine thief!

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