Minneapolis Spokesman

None Are So Blind as Those Who Won't See!

Sees Interracial Relations Suffering Because of Emphasis on Sex, Propaganda

One big stumbling block in the path of greater interracial understanding is the mistaken ideas some Negroes have about social relationships between Negroes and whites. Subtle propaganda by both whites and blacks, accumulative over the centuries, has reduced normal contact between Negroes and whites to a low and primitive level in the eyes of the general public. And that is a main reason why the general public, including Negroes, looks with suspicion at friendly relations between whites and blacks and why the sight of a Negro woman walking with a white man, or a Negro man walking with a white woman is so fraught with danger in so far as public reaction is concerned.

The interracial harmonies that have been achieved over the last twenty years have come about because those seeking that goal have been cold to the reaction of the general public and because they have persisted in demonstrating liberalism on the race question in spite of sometimes violent, even bloody opposition.

White Men Fear Attraction of Sexes

Because of certain biological differences between Negro and whites, men of the white race have built a monstrous bugaboo about Negro men, knowing only too well the attraction that exists between the black male and the white female. Toward this end, whole systems, physical and political, and surely social, have been erected by the white man to overcome what he secretly knows is a natural weakness among his females and what he publicly blames on the Negro, whom he terms "animal-like" and "promiscuous."

Thus far, such preventive steps have failed. Lynchings and burnings, prison cells, public castigation, and the most carefully thought out methods of segregation have proved inadequate as the white man attempts to protect his credo of "white supremacy."

Issue of "Black Nationalism"

Whether the Negro should imitate the white man and keep his racial stock as purely Negroid as he can is the question which in an implied manner has posed a ready problem for years to those who are in positions to influence Negro thought and Negro action. It is generally admitted that the tendency among the Negro masses is to cleave together on grounds of black nationalism: grounds upon which pride in black skins, black enterprise, black culture and black attainment can be generated.

Such Negro leaders as Richard T. Greener, and Marcus Garvey have been the spearheads of abortive attempts at the establishment of "Negro kingdoms" and "Republics" in Africa and elsewhere. A movement was begun several years ago in Chicago to form what was called the "Forty-ninth State" to be peopled exclusively with Negroes. Many all-Negro towns and communities have been formed throughout certain sections of the country.

Dangerous mountebanks have started such movements as the "Moorish Scientists," the "Ethiopian Peace Movement" and others, all toward the end of capitalizing on the inherent desire of the restless black masses for some spiritual anchor of hope upon which to moor their innate longings, their hunger for actual status in the eyes of the world.

The Work of the Amalgamationists

The Negro has also those who at one time were openly accused of attempting to destroy the race by losing it in the American melting pot through the amalgamation with the white race. These were the Negroes who gloried in the prospects of a race of honey-colored, straight-haired beings who generations later would be known as "Colored Americans" or plain "Americans," indivisible from the rest of the population because the entire American population would be so mixed up with various racial strains that those who opposed the Negro on grounds of color alone, would give up in disgust and let things stand.

The unfortunate result of the whole thing, however, has been the tendency on the part of white men and black men in interracial intermingling to seek the sordid instead of the spiritual. After the Communists had entered the arena and taken up for political reasons the cause of the forgotten American black man, many legitimate marriages between black and white sprang up to augment those of other years which had been consummated by those involved in defiance of established custom and precedent.

These Communist-inspired ventures served to further fan prejudice among Negroes and whites because the Communists didn't shirk one responsibility nor dodge one issue in their program of actually practicing democracy.

Promiscuities Wreak Plenty Harm

But subtle preachments, dogmas, propaganda and fanning of racial animosities have continued. The cause of white and black social intermingling is daily weakened because of promiscuities among adolescents and juveniles, as well as older persons who seek the thrill of intimacy with racial stocks not of their own. With the example set and still being carried out by Negroes in high places in worshiping things white and deploring things black, the untutored Negro of the masses is having himself a "private ball." He has been fed insidious doses of false expectations which he uses to justify his desires. This has had an unfortunate effect on serious efforts by thinking members of both races to solve a common problem through common, harmonious action.

There is legitimate cause for alarm when prominent white women who in former years considered themselves missionaries among the downtrodden Negroes now turn elsewhere with their succor.

There is cause for misapprehension when reports seep into Negro communities from white groups that even the most intellectual and outstanding among the Negro leaders are not above "making a play" for some desirable white woman.

Negroes counter with the charge that white men seek the companionship of Negro women, using such conferences and discussion groups as the mask for an actual desire.

Some professional persons are being accused by some Negroes as furthering the cause of amalgamation openly because of their contact with whites in their line of duty. And some professional "race experts" who bounce about in the public eye from one big organization specializing in interracial relationships to another, are being blamed for the state of affairs which siphon into race friction and race riots because of lack of understanding among the masses, both Negro and white, has been allowed to remain as it is. Whatever the future holds, both races suffer because of the lack of a clear-cut, understandable basis for interracial relationships.