FROM Democracy and Race Friction by John Moffat Mecklin, (MacMillan Company, 1921); pp. 66-68:
Into this high-strung, militant, and thoroughly rationalised civilisation of the Anglo-Saxon, with his heritage of laws and institutions evolved through centuries of struggle and presupposing the fighting spirit, the negro was thrust, against his will, and with instincts developed in a social, economic, and political setting totally different from that of the white. Deficient in the instinct for group organisation with a view to defence, he has never been a match for the white, even with everything in his favour, as the issue of the struggle between the Ku-Klux Klan and the Union League of Reconstruction days showed. He is handicapped, furthermore, by his inability to find his way through the maze of bewildering legal refinements and complex system of rights which are totally foreign to the negro race genius. Among these, however, the white feels himself entirely at home, for they are the legacy of his fathers, the expression of his group consciousness, and, therefore, the natural battle-ground for the bloodless gratification of his pugnacious instincts. No doubt the spirit of his race spoke through Professor Kelly Miller when he contrasted the “intolerant Teuton” and his militant individualism, Puritan ethics, and exclusive race pride, with the “amiable African” and his peaceful communism, his latitudinarian ethics, and almost entire absence of race pride.1
The failure of the negro as a social organiser or where group cohesion is involved is apparently the more remarkable in view of his gregariousness. However, it is not the gregarious or socially sympathetic peoples that have been the most successful in creating social institutions. The Veddahs of Ceylon show more pronounced gregarious instincts than either the ancient Roman or the modern Englishman, but as social architects they cannot be compared with these empire builders.1 Much of the shrewdness and mother wit of the negro and his remarkable ability in reading character and in interpreting the minds of others is due to his highly developed social nature. It, together with his submissiveness, explains his excellence as a slave, particularly in the more intimate relations of body-servant, where his keen sympathies enabled him to anticipate his master’s wish almost before its expression.2 For this reason also the isolation and individualism of the country, except in thickly populated sections, such as in parts of the “black belt,” do not attract the negro as much as the gregarious life of the town.8 The gradual segregation and concentration of the coloured population which is taking place not only in the larger cities, but also throughout the country regions is due primarily to the negro’s strong love of his kind.4 The pronounced gregariousness of the negro and the consequent tendency to seek the sanctions for conduct in the larger and laxer sphere of casual social contacts rather than in rational individual interpretations of moral issues throws some light upon the latitudinarian ethics of the negro and his amazing lack as a class of a sense of personal moral responsibility.
There are countless other innate differences between white and black as well as between other races, perhaps even between peoples and nations, less marked than those just mentioned. They are far too subtle ever to be included in any system of anthropometries or caught by the processes of the psychological laboratory, and yet they exert, by reason of their persistence and unchangeable character, an influence of the greatest importance in the shaping of national cultures and traditions.
