THE NEGRO PROBLEM [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sui,—Mr.
Huxley's article on " The Negro Problem " lute. rested me for two reasons : first, because I am an American ; and, secondly, because I am that problem.
He sees the. African mind in operation in a camp meeting with its accompanying emotional display. But I remember one summer returning to my home town in Ohio to find the whole Protestant population, with the exception of one minister, of whom his entire congregation disapproved, holding revival meetings. At a great expense a huge tabernacle had been erected, where nightly they watched some redeemed souls.." hit the sawdust trail for Christ," as the revivalist vividly termed it. Filled with the zeal of his misson, he divested himself first of his tie, then his collar, then his coat, and finally his waistcoat, as he danced about on the platform, mounting and dismounting from a chair in his fiery ardour. The audience moaned and groaned with him over the lost souls, and shouted for joy when one was saved.
I saw no difference whatever between this and Negro camp meetings in the South, except that the Negro singing was better. Yet the Ohio meetings were composed, not of " damned foieigners," as my townspeople like to call those American descendants of Central and Southern Europeans, but of Teutons and Celts. I had hoped that Mr. Huxley would tell us just what the biological differences between the races are. For surely until this is definitely known there is little scientific value in mere opinions. •
Mr. Huxley wisely dismissed all of the solutions to this vexing problem he put forward. But none of his solutions took into account one psychological phase of the situation which is very clear and evident, and which may, perhaps, be the determinant factor in its outcome. Place a group of people in the midst of a larger one. By legal process, social organization and public opinion deny them the simple rights and opportunities inherent in their citizenship. The result is hate,: -• I think history will bear me out when I say there is no
group in the world so powerful that it can afford to foster the hatred of even so small a percentage as one-tenth of its population. " Sloyery has indeed brought its own Nemesis."
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