The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-09-26

out of the question the late dismissal o
teachers, whether we have not all along beer
making too much ado over this matter o
mixed schools.
Our children reach school at about 81 A
NJ, and return home at about 3 T. M. They
are thus in contact with their schoolmatei
seven hours day, for five days in the week
Most of the time however, is devoted to siien
study. Of playtime there is the half houl
before school, the halt hour of recess, and lei
us say another half hour of stolen moments
including the breaking up of school; IN all
one hour and half in the twenty-four, ad
| hitting the pupils to free contact with each
other. Counting the net school year at forty
weeks, and the school week at five days, we
find that this opportunity for "mixlng
amounts to something less than l-29th part OF
the time.
But, "not so fast" some will say. At
school comprehensive are formed which
reach bevond school hours and into social
life. True enough. Our children will do as
we did when we were in school. They will
select and confer free companionship upon
certain playmates, according to their own and
their parents ideas of mental calibre, moral
worth and social position, and the rest OF the
sc hool may 60 it's way. This fact, then, is
rather an argument against our hostility.
The school-room neither requires nor induces
social equality. Social equality is matter of
personal preference, which preference must
tie mental before the social equality can begin
to exist
But here the arqoinlent,tm dd honainem is
thrust in "How would you like your son or
daughter to sit at desk with negro?"
Should we ask "what harm ?" we are quickly
ans wered, "harm enough the negro is an in
ferior being" Chow do you know p "Why,
he belongs to an inferior race" All so he
does; yet he might bs superior to my son and
help him "do his sums" for all that. But
suppose him to be inferior. After all my boy
may 60 to public school, mixed or upmixed,
for twenty years, and never happen to sit with
an exact equal, either physically, socially,
mentally or morally; however, if he behaves
himself, he will most likely have deskmate
of his own selection. Let us at this point
note particularly that for generations parents
have been sending their children to our pub
lie schools, recognizing with IMMUNITY the fact
that their children there met schoolmates too
far beneath them in the social scale to admit
of speaking acquaintance beyond the walls
Of The school-yard.
The opponents of mixed schools propose to
afford equal but separate advantages to each
race distinctively. 1t behooves them to show
that it can be done without great additional
expense. But after all, do what we can, the
distinction is odious; for though accommoda-
tons were every whit equal in two sets of
schools, should one set be closed against any
class other than the blacks, as, (for example
merely, the Irish, | need not say what indig
nation would be aroused, nay, what blood
would be shed, nor how quickly the closed
doors would be battered in. And yet, what
ever our good Hibernian citizens may think,
A. II Ia thzyv
mistaken, who do not consider the Ang lo-
SIX IN race su oerior to the Celtic. The ques-
ton of superiority OF race, take it, is not
sufficient cause for separating children where
contact does not and can not place them on an
equality.
You, Mr.. Editor, have not space, nor
leisure, to discuss the question of colored
teachers. 1t is not the main issue. But |
can say in passing, that hundreds of demur-
ring parents among our people have had their
children nourished at the breast of negro
nurses-fo these parents to object to their
children being taught by an educated and
polite m 1latto is rather illogical
word upon the school tax. This ought
never to be considered an expense. 1t is an
investment, and the most paying public in
yes ment that is made 1t is every citizens
interest to have the masses educated. Ines
timably more expensive will it be for US to
refuse TO provide tor, or fer us to hinder, the
elevation of the many thousands among US,
whose dense ignorance and incapacity is to-
day the greatest incubus that lies on the ma
terial interests of the State. If we withdraw
our children from the public schools on the
color line thousands of poor parents will fol-
low the example and their children will go to
that school of depravity, the street, whose d.
ploma at last is a shaved head and striped
suit. I would rather pay for schools than
prisons, though l and all my kin were child
less.
There is much said about race antipathy.
believe in it more strongly than do the op-
ponents of q mixed school system. But see
our diem ma : if there is no natural antipathy
between the races we have no right to make
one; "less happy" as Gamaliel said, "we be
ound warning against God; )" but, and if there
S this native antagonism, I have that con-
i ience in the Caucasian race to believe it will
preserve its purity without the bolstering aid
Of mass meetings, or the expulsion of we'll
behaved children of color from the schools
" here they are now attendant without injury
TO any person concerned.
If the race is inferior, we can the better
lfford to give them an even start If any
child, colored or colorless, is dirty or vicious
he rules of the school will compel his expul-
'lOus IL uO 10 uOt, dohs dhu npPOoi w OhOh
leaders, sense of fairness for his answer, what
harm will the child do?
Yes, the black race is inferior to the white
The Almighty has established inequality as a
principle in nature. But the lesson it teaches
s magnanimity. not scorn. To apply the
words of Coleridge:
'sThe great God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all"
How aptly might the quotation lately made
" the Hon. Mr. Gladstone from Tennyson'S
Guinevieve be repeated to us:
ssFor in those days
70 knight of Arthurs noblest dealt in scorn;
,ut if a man were halt or hunched, in him
,y those whom God had made full-limbed and
tall
corn was allowed as part of his defect,
md he was answered softly by the King
md all his table,
A SOUTHERN WHITE MAN
A London street is called after Shakespeare,
nd Boston pa er thinks 1T should be al
IyOn-uo.
sHssss@Hsur1,..1sz<ns
Died.