Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1893-01-12


| To the Editor Of The Evening Star:
find on reading this evenings STAR yor
have had communication from fastidioul
and hypercrltical, as we'll as anonymous mem
Der of our much mixed race variety, who OBJ.
jects to being called negro, colored or Afro
American. and makes my use of the first Of
these terms lin address before the Second
Baptist Church Lyceum) the basis of said com.
muncation.
Your correspondent asks: us not American
good enough and sufficiently comprehensive to
embrace all Of our population" and forthwith
proceeds to show it is not by using the word
"colored' four times to designate the partic-
ulaT branch Of the heterogeneous American
family to which he belongs and about which he
is writing. He disclaims ''any advocacy of the
word 'colored' (Which he uses twice with and
twice without quotation marks. though the
last named is, think, most sensible of all and
sanctioned by long usage in a respectable
sense"
There would be just as much common
sense says he, Sin striving to make the ma
tional designation of the people Of England
white instead Of English as in trying to per-
manently fasten the name negro on one-eighth
OF the American people" He fails to see in
this knockdown argument against the use of
the word ''colorsd' also, for a majority Of this
nondescript eight millions are black, not
''colored, and negro from niger means
black" He is willing we should use the term
African because ''it means something" forget
ting we are no more Africans. pure and simple.
than we are negroes-one means that portion of
the black race directly from Africa, while the
other designates the black race wherever found.
The writer Of this is not stickler for race
names. She uses them interchangeable because
the American people know just who are meant
by the use OF any of them. She knows 1t is not
our name 80 much as our actions which shall
n Ifynff nd ,<6l L. A a
there are two ways by which prejudice against
name is uprooted. One is by giving person
or race new name Of dignity, which is used
on all occasions, and thus made popular: the
other is by making the name given YOU one of
dignity and honor. as did the Christians, Meth
odists, Puritans, &c. or the two methods
more often choose the latter, as there has never
been time when l was ashamed of being iden-
titled with the black race. With Shakespeare,
believe "a rose by any other name would smell
~ sweet" and there is too much to be done to
waste time in clamor about those things which
do not OF themselves make for themselves the
truest progress.
But your correspondent Of yesterday sneers
at the ''self-constituted leaders and poorly
educated and badly informed Journalists who
are trying to christen the race negro and
he freely designstes their action SILLY" mon
sense and folly" He should have been espe-
cially careful toprove himself uudeserving those
epithets, and not guilty Of misrepresentation
and ignorance. II he knows anything at all Of
history, he knows that negro was race
designation before these leaders and Journalists
themselves were christened, and that it were
impossible at this late d-y to try to fasten
name which has had ut least 800 years nndis-
puted sway. He unwittingly reflects his own
mental caliber when he stamps a. q .ssilIy
absurdity" the word Afro-American. One Of
the principal stocks whence we derive our
language was not wholly East Indian, nor
wholly European. but mixture Of both, which
became the Indo-European. The same deriva-
ton makes one OF our sturdiest races, not the
Angles alone, nor the Saxons only. but the
conjunction Of races and names to denote the
union-the Anglo-Saxon. By this same deriya-
ton we get Afro-American, the most classic and
therefore the most correct and comprehensive
Of them all Ina b. WELLa