Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 4, 1922
Walter F. White on Social Equality and “The Negro Question in America”
From The Liberator of January 1922:
What is Social Equality
Walter F. White
No speech uttered in the past decade on the Negro question in America has created such nation-wide comment as that of President Harding recently at Birmingham in which he declared that there must be complete economic, political, educational and industrial equality between white and colored people in the United States, but there must and can never be any “social equality.” “Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly,” he said, “against every suggestion of social equality.”
There can be no objection raised to many of the utterances of Mr. Harding on that occasion. Much credit is due him for daring to say them in the South. The one point on which intelligent Americans will question his wisdom is the dragging in of that Southern shibboleth which has been used for a half-century to cover countless lynchings, the robbery and exploitation of nine million Negroes through the peonage system, the nullification to all practical intents and purposes of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, and the denial of common justice to Negroes in the South. That weapon which the South has used so effectively, especially in hoodwinking and gulling the North, is the charge that any Negro who attempts to better his own condition or that of his race is seeking to place himself as a social equal with the white people of that community.
But what is this thing called social equality? Herbert J. Seligmann, in his able analysis of the race question, “The Negro Faces America,” says:
What does the white American mean by social equality? To take the words at their face value, one would suppose he meant association of colored and white persons in the home, personal intercourse without regard to race. In practice the denial of social equality is not confined to personal relations, but includes civil procedure. The socially inferior Negro is exploited on the farm because white lawyers will not take his case against white planters. As soon as the bar of social inferiority is broken down the Negro threatens the white man with competition. Every demand for common justice for the Negro, that he be treated as a human being, if not as a United States citizen, can be and is met with the retort that the demand is for social equality. Instantly every chord of jealousy and hatred vibrates among certain classes of whites-and in the resulting atmosphere of unreasoning fury even the most moderate proposals for the betterment of race relations takes on the aspect of impossibilism. By the almost universal admission of white men and white newspapers, denial of social equality does not mean what the words imply. It means that Negroes cannot obtain justice in many Southern courts; it means that they cannot obtain decent education, accommodation in public places and on public carriers; it means that every means is used to force home their helplessness by insult, which, if it is resisted, will be followed by the administration of the torch or the hempen rope or the bullet.
And that is just what is done. They would have you believe that if there was not this tiresome repetition of talk about social equality, the very foundation stones of white civilization in the South would crumble. The question reduced to its simplest terms is somewhat as follows. No law can ever be enforced to keep two persons from mutual association, if they find in each other qualities, whether mental or physical, which attract each other. No law can enforced which will compel two persons to associate together, if such association is distasteful to either or both of them. If John Jones does not want Henry Smith to enter his home, there is no way for Smith to enter except as a burglar, and then Jones has the right to use physical means to protect his home. Again, if Mary Robinson does not wish to marry James Brown, there is no way for Brown to force his attentions on her, unless he takes her by violence.
In another portion of his speech Mr. Harding quoted Mr. F. D. Lugard and endorsed Mr. Lugard’s recommendation that “each race must preserve its own race purity and race pride.”One wonders how Messrs. Lugard and Harding propose for colored men to “preserve race purity” in many small towns and rural communities of the South where any Negro is subject to lynching who attempts to interfere with a white man of the community seeking to satisfy his carnal instincts on a colored woman.Such a town, for example, as Milan, Telfair County, Georgia, where on May 24, 1919, Berry Washington, a colored man of seventy-two years, was brutally lynched because he shot two intoxicated white men who were attempting to batter down the door of the home of a colored widow and criminally assault her two comely daughters.If any person doubts this story, I refer him to Case Number One of Governor Hugh M. Dorsey’s recent pamphlet, “The Negro In Georgia,” which can be obtained from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Or, to quote again from Governor Dorsey’s pamphlet (Case Number 126):
“Two Negro women and a man, the nephew of one of the women, lived together. Whites drove the man away and debauched the women. The men were prosecuted and made to pay a small fine.”
The words are Governor Dorsey’s. The italics are mine. Need I say what would have been the results had the races of the parties involved been reversed. Yet these things happened in the South, the habitat of champions of race purity, of white supremacy and of opposition to social equality. Perhaps these doughty Sir Galahads will explain how they furiously repudiate any thought of racial intermingling, and at the same t;me the presence of four million mulattoes among the eleven million Negroes of America. What, after all, does social equality mean? Is it social equality if a colored woman bears a white man’s child? Or is it social equality if that mother wants to ride in the same railroad coach with the father of her child?
There are certain inescapable facts that President Harding, the South, and all of America must face, sooner or later.First, the Negro is in America to stay.Second, there will never be peace nor even the betterment of race relations until there is complete economic, political, educational, and industrial equality between the races, as far as is humanly possible.Third, there can never be economic, political, educational and industrial equality without potential social equality.
Does this mean that any colored man can force his way into any white man’s home and demand of the latter that he allow the colored man to marry his daughter? Not by any means, nor does the converse follow. The right of any given individual to choose his social intimates must and always will remain a matter of individual choice. It does mean definitely, however, that bars to the progress of colored men and women towards the highest development must be removed.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on.
