The Race questions

Title

The Race questions

Creator

Gardiner, Robert

Language

English

Year

1966

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The question of prejudice against colored people.

Fulltext

■ The question o£ prejudice against colored people. THE RACE QUESTIONS There is literally a multi tude of myths and dogmas which purport to explain ra cial differences. They range from biblical explanations to zoological classifications. As one explanation loses its novelty or its power to con vince, another emerges. The persistence of race theorists is astonishing. Why do they go to such lengths to find proof for what they obvious ly take for granted? The concept of race resists pre cise definition. All the same, the layman knows perfectly well that there are certain major human groups that differ noticeably from each other — even though there are also noticeable differences between members of any one of these groups. Racism begins with the at tempt to attach values to real or imaginary differences, and the attempt plumbs the depth of absurdity when it produces statements like these: ‘Races which are hairy are inferior to and less human than those which are free from body hair; thick lips are more human than thin lips because apes have thin lips; straight, lank, or wavy hair is more simian than woolly hair’. Where does this kind of analysis take us — if it can be ho nour with the name? Exact ly nowhere. Simian features appear to have been distri buted among the races with a fine impartiality. What race theorists fail to establish on the basis of mea surable physical differences, they try to explain in terms of inherent psychological dif ferences. But this is tricky ground too, for people’s re actions to psychological tests are very much affected by s o c i o-economic conditions, and by acquired habits and skills which are hard to as sociate from innate ability. For instance, it has been es tablished that there are no completely culture-free or language-free psychological tests. 4 Panorama In everyday terms we speak of people as being of ‘Eng lish blood', ‘German blood’, ‘Negro blood’. We speak of one as ‘pure-blooded’, of an other we say that he is ‘half breed’ or ‘half-caste’, or oneeighth this or one-sixteenth that. It sounds very precise to say that if one of the six teen direct ancestors of a per son — that is, a great-great grandparent — belongs to a particular race, then he is one-sixteenth a member of that race. In Brazil there are special names for different racial mixtures — whiteAfrican mixture is a ‘mulato’; an Indian-Portuguesse mix ture is a ‘caboclo’; an IndianAfrican mixture is a ‘cafuso’. But genetically a man cannot be described as if he were a cocktail or an omelette I Anyway, if these ‘recipes’ haVe any value as descrip tions of people’s physical types they are useless in cases where members of the same family — brothers and sisters, even — have totally different complexions and physical characteristics, to the point where some are regarded and treated as Negros and others pass for whites. Race relations are rooted in accumulated experiences and memories of the past, in frustrations and grievances of the present; these are the things which determine the mood in which peoples meet, that give birth to preconcep tions and attitudes which get in the way of mutual under standing. Dr. Albert Schweit zer surprised us when he said: ‘My general rule is never to trust a black’. A Gold Coast statesman, Nana Sir Ofori Atta, said in the Legislative Council in 1939: ‘Whiteman is a whiteman, he will not leave his brother whiteman and support you. Do you think the Government will support you, black man?’ A former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia is report ed to have said: ‘Africans, until they are very much ad vanced, are all liars'. And then there are the dogmas. A Governor of Mis sissippi is reported to have said: ‘The Negro is singu larly tractable and amenable to control by his well-recog nized superior. For this rea son the Egyptian, the Roman, and the Turk paid higher prices for them than for other slaves’. Needless to say, this seemingly scholarly February 1966 5 pronouncement has no basis in fact. But the Governor is not alone in his illusion. The late F i e 1 d-Marshal Smuts, addressing an au dience in New York, once remarked: ‘Apart from the donkey, the Negro is the most patient of God’s crea tures’. Questioned about this, the Field-Marshal answered that he was praising the vir tues of Negros, and that his remark had not been intend ed to be an insultl It is not generally realized that Negro resistance to slave ry never ceased. Indepen dent and purposeful slaves on American plantations were usually ‘sold down the river’, as the expression was, to harsher and more ruthless masters. Captured runaway slaves and insurrectionists were quartered or broken on the wheel. Haiti became in dependent as a result of a rebellion of its slaves. Fu gitives from slavery formed independent settlements in Guiana, where they became the ‘Bush Negroes’, and in Jamaica, where they were named the 'Ma r o o n s’. Among the early settlers in Freetown, Sierra Leone, were rebellious Negroes who had been specially selected for re patriation. There is no short age of evidence to show that the Negro worked relentless ly to emancipate himself and to regain his status as a man. Apart from resisting slave ry, Negroes developed a group consciousness which provided a basis for a kind of black nationalism. The white man’s religion and ci vilization — everything white — was regarded as part of an arrangement to enslave and humiliate the black man. There have been two trends in black nationalism, repre sented by two anti-slavery agitators, Delany and Frede rick Douglass. Douglass’s school of thought sought to secure the rights of the Negro in a multi-racial so ciety, and it is carried on in the policy of the present-day Civil Rights movement. Delany’s attitude finds expres sion in the Black Zionist movement of the ’twenties, which was led by Marcus Garvey, and in the Black Muslim movement of Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, whose aim is to build a Negro society in isolation. In his study of the race question, An American Di 6 Panorama lemma, the Swedish econo mist Gunnar Myrdal estab, lished what he termed a 'rank order of discrimina tion'. This is a set of topics about which upholders and victims of racial discrimina tion feel most strongly. Myr dal lists them from the point of view of white Americans in descending order of inten sity. Marriage and sexual relations rank the highest, followed by conventions in tended to deny social equal ity; then there is segregation in the use of public facilities; next comes political disen franchisement; then comes discrimination in law courts and by law-enforcement of ficers; and at the bottom of the list are restrictions on the ability to purchase land, secure credit, and obtain em ployment. Myrdal notes that ‘the Negro’s rank order is just about parallel, but inverse, to that of the white man’. In other words, the com plaints which were at the bottom of the white man’s list — jobs, education, hous ing, political rights and just treatment by the courts and law-enforcing authorities — are at the top of the Negro’s list. The same pattern ap peared in what were called 'the African Claims’ which were adopted in 1945 by the National Congress of South Africa, some of whose activi ties I have mentioned. In short, the most pressing dis abilities are economic. Po verty, social debasement, and lack of political influence ex pose the deprived sections of a community to abuse, ex ploitation, and injustice. An improvement in economic status could lead to fuller public acceptance and to equality before law; but the lack of these social rights makes economic improve ment impossible. To return to my categories of fear: the intensity of feel ing about inter-marriage, which came first on the white man’s list, is closely linked with the fear of miscegena tion. It is an aspect of most caste and class systems. The rule has been for the male members of the dominant races to take women of the subject or conquered peoples, and where there has been ethnic domination most per sons of mixed ancestry have for their fathers or grandfa thers members not of the sub Fkbruary 1966 7 ject group but of the ruling group. The contemporary male member of what used to be the ruling races has in herited a sense of guilt which grossly exaggerates his fear of the reverse process — of the formerly subordinate group becoming sexually do minant. And unscrupulous politicians and racial psycho paths exploit this fear. Richard Wright once made the defenders of ‘racial pu rity’ an offer: he suggested that an inter-racial covenant should be signed which would guarantee that: ‘The white man’s eyes shall re main forever blue, his skin forever white, and his hair forever blond, provided that he does not continue to pre sume that the natural re sources of the world belong to him and that all other peoples are means placed at his disposal merely because his eyes are blue’. The peoples of the world are trapped in a vicious cir cle composed of notions of superiority and inferiority, of suspicion, misconceptions, preconceptions, frustrations, and insecurity. Above all there is fear. It is fear that sets the racial moods, and if we are to break the vicious circle we must concentrate our assault upon these racial fears in all their forms. Hat red and intolerance are not innate in peoples; they are the children of fear, as fear is the child of ignorance. Ultimately, what racial minorities seek is not any body’s to give. The domi nant races will not be any poorer by recognizing the rights that are now denied to much of the world. When this fact is appreciated in all its significance, our moods will change. And change they must, because the solu tion to our problem is to be found in a society of free men. There is all the dif ference in the world between 'free’ and ‘freed’ men. No body is being required to free anybody. A world of peoples will consist of societies in which men are free. No one can give equality; all that can be shared is res pect. — Robert Gardiner, Home Service of the BBC. 8 Panorama

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