St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1940-09-20

position of COlOred people In the
cruder instances of white folk mis-
treatment of COlOred people get a
rise out of US: false charges of
rape, judicial railrOading, whip
pings and lynchings - these whip
us into a fury as long or shOrt-ived
as our particular sensibilities allow.
But it is Of the subtler proscrip-
lions, the morality of racial infer
iority, the quiet but demoralizing
little day-to-day indignities which
more or less unconsciously accom-
modate Colored people to the struc-
ture of life as organized and lived
in the United States, that I am
thinking.
Now, it is obvious that in order
to cOunteract the tendency to this
accommodation to an inferior
status and it's attendant moral JUS
tificatiOns, or, better still, rationale
cations, it is necessary that COlOred
people sustain a mood of protest,
cultivate a social ethics and politics
whose function shall be to view
realistically the relation COlOred
people sustain both to the dominant
groups in the United States and
such minority groups whose posi-
ton make them the logical, if not
the actual allies of COlOred Amer
leans, and to work out techniques
of action which at once carries on
continuous bOmbardment of the
bulwarks of PREJUDICE held by
these dominant groups and seeks
to turn a logical into an actual al
lance with other aspiring minority
groups.
To do this requires a desire and
willingness on the part of Colored
people to examine their position
critically and without those little
half-conscious apologies people ac-
customed to living on an inferior
stratum are inclined to make for
themselves and to themselves. Pre-
cisely, it means that Colored people
in the United States must begin
consciously and convincingly to be-
lieve that all men are created
equal, are endowed with certain in
alienable rights; that democracy
means nothing if it does not mean
equal opportunity for black as well
as white; that freedom, like re-
spect, must be won; and that to
win it a people must believe it
deserves it.
Beliefs are, even in this day of
widespread unbelief, the structure
of a peoples character and the mo-
tive power of their aspirations.
People may not be what their be-
liefs are, but they are indisputably
directed and disciplined and delim-
tied by their beliefs. A people with
out significant beliefs are a people
without a sense of directiOn-sOcial
tramps, rOOtless and lost.
Beliefs are necessary for social
ethics and an effective politics. We
must have a valid sense of values,
of morals and social standards, be-
fore we can hope to find the basis
for those techniques and methods
Of action which make possible an
effective politics. Just as colonial
Americans felt and believed they
were worthy to be, and of right
should be, free from England, and
began thereupon to work out those
techniques Of protest and action
which led to independence and
American nationhood, so in the
case of the Colored American, must
significant and deeply felt belief
precede any effective action in their
own behalf. ..... .
The old songs refrain, 81 been
down so long that down DOM
worry me-" is no mood with which
to begin the struggle upward; and
yet it is perhaps no exaggeration ia
say that this is the dominant mood
of millions of COlored Americans
today, as it was yesterday. If it is
argued that this mood is only nat.
ural to men and women so long
prescribed and outraged by preju.
dice, 1t can be countered that the
spirit of resentment, and even re