A Study in the Theory and Practice of Race
Race theory of recent development (de Gobineau, 1854)—scientific in data and method, pseudoscientific in postulates and conclusions—invariably the philosophy of the dominant groups—propagandist in the interests of the prevailing civilization types: anthropological and ethnological evidence inconclusive, sociological and dynamic theories prevailing—false expectations of ethnopsychology—race theory essentially committed to the historical bias, awaits correlation of biological and sociological science for its final conclusions—meanwhile useful only in the study of primitive social levels and origins, or as a guide to the relative value of hereditary and environmental influences upon social groups.
Racial differences and race inequalities undeniable, traceable invariably, however, to historical economic and social causes: no static factors of race, even anthropological factors variable, and pseudoscientific except for purposes of descriptive classification—race prejudice an instinctive aberration in favor of these factors erected into social distinctions—need for evolutionary and dynamic factors expressing divergent culture stages and civilization types; the real scientific criteria of race to be found in language, customs, habits, social adaptability, and survival—the true theory of race a theory of culture stages and social evolution.
Modern races “ethnic fictions,” the biological meaning of race lapsing—its sociological and cultural significance growing—social perpetuation of race legitimate, but in need of rationalization.
Race is at present favorable or unfavorable social inheritance falsely ascribed to anthropological differences: race prejudice, a social paradox, and as prejudicial to science as to practical social organization and progress. Race contacts increasingly inevitable: modern civilization, dependent upon their successful maintenance and extension demands race reciprocity—false conceptions of race therefore an obstacle to progress and a menace to civilization.
The political and social practice of race world-old, only the theory modern. The sense of race born of its political practice: the race or kinship bond a traditional and important factor in all forms of group organization from the tribe to the nation—civilization as “ethnic competition”—dominance breeds the “political” races; conquest, and the consequent political and economic subordination, determine the “subject” races—“superior” and “inferior” or even the relatively more scientific contrast of “advanced” or “backward” races, a reference in the last analysis to the political fortunes of race groups—for this reason much false race theory is orthodox history—as well as the apologia of prevailing practice: being more vicious, however, in the latter case than in the former.
Imperialism essentially a “practice of race”—ancient imperialism: modern imperialism—the Roman example of race assimilation and culture absorption superceded. Instead of one civilization superimposed upon another, modern imperialism attempts the substitution of its own for the subjected civilization—economic factors the controlling ones in this characteristic modern aim, growing out of the competitive and industrial basis of modern imperialism. Missionarism, the corollary and important moral sanction of modern imperialism, often a pernicious reenforcement of the creed of race superiority—such conceptions, however idealized, complicated by the racial approach, result in implications of a status of dependence and inferiority, and dominance justifies itself as tutelage.
A study of imperialistic practices important because over half of the colored races live within their direct sphere of operation, and the rest indirectly, since the creed and practice of dominant classes is derived from that of dominant states; no such doctrine survives without the substantiation of successful political practice. Anglo-Saxon superiority a trademark of modern empire—literature of Anglo-Saxonism confessedly racial—fundamental European agreement with English theory and policy of empire—the most liberal and enlightened statesmanship (Cromer, Morley, Bryce, Beaulieu, Clemenceau, Zimmermann, Dernberg) insists upon racial ascendancy as the keystone of empire. Adoption of this policy independent of the practice of Empire: the United States a participant and ally in Anglo-Saxon dominance. We confront in this the common factor of modern race problems: The phenomenon of the color line encircling the globe really the result of commercial imperialism, linking up dominant groups on the one hand, and dominated groups on the other. To be subjected to economic subordination and social prejudice similar under modern conditions to being subject to political domination and commercial exploitation. Present-day civilization of a type calculated to stress the ethnic basis (Giddings), and characterized by “ethnic concentrations,” or federations (Finot)—Anglo Saxonism, the Pan-Slavic, Pan-Germanic, and Pan-Anglian movements, and the Pan-Islamic, Pan-Asiatic, and Pan-Ethiopian countermovements. These as tendencies uniquely characteristic of modern civilization need careful study—perhaps peculiar to the expansive types of civilization, or traceable to unusual and not necessarily permanent factors in modern life. This world situation and problem presents great possibilities, if favorably solved—at present it intensifies all specific race contacts and issues, making inter-racial relations the “problem of the twentieth century.”
A study of race contacts the only scientific basis for the comprehension of race relations—yet the history of race contacts is needless, inconclusive, and tantamount to rewriting history: the scientific approach is the sociological, which studies not how the racial contacts have come about, but how society, confronting them, readjusts its life, and works out a modus vivendi—the relations between social conditions and the social code or program constitute the vital phenomena of race contacts.
Danger of erecting phenomena into laws, and of construing race contacts as wholly automatic or wholly deliberate. Race problems, like class problems, originate in the practical issues involved in the relations of mass groups, most often between those that must live together under the same system. The scrupulous regulation of social relationships by race and class codes inveterate, yet no purely ethnic distinction exists apart from underlying political, social, or economic disparities: the tragedy of social forms being that even the necessary recognition in law and custom of these disparities tends to perpetuate them. Complete absorption and wholesale adoption not impossible, and perhaps not infrequent, though it must always seem the exception for historical reasons. Civilization itself a “counter-tendency,” so the conscious checking of “social osmosis” or natural assimilation seems, like self-preservation, the “first law of human society.” Still the social inequalities of race, rather than their equality, invariably provide the conditions conducive to blood intermixture and physical assimilation.
Restricted status the clue to broad racial relations in society—legal distinctions, though conservative and subject to variation through custom, nevertheless the most reliable clues. The older practices of economic, political, and legal disability—as slavery, position of serf, helot, and metic. Modern disabilities characteristically different, though only slavery, of all the many forms of social disability, is inoperative under modern conditions. Peonage and helotage still exist. Reservation with communal or private tenure still a governmental policy in dealing with intractable groups—the Kraal and the legalized ghetto in dealing with groups whose economic cooperation is necessary, and all forms of partially restricted political participation between delegate representation and full political participation, and on the social side from absolute social exclusion to the full recognition of a “mezito” or a representative class, prevail. Much political practice of race is obsolescent, yet much still remains to be eradicated.
Legal disabilities, except under benevolent colonial systems, repellent to the modern conscience. Social distinctions more typically modern—operative in the absence of political and legal restrictions, and intensifying with their sudden removal. Periodicity of race antagonism not yet clearly established, but the necessity of legislative adjustment of group status sufficient in itself to establish waves of moral reform, and of inevitable social reaction. Variability itself, however, provides a margin of social control, and establishes the moral responsibility of society in these matters. Racial antipathy, though instinctive in appeal and operation, cultivated and not spontaneous—as shown by its comparative absence in periods of slavery. A second, subtler phase of race antagonism only develops with emancipation and subsequent rivalries—violent intensification as race contacts pass from one stage or level to another—especially from an automatic to a voluntary basis, becoming acute on issues arousing a sense of social jeopardy. One variety of racial antipathy decreases, and another increases as the unlike race approaches more the level of the civilization type. Native British, French, and Russian racial feeling of the former type; colonial British, Australian, and American sentiment of the latter type. Though yet unexplained, a possible sociological clue to these differences is the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” groups (Cooley).
Color or other cardinal race differences complicate, but do not cause these issues, for they are as intense in southern Europe. It is a problem of social conformation, becoming acute with peculiarly assimilative peoples, of whom the Negro is admittedly the most imitative. Unlike class issues, which within common culture interests are issues of practical and immediate social ends (Schmoller), race struggles project their issues to the ultimate purposes of society, and awake more fundamental antagonisms. They generate a vortex in society until broken up into class issues.
Race feeling has an undetermined relation to population, intensifying with marked changes in its relative proportions, as well as a definite relation to economic condition, varying inversely with economic differentiation, or any condition that permits of the race group’s being thought of en masse. Economic and political disabilities require legislative change and legal control—political equality or participation must either wait upon practical conditions, or tolerate apparent discrepancies, the latter preferable under democratic institutions. Social prejudice indicative of a secondary stage in race relations. The mixed blood the first class to become representative and recognized—an inevitable reaction against this class from without and later from within as soon as prejudice has passed into the social and cultural phases of life. Social problems and relations only remotely touched by legislation—their solution the final stage of any race situation.
Race creeds control social and even political policies, especially under modern conditions—an account of this factor important. Cromer suggests a distinction between ancient and modern society on this point of the psychological complication of race creeds, regarding color prejudice as distinctively modern. Color prejudice and race prejudice not quite the same—its historical factors; its social factors. The psychological factors still undetermined, their study valuable for general social psychology—rooted in the deepest and most indispensable social instincts, like the consciousness of kind—inhibitive in the highest degree, yet of necessity to be regarded as eradicable and to be eradicated. Race prejudice a Moloch of the Baconian “idols,” yet essentially in its recent phases an “idola theatri”—the feature of indoctrination making modem race creeds more pernicious than their practices—evidence in the spread of anti-Semitism in Europe and the second crop of race prejudice in America.
A scientific study of race prejudice awaits the further development of social psychology—closest analogies in class problems involving a sentimental issue—a comparison with class issues imperative. Recent observers frankly admit the irrational element in color prejudice—but these factors remain to be explained: being perhaps the most important, as nearest to the origin of race antipathy in individual and group instincts. Its enigmatical nature as a peculiar phenomenon in democratic societies, and in its relation to social solidarity not to be minimized.
Practically, race prejudice is what it is psychologically, a false standard or tendency of social judgment: the social standards of its exponents and opponents alike paradoxical. The mere verbal transfers among the many meanings of the conceptions of race a real contributing factor. The most fundamental fallacy is the standard used to justify race superiority—this ideal root of the evil disproved (Zollschan), chiefly by pointing out the false identification of race in the ethnological and biological sense with race in the historical and social sense. The derivations of this doctrine in 19th-century scholarship (Aryan superiority and Indo-Germanic accounts of civilization) explain why science has reenforced with theoretical race creeds and political race theory the unfavorable social practices of race. A rational or a purely scientific theory of social culture the great desideratum.
The Biological Fallacy—since physical race integrity is contradicted in practice through miscegenation, race purity is irretrievable and its maintenance as a social fetish and fiction unwarrantable. The Fallacy of the Masses—the estimation of peoples in terms of aggregates untrustworthy, and not our best attitude even in history, which treats representative groups and factors: wherever inevitable, a strict comparison of equivalents must be attained. The Fallacy of the Permanency of Race Types—no race or class maintains its social role or relative social position long, and further the race types change under environmental adaptation: instances among both the Semitic and the Negro peoples. The Fallacy of Race Ascendancy—a bi-racial organization or a dual code socially unstable, generating the very issues that accelerate social changes toward their termination. The Fallacy of Automatic Adjustment—race distinctions partly deliberate; it is a mistake to regard them as automatic in operation and not subject to remedial measures. All these fallacies involve false social standards as well as false habits of judgment. “Social kind” not necessarily “racial kind”—establishing and maintaining a “social kind” is the vital business of civilization.
Civilization committed practically to some kind of adjustment of various races under the same civilization and polity, the bi-racial organization of such societies a typical modern solution, essentially a transitional form—its immediate advantages often cause its adoption even by the group discriminated against—Booker Washington’s acceptance of it notable—as a means to an ultimate end it has appealed to many statesmen having to deal with race problems acutely affecting large groups. Society will not make large concessions simultaneously in the economic and the social fields, even in class issues. The only successful contradiction to invidious race creeds is that of social practice; social theory being invariably conservative, and not lapsing until the customs supporting it have lapsed.
Race as a unit of social thought is of growing importance and necessity—it is not to be superceded except by some revised version of itself—the history of ideas of this kind the history of a succession of meanings—what conception of race is to dominate in enlightened social thought and practice is the present problem. The sociological conception of race as representing phases and stages and groupings in social culture repudiates the older biological and historical doctrines of race as working formulae in social practice, though it does not wholly supercede them in their scientific uses. Physical race or “pure race” is a scientific fiction—biologically, it is irretrievable, if ever possessed—historically, it is an anachronism, being attributed to national not racial groups, and then only to justify the historical group sense—politically, it is a mere policy or subterfuge of empire—it is socially extinct under a competitive industrial order, as its oldest origin as caste was really economic, and required artificial economic limitation for its perpetuation. Social race, or “civilization-type” and “kind,” the only thoroughly rational meaning of race.
Every civilization tends to create or mold its own racial type (Tarde); and if civilization is conformity to civilization-type, races must inevitably follow their social affiliations and contacts according to the social environment. Assimilation, limited on the physical side by climatic adaptability, but involving also the capacities to absorb social culture, is the final racial test under modern conditions. Physical assimilation immaterial, but conducive to more rapid assimilation of social culture wherever prevalent. Social assimilation necessitated by modern political and social organization—and necessary also for progress, since all modern civilizations are “assimilative” and not “spontaneous” cultures.
This process is a real collaboration of races—the alien race has its influence, though not invariably unfavorable as LaPouge asserts. His formula, “It is the lower race that prevails,” an unscientific generalization. Contacts may be in the control of the stronger groups—assimilation or amalgamation depends more upon the attitude of the alien group—if it desires to annihilate itself in merging, no reaction on the part of the other group can stem it. Instances: the Negro and the Japanese both biologically adaptable, and socially imitative; the Japanese in their contact with western civilization have made a reservation in favor of their own racial tradition, and have adopted for the most part only the “utilities” of modern civilization; the Negro, being denied this through slavery, makes in America no reservation, and is on the way to complete culture assimilation. Modern civilization is approximating a common utility civilization (Santayana), but after this has been accomplished, a more stable and diversified culture grouping may reappear.
Anglo-Saxon race contacts unprecedented in extent, and in degree of divergence between the groups—social integration difficult—rapidity of assimilation under democratic institutions develops countercurrents or reactions. Afro-Americans confront the most paradoxical situation, one that involves the ultimate race issue, if not the ultimate solution. Mere social “imitation” useless—it arouses antagonisms and reactions; while social assimilation is in progress, the steadying and apparently contradictory counterdoctrine of racial solidarity and culture seems necessary. This secondary race-consciousness stimulates group action through race pride; it is the social equivalent of self-respect in the individual moral life; it is a feature of national revivals (Celtic, Provençal, Polish, etc.) in European politics and in modern art; it prevents the representative classes as they develop being dissipated in the larger groups, harnesses them in the service of the submerged group, and gradually as social stigma and taboo pass into social respect and recognition, eliminates itself as the race antagonisms subside. This is not a doctrine of race isolation, or so-called “race-integrity,” but a theory of social conservation, which in practice conserves the best in each group, and promotes the development of social solidarity out of heterogeneous elements.
Culture-citizenship is not acquired through assimilation merely, but in terms of a racial contribution to what becomes a joint civilization. With the development and education of a higher type of social consciousness the “race-type” blends into the “civilization-type.” Race progress and racial adjustment must achieve this end, and whatever theory and practice makes toward it is sound; whatever opposes or retards is false.
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