The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-11-02
EDUCATION AND EQUALITY.

All because President Roosevelt en-
tertained at dinner Booker T. Washing
ton, the negro president of negro
school in Alabama, there is raging a
storm which threatens to eclipse that
which blows about his policy of ap-
pointing good men, whether or not they
are negroes, to office in the south.
There are many foolish things being
said during this war, things which had
better be left unsaid, but through it all
there is a current of understanding Of
the position of the negro. which prom
Uses In the end to result in the solution
of the race problem Of the South.
While this truly great worker for the
uplifting of his people was at the table
OF Theodore Roosevelt another negro
laborer IN the same field, the presi-
dent OF a school, was quoted in the
great journals of the East as saying
that the hope of the negro was that
ne might maintain his identity and
through education reach position of
racial Importance which would be i'm
possible If there should be any partial
amalgamation. He adjured his people
to not struggle for social equality.
which must result In bitterness, but
TO make a place for themselves and so
fill IL that they would be respected and
live peaceful lives.
1t is the close of the second generation
since the negro question wrought for
the division of the people, and there
fore there may be a calm view taken
of the future and the way in which
the later generations will view the negro
in the life of the republic. No back
ward step ever will mark the Ameri-
can republic. The political equality
which was given to this race by the
American people cannot be taken from
them. But the difference in their social
status, as in connection with the white
people, Is as marked today as it was
forty years ago.
II would be safe to say that of the
majority of the negroes Of the United
States today not one-half ever strive for
social equality with the whites. Men
and women there are of that race who
are as delicate of feeling as any of their
fairskihued brethren or sisters. They
feel the slight of the withdrawn gar
ment, the implied contamination. as
deeply, even more than did their parents
the lash. They are the equals of the
whitest and bluest blooded in feeling,
but there must be worn away by gen.
erations the touch of the social differ
ence which grew from years of servi-
tude and mastery. This feeling is not
constituted of the one race it is as
finely felt as In the same specimen of
the other.
In the city of Washington there is
a church where the best educated and
most perfectly organized society of the
hundred thousand negroes of the Capt.
tai City worship. Into that edifice,
which is an ornament to the city, there
go each Sabbath hundreds Of negroes
whose aim in life is to so live that they
may respect themselves and be re-
spected by their neighbors. Yet white
person Is made to feel actually uncom-
Portable if by chance he wanders into
that church. There is a sense of self
sufficiency among those we'll groomed
and well-bred negroes which renders
them a society apart as we'll from the
whites as from the ignorant and evil
OF their own race. And of this class of
the race in that city there has never
been a criminal. nor any trouble as to
the fourteenth amendment.
1t is from the pushing, talking assert
i've negro that the race suffers. The
Washingtons spend their lives in uplift-
Ing. They leave their people the bet
ter for their lives and labor. The Perry
Carsons are OF another kind and they
create a feeling OF repulsion, for that
tribute which is wrung from an unwill-
ing people, whether of place or posi-
ton. is paid in the coin OF i'll will. The
negro who has forced himself into the
hotel or cafe under threat OF the law.
has found his service too Ill for COM
fort, and the people upon whom he has
forced his society never forget the in
trusion.
The hope for the South is education
The people will be advanced only
through the cultivation of the mass of
the population. and until they have
come TO realize that this is their only
hope. until they abandon their effor 10
wrest recognition which is wit lheld
from ancient prejudice. rather COM
polling 1t by personal attainment. there
will be a race question and the Anglo
Saxon Will not be the one who suffers.