



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.









  The American <DW64> Academy

  Occasional Papers, No. 2.


  The Conservation of Races.

  BY
  W. E. BURGHARDT Du BOIS.


  WASHINGTON, D. C.
  Published by the Academy.
  1897.



  Baptist Magazine Print,
  Washington, D. C.

  Orders may be sent to John H. Wills.
  The Boston Cheap Book Store,
  Washington, D. C.




Announcement


The American <DW64> Academy believes that upon those of the race who have
had the advantages of higher education and culture, rests the
responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these
agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of thought and action.

Two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (_a_) The lack of
unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-sacrificing spirit, and no
well-defined line of policy seeking definite aims; and (_b_) The
persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart
the <DW64> at every step of his upward struggles to establish the
justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral
possibilities.

The Academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish such papers as
in their judgment aid, by their broad and scholarly treatment of the
topics discussed the dissemination of principles tending to the growth
and development of the <DW64> along right lines, and the vindication of
that race against vicious assaults.




THE CONSERVATION OF RACES.


The American <DW64> has always felt an intense personal interest in
discussions as to the origins and destinies of races: primarily because
back of most discussions of race with which he is familiar, have lurked
certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political,
intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. He has,
consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to
believe intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to
speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an
already dawning to-morrow.

Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human
beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme
types of the world's races have met, and the resulting problem as to the
future relations of these types is not only of intense and living
interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind.

It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our
future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but
smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and
lynch law, to survey the whole question of race in human philosophy and
to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large
lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and
boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. For it is certain
that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law,
and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is
against the constitution of the world, is vain. The question, then,
which we must seriously consider is this: What is the real meaning of
Race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what
lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising
<DW64> people?

When we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we
find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. Many criteria
of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair,
cranial measurements and language. And manifestly, in each of these
respects, human beings differ widely. They vary in color, for instance,
from the marble-like pallor of the Scandinavian to the rich, dark brown
of the Zulu, passing by the creamy Slav, the yellow Chinese, the light
brown Sicilian and the brown Egyptian. Men vary, too, in the texture of
hair from the obstinately straight hair of the Chinese to the
obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the Bushman. In measurement of
heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed Tartar to the
medium-headed European and the narrow-headed Hottentot; or, again in
language, from the highly-inflected Roman tongue to the monosyllabic
Chinese. All these physical characteristics are patent enough, and if
they agreed with each other it would be very easy to classify mankind.
Unfortunately for scientists, however, these criteria of race are most
exasperatingly intermingled. Color does not agree with texture of hair,
for many of the dark races have straight hair; nor does color agree with
the breadth of the head, for the yellow Tartar has a broader head than
the German; nor, again, has the science of language as yet succeeded in
clearing up the relative authority of these various and contradictory
criteria. The final word of science, so far, is that we have at least
two, perhaps three, great families of human beings--the whites and
<DW64>s, possibly the yellow race. That other races have arisen from the
intermingling of the blood of these two. This broad division of the
world's races which men like Huxley and Raetzel have introduced as more
nearly true than the old five-race scheme of Blumenbach, is nothing more
than an acknowledgment that, so far as purely physical characteristics
are concerned, the differences between men do not explain all the
differences of their history. It declares, as Darwin himself said, that
great as is the physical unlikeness of the various races of men their
likenesses are greater, and upon this rests the whole scientific
doctrine of Human Brotherhood.

Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the
grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way
toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played
in Human Progress, yet there are differences--subtle, delicate and
elusive, though they may be--which have silently but definitely
separated men into groups. While these subtle forces have generally
followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical
peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these.
At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which,
while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are
clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist.

If this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of
individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races