Omaha daily bee., 1919-11-06
British View of Our Negro

September 80. the correspondent of the London
Times considers the relation between whites
and blacks in the United States. His article
reads:
Another race riot, this time in Omaha, accen-
tuates the fact that the United States is still
far from finding solution of what is when all
is said and done the most difficult, though not
Immediately. the most important, of her social
problems. A good deal has been said in pre-
vious articles of the movement for the proper
Americanization of citizens of alien blood
Things like the steel strike, which would not
have come about had It not been for the In
hammability of the foreign labourers in the
mills, show that the movement 10 4 much
needed one.
For the negro question there is no such
ultimate cure as yet visible. The descendants
of the slaves of Colonial days and of the first
era of independence, are already as much
lessons of the present situation is that the
farther upwards they move in the social scheme,
the greater their discomfort and the greater the
prejudice against them of the whites with whom
they compete.
There are in the country over 100000
people of black or mulatto blood. In the old
days the vast bulk of the negroes, who thus
number about ten per cent of the population,
were to be found in the Southern States,
1t is the custom of the negro to live in we'll
defined quarters of the cities Even in Wash
ington one finds whole streets given up to
coloured people, tucked away in the midst of
the best residential quarter. As the negro
crowds North the old coloured district becomes
unable to hold him; he Stops out in adjoining
streets His presence in them is resented, and
there is bad blood. This bad blood is often
of his new competitor. A crime against
white woman, something of that sort, and
the fat is in the fire.
The war has also hardened the feeling Of the
negro against the white. He was sent In large
numbers to France He found in France no
| particular colour line drawn against him.
He was received as an ally and not as an in
feror. 1t irks him to return to the inequalities
OF the home he went to fight for, to the Jim
Grow" laws of the Southern States that provide
various schemes, like the Grandfather Clause"
whereby. some States confne the suffrage to
those whose grandparents were free, in order
to deprive him of the vote that was constitu-
tionally given him after the Civil War. 1t
irks him the more inasmuch as he is told by
his organs in the Press that the American High
Command tried to get the French to treat him
as he was treated at home. Proud of his new
found sense of discipline, he is not deaf to pro-
pasganda against, allowing himself to be ex-
then, when the crisis is over, to be put back into
position of recognized inferiority. 5
For many years past there have been two
theories about the education of the American
negro. One. idea has been to concentrate
upon technical education to bring. him up to
manual trades, and to encourage him to be-
come small farmer. The other idea has
been to treat him as a white man, to give
him a higher education. The later policy
has had considerable success; There have
been negroes high in the Federal service There
are good coloured doctors and lawyers; and
there are many thousands of negroes, probably,
rich enough to own their own motors and that
sort Of thing. In New York, for instance,
there is a most prosperous cploured community.
living together in good streets and good houses,
with it's own theatres and all the other trappings
of civilization
-. But there is reverse side to the shield
The intellectual negro seems to take rather
kindly to Socialism and organized agitation
Thus one finds, besides the National Associa-
ton tor the. Advancement of the Coloured
People, which has many white members a
number of purely coloured organizations like
the League for Democracy. an organization of
coloured soldiers aflame with grievances against
the. white officers they had in France the
Universal Negro Improvement Association,
whose program is to awaken class conscious
ness among the negroes here and in Africa
and to knit together all the colored races of
the world, the National Association for the
Organization of Labor Unions among Negroes,
the Hamitic League of the World the League
OF the Darker People of the World, and so on
so on.
Nearly all SuCH associations are extreme and
run by young colored socialists, often aided
and obetted by professional white extremists
OF the type that causes so much trouble among
the alien proletarat Some of them publish
lnHammatory organs like the Messenger of
New York, the Crisis of the same city. or the
Boston Guardian, whose editor W. NJ Trotter,
a Harvard graduate, after fruitless visit to
the peace conference, lately told the senate
committee on foreign relations to look out for
race rising if the white. did not mend their
ways. Even the Industrial Workers of the
World have been getting recruits among the
negroes in the south, fact which made the
American Federation of Labor decide this year
to countenance coloured unions, much to the
disgust Of the southerners.
To this the white reply, as has been seen
from the news of recent months, has too often
been mob force. Mob protection is the only
protection of the white mans home" cried tbe
other day the paper of former senator of the
United States, published in Mississippi, in the
course OF an article calling on the 'best and
6ravest IN the state to organize "snce there
is no doubt that hell will be to pay in this
country in the near future"
=. But enough has been said to show how
discomfort, merging often into impertnence and
sometimes criminal misbehavior the one
slde and sometimes rough intolerance on the
other are exacerbating problem already diff
/ cult The process is depfored by the vast ma
Jority OF sober whites and by many thoughtful
negroes 1t is quite probable that the better
sense OF the nation will prevent its going so
iar as some profess to fear; but for the moment
1t /: not the least troublesome feature of a gen
eral situation teeming with other problems of
race amalgamaton. Nor is it one the existence
OF which we afford to overlook There can
be little doubt that the extremists would like
| to extend their propaganda to Our possessions