The Savannah morning news., 1903-04-16
MIR. CLEVELAND AND THE NEGRO
PROBLEM.

1
PROBLEM.
Mr.. Cleveland has a very kindly
feeling for the negro and wants to do
| all he can for his advancement to a
| higher plane of civilization. His speech
at the meeting in the interest of the
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Insti-
| tute at Madison Square Garden on
Tuesday night, in which he gave his
views as to the best way to deal with
the negro, is certain to attract wide
attention, not only because of the es-
TEEN in which he is held, but also be-
cause it shows that he has given the
subject he discussed much thought.
Mr.. Cleveland is right in saying that
the Southern people are ready and
willing to do all they can to improve
the negro's material condition. That
this is so is shown by the fact that
they have taxed themselves heavily
for the purpose of giving him such ed
ucational advantages as they can af-
ford. It is shown also, as Mr.. Cleve-
land points out, by the fact that they
have forgiven him the part he took
in despoiling them during the recon-
struction period. Nowhere in the South
is there any hostility to the Tuskegee
Institute or similar schools for ne
groes. On the contrary, there is very
general approval of them. Indeed, the
Southern people are anxious to see the
negroes educated along industrial lines.
Their desire is that they shall be valu-
able members of the communities in
which they live. To that end they
encourage every means that is calcu-
lated to make them honest, thrifty and
energetic. Mr.. Cleveland seems to I'M
derstand that the task of raising the
negro to a higher plane is appalling in
it's magnitude, for, in the course of
his remarks, he said: 81 believe that
among the nearly 100000 negroes who
have been intermixed in our citizenship
there is still a grievous amount of ig-
norance, a sad amount of viciousness
and a tremendous amount of laziness
and thriftlessness."
But while Mr.. Cleveland has a pretty
fair knowledge of the negro he does
not seem to take broad view of the
negro problem. In speaking of the
Southern people he said: "They do not
believe in the social equality of the
race, and they make no false pretense
in regard to it. That this does not
grow out of hatred of the negro is very
plain. 1t seems to me that there is
abundant behavior among the Southern
whites towards the negro to make us
doubt the justice of charging this de-
NAL of social equality to prejudice, as
we usually understand the word. Per-
haps it is born out of something so
much deeper and more imperious than
prejudice as to amount to a racial in
stinct."
In the foregoing Mr.. Cleveland as
sumes that there is no such feeling
against the negro in the North as there
is in the South. He pretends not to
understand the feeling in the South
which refuses to admit the negro to
anything like social equality, and yet
he must know that this feeling exists
in the North to as great an extent as
in the South. Why then did he in dis
cussing the negro problem view it only
from the standpoint of the South? In
fact, does he not know that the negro
has been forced out of most
of the occupations in the North
particularly in New York city?
1t may be that there is a little
more liberation of the negro in public
places in the North than in the South,
but that is because the proportion of
the population of the South that is
black is much larger.
The fault we find with Mr.. Cleveland
is that he assumes that the negro
problem is confined to the South and
that the feeling with which the negro
is regarded in the North is different
from that with which he is regarded
in the South. AS a matter of fact the
negro problem belongs to the entire
country and the prejudice or the FRA
cial instinct" is as strong in the North
as it is here in the South. Mr.. Cleve-
land throws no light on the problem.
He only says some kindly things about
the Southern people, holding the opin-
ion apparently that they know better
how to get along with the negro than
the people of the North do.