They stand back to make room for every
rascal and demagogue who chooses to cloak his selfish deviltry
under the veil of race pride.
Is this right? Is it rational? Is it good policy? Have we
in America a distinct mission as a race–a distinct sphere of
action and an opportunity for race development, or is self-
obliteration the highest end to which Negro blood dare aspire?
If we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we
find it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between
different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in
feeling, in ideals of two different races; if, now, this
difference exists touching territory, laws, language, or even
religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the
same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other
hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and
religion; if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic
life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on
the same street, two or three great national ideals might not
thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive
together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better,
than in isolation. Here, it seems to me, is the reading of the
riddle that puzzles so many of us. We are Americans, not only by
birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our
language, our religion.
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