“DURING the centuries of contact, the white man has looked upon the Negro either as a case of hardened degeneracy or he has gone wild in the other extreme of expecting the Negro to assume equal rank with the Caucasian. Both theories are wrong. Possibly equally so. To deny the Negro the right to develop according to natural laws is unjust; to expect him to develop as a Caucasian is a species of sentimental insanity. The one overlooks that he is human, the other ignores that he is a race. He is human and should not be denied the right to work out his own salvation. He is a fully constituted race and like other races, is possessed of ineradicable race instincts and tendencies, and may work out his salvation along race lines only. This understanding of the Negro and the Negro problem will be at the bottom of any rational dealing with the Negro and the problem he constitutes to civilization.

“In the Ideal Negro State the Negro will develop as a Negro, in accord with his race instincts and capacities; but he may need white guidance in the first stages of his independence. Heretofore the white man has made the Negro work for the white man’s advantage. In the ideal Negro State, the white man, if there be need, may direct the Negro’s work for the Negro’s welfare. Heretofore the white man has received chief profit from the Negro’s labor; under a rational system of developing the Negro the latter alone will profit from his toil.

“Transplanted to Africa, the Negro, under the temporary tuition of the United States, will be able to work out his own destiny. Our knowledge of his history shows us that his future is to be as a Negro.”

— Earnest Sevier Cox, White America, 1937 (p. 61)

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