  In “Has America a Race Problem? If So, How Can it Best Be Solved?” (1892) Cooper argues that progressive peace is achieved through fair conflict and difference, anticipating later work by Audre Lorde. According to Cooper, “All through God’s universe we see eternal harmony and symmetry as the unvarying result of the equilibrium of opposing forces” (VAJC, 121). Operating at the forefront of this analysis is racial conflict. What Cooper has in mind is not the obliteration of one race by another, but the progress that is achievable when we embrace difference and change. Cooper endorses multiculturalism and racial diversity for the purpose of progress and argues that isolation hinders the development of racial groups rather than making them stronger. Here Cooper is responding to various positions about interactions, or even admixture, between races.  Like Crummell before her and Du Bois after her, Cooper was convinced that every race had a particular purpose and message to contribute toward human progress. Du Bois has been credited with making this claim in “Conservation of Races” from The Souls of Black Folk, but this idea had been prevalent for years before the 1897 “Conservation of Races” speech.