The Colour Bar
[The Spectator does not necessarily agree with all the views of the writers contributing to this series on the Colour Bar. Our object in publishing the series is to attempt some explanation of why the Colour Bar exists, and to emphasize the importance of the problem for the British Commonwealth. Next week Mr. C. F. Andrews will write on the Colour Bar in South Africa. Our correspondence columns are open at all times to letters which seem to us to add to the interest of this discussion ; and such correspondence is cordially invited.—En. Spectator.]
Why the Colour Bar ?
BY LOTHROP STODDARD.
SELF-PRESERVATION is the first law of Nature." That familiar saying holds true for every form of life. It applies to amoebae and to men. It applies to every sentient group, from beehives and ant-hills to the most highly evolved human societies.
Now, stripped to its essentials, the " colour bar " is a manifestation of this universal urge towards individual and group preservation. Specifidally, it is a defence- mechanism of the white peoples against : (a) non- white immigration ; (b) intermarriage with non-white stocks. These two aspects of . the colour bar should be elearly distinguished from one another. ; for they are different aspects of the problem, although they arise from the same basic instinct and work toward the same end.
The principal reason for exclusion laws against coloured immigration is economic. Living-standards are so much higher in most white lands than among non-white peoples, and the coloured races are so much more numerous, that any lowering of immigration barriers mould mean the rapid swamping of high-standard countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia by hordes of low-standard, coloured immigrants who would depress wage-scales and otherwise upset the whole .economic equilibrium. These newcomers, with their utterly diverse manners, customs, beliefs, and attitudes toward life would likewise disrupt the social and religious fabric in equally devastating fashion. Lastly, the racial effects would be momentous, and, for the whites, disastrous ; because, quite apart from the question of intermarriage, the upshot would be extensive replace- ments of white by coloured stock. Experience has .conclusively shown that there exists a sort of " Gresham's Law " of labour, whereby low-standard men drive high- standard men from their jobs and from the land as surely as bad money drives good money out of circulation. White labour simply cannot compete with " coolie " labour. As Lafcadio Hearn succinctly put it : " The East can underlive the West."
This phase of the colour problem may, to many Englishmen, seem rather academic, since in Britain coloured immigrants (outside Limehouse and the water- fronts of a few port-towns) are virtually unknown. Nevertheless, I have here emphasized it, because English .readers should appreciate both its vital importance to the United States and the Dominions, and also the fact that the colour bar is largely due to economic, social, and -political factors wholly apart from intermarriage.
Furthermore, it should be clearly understood that intermarriage is (practically speaking) a matter of group- preservation rather than of personal predilection or prejudice. Here are the essential facts of the case : While it is doubtless true that there are to-day no absolutely " pure "- races, it is equally true that there are well-defined human stocks which differ markedly from one another, not merely physically, but mentally and temperamentally as well. To claim the contrary—to assert that Englishmen, Chinamen, and negroes only look different, and that a general mixing of these stocks would produce no-deep-going, mental- and temperamental effects—is nonsense.
In all this, so far as protective motivation is concerned, the question of abstract racial "'superiority " or " inferiority " is not necessarily involved. However biological research may eventually grade the races according to innate worth, the fact of difference is already a certainty. And if a bar to free immigration and intermarriage is the only feasible method by which white peoples can maintain their identity, surely it is shallow sentimentality or gross ignorance to stigmatize as mere " prejudice " an attitude and policy dictated by the imperious urge of self-preservation. Cosmopolitan theorists may view with equanimity the prospect of a world-wide " melting-pot " in which all men would be indiscriminately fused. But the vast majority of us believe (and presumably will continue to believe) that in our racial individuality we have a precious heritage which we are in duty bound to hand on to future generations who have the right to be born white in a " white man's " land.
Here, again, to some Englislunen, this may 'sound remote, alarmist, perhaps even - a bit hysterical. ' Yet such persons do not realize how very practical and pressing a matter it is, alike to Americans and to the Dominions overseas. For Australians the motto "All White !" is not so much a " slogan " as a creed. For Australia, the question of racial intermarriage is academic, because Australia has resolutely barred all Oriental immigration. We Americans have accomplished the same thing, so far as Asiatics are concerned, by our exclusion laws. Unfortunately, we already have in our midst a large negro element, numbering fully one-tenth of our total popula- tion. The plain fact of the matter is that, statistically, we are light mulattoes, and the only way we can prevent ourselves from becoming biologically mulattoes is the combined legal and social tabu known as the " colour line."
Let no one imagine that we of the United States and the Dominions have not duly weighed the trouble and the risks involved in maintaining the colour bar. We know, and we deplore, the inevitable complications, ranging all the way from social friction to the possibility of war. Yet, having reckoned the consequences of the alternative, we are willing, if need be, to pay the full price. And nothing that either cosmopolitans or paci- -fists may say is likely to alter our decision.
Indeed, we feel that attacks by religious and humani- tarian idealists upon the colour bar, however well- meaning, do' harm rather than good. What every right- thinking man desires is to foster peace and good under- standing. But what every right-thinking man realizes is that those blessings are attainable only within the limits of reality. Nothing is more dangerous than illu- sions which are presently shattered upon hard fact, leaving naught behind but bitterness and vain regret. Conversely, realities, however stark, if resolutely faced, are a sure foundation upon which to build constructively. ' To denounce immigration exclusion laws and tabus against racial intermarriage as mere snobbery and wicked or ignorant prejudice is to rouse on the one hand a sense of legitimate grievance and moral indignation, and on the other hand, to accentuate fear and drive it into all sorts of emotional " rationalizations." The upshot is that the issue, grave enough in itself, is further clouded and envenomed with needless passions. Only by regarding the colour bar realistically and with common sense can we hope to deal sanely with perhaps the thorni- est problem of our modern world—the relations of the primary groups of mankind.
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