Sociology and Modern Social Problems

one of many race problems which the United States has, but because it is the most pressing of all of our race problems it is frequently spoken of as the race problem. An unsolved factor i

thus no one denies that between different species of animals heredity counts for everything in explaining their life activities, and, as between the different breeds or races of a single species, no other position is possible from the biological point of view. Nevertheless it may be admitted that man no longer lives a purely animal life and that racial heredity as a factor in his social life may be easily exaggerated. On the whole, it is a safe rule to follow that racial heredity should not be invoked to explain the social condition of a people until practically all other factors have been exhausted. Nevertheless as between the different races or great varieties of mankind there must be a great difference in racial heredity. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, since

dity is modifiable both in the individual and in the race. It is modifiable in the individual through education or training; it is modifiable in the race through selection. Therefore racial heredity does not

pical environment. The dark color of his skin, for example, was developed by natural selection to exclude the injurious actinic rays of the sun. The various ways in which the negro's tropical environment influenced the development of his mind, particularly of his instincts, cannot be here entered into in detail. Suffice to say that the African environment of the ancestors of the present negroes in the United States deeply stamped itself upon the mental traits and tendencies of the race. For example, the tropical environment is generally unfavorable to severe bodily labor. Pers

rican environment did not have something to do with these two dominant characteristics of the present American negro. So we might go through the whole list of the conspicuous traits and tendencies of the Am

existing under very different climatic conditions from those in which he was evolved. This does not mean, however, that the negro is in any sense a degenerate. On the contrary, from the point of view of a tropical environment, as we have already made plain, the negro may be regarded as the white

the slave traders were subject to a very severe artificial selection, which, perhaps, secured a better type of negro physically on the whole, and a more docile type mentally; but the chief beneficent i

rty would be sold and the families of his slaves scattered. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the negro learned little of family morality. Again, being property himself, the negro could not be taught properly to appreciate the rights of property. Finally slavery failed to develop in the slave that self-mastery and self-control which are nece

how the percentage of negroes in the population of the United States at differen

ce

......... 18.10 1840 ................................... 16.84 1850 ................................... 15.69 1860 ................................... 14.13 1870 ..........

,000. Nevertheless, it will be seen from the above table that the percentage of negroes in the total population has steadily diminished, although the negro population

in sections. Ninety per cent of the total number of negroes in the country live in the South Atlantic and South Central states. Moreover, over eighty per cent live in the so-called "Black Belt" states,-the "Black

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Washington County, Mississippi, for example, the negroes number 44,143, the whites 5002; in Beaufort County, South Carolina, the negroes number 32,137, the whites 33

able will show the percentage of negroes in the populat

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sed since the war are Arkansas, Mississippi, and Georgia, while in South Ca

d increase of their negro population than of their white population. In other Southern states, however, the white p

r of negroes in these states was still in 1900 comparatively small, New York having 99,000; Pennsylvania, 156,000, Illinois, 85,000, Indiana, 57,000; and Massachusetts, 31,000. This increase of negro population in certain Northern states is, of course, due to the immigration of the negro into those st

0 lived in cities of over 8000 population while the remainder lived in small towns

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e, however, it will be seen that the mass of the negroes in the United States still live in rural districts, although directly after the Civil War and again within recent years there has been a considerable movement of the negroes to the

agree that this number understates the actual number. The census officials themselves repudiated these figures as being entirely misleading. Experts in ethnology have estimated that from one third to one half of the negroes in the United States show traces of white intermixture. The lower estimate, that one third of the negroes of the United States have more or less white blood, is quite generally acc

e in this country have come. The pure negro without intermixture has hitherto seemed incapable of leadership. Such men as Booker T. Washington, Professor Du Bois, and most other negro leaders have a considerable mixture of white blood. A list of 2200 negro authors was once compiled

or with both races; hence the social environment of the mulatto as well as his heredity is oftentimes peculiarly unfavorable. It is not surprising, therefore, to find among the mulattoes a great amount of constitutional diseases and a great tendency to crime and immorality. Again mulatto women are more frequently debauched by white men than the pure blood negro women, and f

that took place under the regime of slavery. Rather intermixture under such circumstances approached not vice, as we understand the word, but polygyny. Consequently some of the best blood of the South runs in the veins of some of the mulattoes. Again, we have examples from other countries of the crossing of the two races, negro and white, without physical degeneracy. In the West Indies and in Brazil this crossing is frequently taking place, and ma

oting only the social effect of the intermixture that has gone on in the past; and we see that on the one hand it has resulted in creating a class of so-called negroes in whom white blood and the ambitions and e

o prisoners to every ten thousand negroes. These statistics show that the negro is everywhere more criminal than the white, and that his tendency toward crime increases as we go North, doubtless largely because in the North he is in a strange and more complex environment and finds greater difficulty in making social adjustments. Moreover, negro crime is increasing. From 1880 to 1890 the negro prisoners of the United States increased 29 per cent, while the white prisoners only increased 8 per cent. Later statistics sho

births among the whites was 2.9 per cent, while the percentage among the negroes was 22.5. In other words, from one fifth to one fourth of all the negro births in Washington during that fifteen-year period were illegitimate. Statistics collected in other cities show ap

r burials are those of negroes; and in Charleston, where 57 per cent of the population are negroes, 96.7 per cent of the pauper burials are those of negroes. In nearly all communities where organized charities exist the negroes contribute to the dependent population far o

tricts the negro birth rate has been found to be equal to about twice the death rate. On the other hand it is a curious fact that in the North the negro fails to reproduce sufficiently to keep up his numbers, consequently the negr

ion. These same cities in 1901-1905 showed an annual average death rate for the whites of 17.5 and for the negroes of 28.4. In several cities the negro death rate is nearly twice that of the whites. When these mortality statistics are analyzed, moreover, while they show that negro mortality at all ages is greate

y to its high death rate, yet it is increasing, and there is no indication as yet that the negro population will decrease. It is probable, indeed, that at the end of the twentieth century the negro population of the United States will be be

f intermixture of races he will be less and less a pure negro, so that at the end of the twentieth

al of the more fit elements among the negroes, and, therefore, towards bringing the negro up to the standard of the whites. The misery and vice which we see among the present American negroes are simply in a large degree the expression of the working of a process of natural selection among them. It

ollars per head of the negro population seems of course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emancipation was in no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few freedmen, the negro at the close of the

at them in that way, but on the other hand, if we consider the disadvantageous position in which the n

, that gives rise largely to the friction between the two races. The negro has not yet become adapted to a system of free contract and is frequently unreliable as a laborer. This breeds co

n of negroes. Since the emancipation there has been a rapid decrease of illiteracy. In 1880 seventy per cent of the negroes above the age of ten years were still reported as illiterate. In 1890, 56.8 per cent; and in 1900, 44.6 per cent. The number of illiterate negro voters in the United States in 1900 was

ear,-the equipment of the school being very inadequate and the teacher poorly trained. Nevertheless the sixteen Southern states have spent, since the emancipation, over $175,000,000 to maintain separate schools for negroes, a much larger sum than all that has been given by Northern philanthropy. In addition to the common schools for negroes there were in 1907-08 one hundred and thirty-five institutions for the higher education of the negro with an annual income of over $2,800,000. In these there were 4185 negro students receiving collegiate

. Since then a majority of the Southern states and practically all of the states of the "Black Belt" have embodied either in their constitutions or laws provisions for disfranchising the negro voter. Louisiana made the provision that a person must be able to read and write or be a lineal descendant of some person who voted prior

t injustice and inequality of some of the laws must, it would seem, react to lower the whole tone of political morality in the South. Again, the very provision of these laws to insure the disfranchisement of the illiterate negro has tended in some instances, at least, to discourage negro

, then, without further discussion. Mr. Booker T. Washington has said that the negro is bound to become adjusted to our civilization because he is surrounded by the white man's civilization on every hand. This optimistic view, which seems to dismiss the negro problem as requiring no solution, is, however, not well supported by many facts, as we have just seen. Everywhere we have evidence that the negro when left to himself, reverts to a condition approximating his African barbarism, and the statistics of increasing vice a

adjust the mass of the race to the social conditions in which they find themselves. We may say, then, roughly, without any injustice to the negro, that the negro masses of this country are still essentially an uncultivated or a "nature" people living in the midst of civilization. The negro problem, in other words, is not greatly different from what it would be if the present negroes were descendants of savage aborigines that had peopled this

t it has failed to help him in any efficient way to adjust himself industrially. Oftentimes indeed it has had the contrary effect and the slightly educated negro has been the one who has been least valuable as a producer. The common-school education has not been such a failure with the white child, for the reason that the white child has been taught industry and morality at home, but these the negro frequently fails to get in his home life. Moreover, the common-school education of the white child has usually been simply the foundation upon which after school days he, as a citizen, ha

ries have introduced industrial education and adjusted their converts to what is perhaps the fundamental side of our civilization, the economic, they have met with the largest degree of success. This success of missionary endeavors along this line has led to the establishment of similar industrial training schools for the negro in this country, and it must be said regarding such schools for the negro as Hampton and Tuske

nrich the educational process; and it may be remarked also that industrial training, while of itself having a strong uplifting moral influence, is not sufficient to socialize without explicit moral teaching being also added thereto. Schools that attem

difficulties which confront any attempt to apply such a solution at the present time. These difficulties may be summed up under three heads: (1) The difficulty of securing adequately equipped schools to gi

e willing to give for many years to come, and which we think they should not be asked to give. As we have already seen, there are more illiterate native whites in the South than in any other section of the Union. This is due in part to the effects of the war which left a majority of the

negro teachers are unqualified for their task of civilizing and socializing their race; hence one reason for the failure of the negro common school. It would seem also that, while competent negro teachers should be encouraged in every way, white teachers should not be absolutely excluded from negro schools; and particularly that white teachers would be necessary if industrial and moral training were to be emphasized in the education of the negro. This brings us to the third difficulty,-the lack of intelligent co?peration by the members of both races. Unfortunately the negroes do not care for the newer education, the education which emphasizes industrial training. Most of them, misled by unwise leaders, prefer the education of the older type and think that industrial trainin

The Southern states should not be expected to furnish these funds. They have already done their full share in attempting to educate the negro. The negro problem is a national problem, and as a national problem it should be dealt with by the Federal Government. The burden of educating the negro for citizenship should rest primarily upon the whole nation and not upon any section or community, since the whole nation is responsible for the negro's present condition. The trouble is, however, again, that the mass of the Southern people would at the present time undoubtedly resent any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to aid in the educati

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