AMERICAN MERCURY - May, 1928

# A NEGRO LOOKS AT RACE PREJUDICE

BY JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

I ONCE heard a Negro say, "It's no dis-
grace to be black, but sometimes it's
mighty inconvenient." That expresses
the general attitude of Negroes in the
United States regarding their situation on
account of race prejudice. Undoubtedly,
the thought that Negroes are naturally
ashamed of their color furnishes white
people with a pleasing expansion of self-
esteen. I can understand how the idea that
the primary urge of the millions of colored
people in the United States to be white or
at least whiter would add to the swollen
condition of the Nordic superiority com-
plex; but, speaking out of a lifetime ex-
perience as a Negro, I know the idea is
false. The American Negro is not innately
ashamed of his color. Such efforts as he
makes to approach the American color
standard are due fundamentally to strong
economic and social urges. One thing the
Negro has learned so well that it has sunk
down into his subconsciousness, and that
is that the United States puts a higher
premium upon color or, better, lack of
color than upon anything else. Few Ne-
groes there are who have not brains enough
to analyze their capabilities and reach the
sound conclusion that the only thing stand-
ing between them and a good job as a
plumber or a higher position as an execu-
tive is a shade or two of complexion.

Now, in the little over three hundred
years that the Negro has been in America
his complexion has undergone consider-
able lightening; however, the most of it
has been accomplished not by any artificial
means but with the voluntary coöperatión
of the whites through a well-known bio-
logical process. The artificial practices of

today do not evidence any innate shame of
race or color; rather do they signify an
effort to circumvent the handicapping in-
convenience and what is often the actual
danger of being black in these United
States. They are, indeed, more or less the
manifestation of a natural defense adapta-
tion. These tendencies are being studied by
the scientific-minded and much written
about by others. The others draw a num-
ber of deductions—most of them deroga-
tory to the Negro—from the fact that
among urban colored people the darker
men show a general tendency to marry
lighter women. The true deduction to be
drawn, when all the facts are considered,
is that these men are doing merely what
is quite natural and in no small degree in-
escapable. And I cannot see where they are
making any greater sacrifice of self-respect
than the rich of this great democracy who
purchase for their children's children the
advantages which they think titled ances-
try and aristocracy carry.

During the major portion of my life
I have given voluntary and compulsory
study to this question of race prejudice in
the United States. I have looked at it from
many angles. I have taken in a close-up of
it in the heart of the darkest South. I have
viewed it in perspective from across the
seas. Yet, I must confess, the longer I study
it the more paradoxical and absurd it
seems. And, contrary to what many people
may think, the closer the view the greater
the paradoxicality and absurdity. What,
now, is the honor point on the escutcheon
of Southern aristocracy? In a word, what
is the *sine qua non* of a background of social
prestige below the Mason and Dixon line?

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THE REHABILITATION OF WHISKEY

51

who are outraged by the spy system of Prohibition enforcement will increase.

Moreover, to the new generation, the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act will have none of the sanctions claimed for them by the generation that debated Prohibition and enacted it into law. By 1950 America will have an electorate that took no part either in the discussion or the vote on the Eighteenth Amendment. It was never consulted on the question of Prohibition and it will be deaf to the argument that it should obey a law which it never enacted. We see now, in many of the older States, Sunday laws handed down from Colonial times, enacted by a generation that never knew automobiles, golf, moving pictures, radio or vending machines. As all these things become part of the common life, the new generation, without troubling itself to examine or repeal the ancient statutes, simply disregards them, and modifies its Sunday activities according to the age in which it lives. It will be so with Prohibition when the generation that knew the open saloon and had a violent aversion to whiskey has passed away and is succeeded by a new generation which holds whiskey in considerable esteem and feels a violent aversion to the methods of spy government.

## VI

Thus, by prohibiting it, whiskey has been restored to popular favor. It is but one more example of the fact, so often repeated in history, that Prohibition does not prohibit. The so-called experiment of Prohibition began at least as far back as the Garden of Eden. Adam's first transgression was to defy Prohibition. Civilized man has been defying it ever since.

The most successful gospel ever preached, the gospel of Jesus, is without prohibitions; and it is strange indeed that Christians, who daily read this gospel or who know anything of Christian history, should believe in Prohibition. If Prohibition had been effective, there would be no Christians,

no Protestants and no Bibles. Prohibition was tried against the first Christians, against the first Protestants, and against the first Bibles printed in a popular tongue. It was not only completely ineffective in each case, although enforced with a rigor and harshness that would almost satisfy a fanatical Methodist bishop today, but it multiplied the numbers of those it was directed against. It became a Christian maxim that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"—a maxim again illustrated in the popular sympathy which follows every victim of Prohibition enforcement officers.

Thus Prohibition is now popularizing whiskey just as in the early history of the Church persecution popularized Christianity. Persecutors are the best publicity agents and persecution the best advertising medium in the world. From Nero to Diocletian the prohibited Christians of the early Church endured ten persecutions, and flourished and increased through them all. Every Christian thrown to the lions, tortured, beaten or slain, animated Roman youth with an intense desire to test the precious gospel that inspired such devotion. Finally, under Diocletian, the tenth and last persecution was the most terrible of all; and following it the Roman Empire turned Christian.

Prohibition is doing for whiskey what persecution did for Christianity. It is giving it publicity and popularity. Every still that is destroyed, every cabaret that is raided, every rum-runner sunk or captured, every bootlegger slain, and every miserable fellow sent to jail for the crime of possessing a pint of whiskey incites thousands of young Americans to taste the precious stuff for which men run such risks. If the fanatical drys who preach Law Enforcement are ever persuaded to embark on a zealous campaign of real enforcement, with all its accompanying terrors, it will undoubtedly end in America's going wet. Publicity is the road to popularity, and Prohibition has given whiskey the most effective publicity it has ever had.

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The one and only answer is, the Black Mammy. I have met and talked with a great many Southern white people, and I make the conservative estimate that not one in ten of those who make any pretension to family and good breeding has ever failed to mention and stress his having had a black mammy—at farthest, one generation back. And what does having had a black mammy mean? It means having spent the greater part of one's infancy and childhood in the arms of a black woman and, perhaps, having nursed at a black breast.

## II

Of course, most white people who boast of black mammies are romancing. Naturally, Negroes had black mammies, but black mammies for white people were expensive luxuries and, comparatively, few had them. But even for those of the Simonpure aristocracy who were fortunate enough to have black mammies it strikes me as being in bad taste to be continually calling attention to the fact. I was born in the South, in Jacksonville, Fla., and when I was born my mother was too sick to nurse me. On the corner, in the next block, there lived a Southern white family—and not poor white trash—in which a girl baby was born a few days before. The white mother took me and nursed me during the whole period of my own mother's inability to do it. And so I may say that I had a white mammy; and it may be something to be proud of, but it has never occurred to me to go around bragging about it. Between my white mammy and me there existed a tender relationship through all my childhood; and after I was grown and had left the South, I never, up to the time of her death, went back to my old home without paying her a visit and taking her a small gift.

It is in the South, where race prejudice is the force that moves and regulates and determines the whole social order, where it is the very corner-stone of civilization,

that we find it manifested in the most contradictory extremes. It can be said that nobody loves the Negro more or hates him as much as do the Southern whites. Their reactions run from affectionately allowing some faithful old black servitor to tyrannize the whole family all the way to making a Roman holiday by baptizing some young Negro with gasoline and setting him on fire.

The great American taboo is miscegenation, and the nerve center of the national agony about it is in the South. One Southern regular can put to flight any number of pro-Negro volunteers by firing this broadside: "Would you want your daughter or your sister to marry a nigger?" And, by the way, that is a question which deserves closer analysis than it has yet received. It has been the custom to yield the field before it or reply with some such volley fired in the air as: "Men can be brothers without being brothers-in-law." Some day somebody is going to take that flabbergasting question as a thesis and write a book on race prejudice in the United States that will not omit the most important factor in the whole problem, the factor of sex. But I was going to say that although miscegenation is not only taboo but is also a great bugaboo in the South, it is Dixie Land that has been the chief station for the experiment in race mingling. When I lived in Jacksonville I knew several families whose white and black branches mutually acknowledged the blood tie, and between whom there was a friendly relationship among the half brothers and sisters and the cousins and the uncles and the aunts. Moreover, there is not a Negro over thirty years old and familiar with the South who does not know of the same sort of thing.

Considerable effort is made to create the belief that this intermixture is due only to the lowest class of whites. This is on a par with the report which came out of the Great War that it was only the most disolute women of Europe, the dregs and lees of womankind, who looked with

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favoring glances upon the colored Amer-
ican soldiers over there. There are Negroes
who claim descent on the white side from
those whose names are among the brightest
on the Southern honor roll. I would not
undertake to say how many such boasts are
true, but I do know that the bi-color
families I referred to above belonged, on
the white side, to the "leading families."
At any rate, it is a well-known fact that
in the olden days it was in and around the
big house the mixed bloods flourished.

Through my study and observation of
the tragedies and farces of race prejudice,
especially as they are enacted in the South,
I long ago reached the conclusion that the
so-called race problem is not based upon
innate racial antipathies; indeed, the oppo-
site is more nearly true. Some seven or
eight years ago I went to Atlanta in com-
pany with a white friend. When the train
arrived the Pullman porter put our bags
out, and when we alighted they were both
in the hands of one and the same red-cap.
As we followed this red-cap along the
platform and up the stairs I could see
through the back of his head how his
brain was working on a serious problem
which increased in imminence with each
step that he took. And the problem was
whether to break the laws of Georgia by
taking the white man through the Jim
Crow exit with me or by taking me
through the white folks' exit with him.

I was so fascinated by his mental pro-
cesses and the probabilities of their result
that I lost sight of the fact that the poor
fellow and ourselves were between the up-
per and nether millstones of all the power of
the sovereign State of Georgia. Now, At-
lanta, like all Southern communities, is a
city in which there is not a white household
worth going into in which Negroes have
not gone and even lived and slept. The
finer and wealthier the household, the
more certain is this to be true. Negroes
keep such houses clean, they take care of
the children, they nurse the sick, and with
their own black hands they prepare the
food; yet, the entrance to the Union Sta-

tion, as wide as a city street, is too narrow
for the two races to pass in and out of
together!

It is easy to see that no question of in-
nate antipathy is here involved; it is a
feeling of class, of caste. It is the feeling
that permits the presence of Negro servants
where independent and cultured Negroes
would not be tolerated. There is a sort of
irrational boundary established by the
imagination. However, it is nonetheless
real, either for the Negroes who are cir-
cumscribed by it or for the whites who
conjure it up. I can understand that to a
white person strongly possessed with this
feeling the presence of a cultured, well-
dressed, well-behaved Negro in a hotel or
a restaurant or a theatre or a Pullman car
is an ominous portent. Such a white per-
son may see so far as to discover in it a
sign of the coming overthrow of white
civilization and the impending black dom-
ination of the whole white race. Still, it is
as heartless to laugh at such a person's
fears as it is to laugh at a man with delir-
ium tremens; for to the drunk the pink
serpents are just as real as though they ex-
isted. And the cultured Negro fares just
about the same as though the overthrow
of white civilization and the black dom-
ination of the white race were actually
impending.

III

Some timid white souls fear culture on
the part of the Negro as a threat of social
equality. What is the truth about this
thing termed social equality? The truth
appears to me to be that it is something
that white people are much more con-
cerned about than colored people. As I go
round the country in my capacity as a pub-
lic speech-maker I am continually being
asked about social equality by white
people, but very rarely do I hear it even
mentioned among Negroes. The idea that
cultured colored people spend the major
portion of their time moping around and
waiting for a chance to slip into some

55

white person's parlor is seriously held by
a great many white Americans, but it is
sure to get a laugh in any group of intelli-
gent Negroes. They do carry a heavy bur-
den and have their periods of lamentation
and indignation, but the fact is, Negroes,
no matter what their class, do very little
moping for any reason whatsoever; they
find it too easy to have a good time.

Others must occasionally wonder how,
considering all the conditions, they can
enjoy themselves so fully. Indeed, we Ne-
groes are sometimes ashamed that we can
so utterly enjoy ourselves; we somehow
feel it is a reflection on our intellectuality.
When white people get into the social life
of cultured Negroes on terms of equality—
and that is not an entirely easy thing to do
—they must be amazed at the degree of
spontaneous gaiety indulged in by these
sorely oppressed people. I have said that
Negroes are sometimes ashamed that they
can so utterly enjoy themselves, but the fact
remains that they do enjoy themselves. I
have not found among them the hollow
pretense of having a good time, which I am
sure I have at times detected among white
people. It may be, in the final analysis of
life, that the Negro here possesses a capacity
not to be ashamed of but to be envied.

There are some whites who, I judge,
suffer from a feeling akin to disgust at any
demonstration of culture on the part of
Negroes. It actually gives them a feeling
of sickness or of rage. It upsets their whole
vegetative nervous system. When they see
a Negro wearing good clothes or living in
a fine house or driving his own automo-
bile they discount the universality of hu-
man nature completely and feel that such
a Negro is giving a monkey-like imitation
of white folks. When they see a Negro in
a hotel or a restaurant they feel that he is
there because he wants to be among white
people, not thinking that he may be just
hungry or wanting a place to sleep. At
any rate, down to the present time, the
thing that widens and deepens the gulf
between blacks and whites, particularly in
the South, is culture on the part of the

blacks. Here is a field for the psychologist,
or, maybe, the alienist; however, I think
it is plain that the crisis in this whole
national malady will not be passed until
culture on the part of Negroes begins to
have the effect of lessening prejudice. There
are signs of this change for the better in
parts of the North. And where this change
has come and social equality along with it
no upheaval in the general order of nature,
cosmic or human, has been noted.

In the South the race elements farthest
apart are the intelligent whites and the in-
telligent blacks. The closest contact is be-
tween the well-to-do whites and the ser-
vant class of blacks. It is through the Negro
servants that the cultured whites get their
information about that world so close to
them and yet so far away, the world of the
well-to-do, cultured Negro. This informa-
tion is given to them sometimes voluntarily
and sometimes under pressure of indirect
and direct queries. And strange, indeed,
are some of the tales they are told.

I wonder if it sounds strange when I say
that I do not object to anyone having prej-
udice, even this particular brand we are
talking about? I should rather, for a man's
own sake, that he had a free mind; but if
he really wants them, he can, so far as I
am concerned, retain and maintain as many
prejudices as he pleases. My faith in the
coming brotherhood of man would scarcely
move an ant-hill. I have no shining hope
that the time is coming when everybody
will just love everybody else for no par-
ticular reason whatever. And if such a time
should come I am not sure it would be
quite as blessed as it has been pictured.
But I do long for and look for the day when
people will not allow their lack of love
or even their hate to interfere with the
rights of other people. This day may be
as distant as the day of universal brother-
hood; nevertheless, to my mind, no happier
era could be wished for. So I am willing to
let every man have his prejudices, if he will
agree not to have them interfere with me.

Once I was coming back from Europe on
board a Cunarder. The steward had assigned

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me to a very good seat at a very good table. I noticed after the first meal that the chair which had been occupied by a man on my right remained vacant. I paid no attention to this and would not have given it another thought but for the fact that when we were about a day out of New York one of the passengers with whom I had struck up a slight acquaintance said to me, "Do you object to my telling you something unpleasant?" I replied that my curiosity overcame any objections I might have. Then he told me that the man who sat next to me at the first meal had asked the steward to move him, and afterwards had attempted to circulate a petition among the passengers to have me excluded from the first-class dining-saloon. I said to my informer that I granted the man in question the right to move if I in any way disturbed his appetite or his digestion; that so far as I cared he could move to the farthest table in the saloon or get off the ship; but that I did object when his prejudice reached the point of making me move.

The meanest aspect of race prejudice is demonstrated by the person who goes about injecting the virus into other people.

Suppose a man does need race prejudice to bolster up his own self-esteem and sense of superiority, yet why must he consider it his duty to go around administering his nos-trum to those who are getting on very well without it? I grant him his need, but pro-test against his acting on the assumption that everybody else lacks what he lacks. The professional Southerner argues that anti-Negro prejudice is absolutely neces-sary for the preservation of Southern white civilization—whatever that may be worth—and there is a certain logic in what he says; for, given a fair chance, the Negro would make some changes in Southern white civilization and would at the same time, I think, make some improvements. But what logical reason can the profes-sional Southerner give for crusading for anti-Negro prejudice like a good Mussul-man carrying the faith of Islam by fire and sword to all the world? What is it in him that makes the sight of a solitary Negro sitting in a café in Paris or Berlin allow him no peace of mind until he has put forth every effort to have the black man kicked out? I admit he is a fanatic, but I also insist he is a vulgarian and a bounder.