Jackson Advocate

Mr. George W. Schuyler "Views" And "Reviews"

One of this country's most able newspaper men regardless of race, and certainly the Dean of Negro editors and correspondents is George W. Schuyler, editor of the New York edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, who is also a columnist for a number of daily newspapers in the New England section of the country.

He is a man of wide and varied contact in the top circles of American life and has wide and varied contacts and experience as a world traveller.

During his all too infrequent travels in the South as an observer of the local scene, when in Jackson he never failed to be received in audience by the late Major Fred Sullens, the dynamic editor of the Jackson Daily News.

In the Pittsburgh Courier Mr. Schuyler's opinion is expressed in his column, "Views and Reviews."

In one of his recent columns in the Courier Mr. Schuyler arrives at some conclusions with which we heartily agree, which follows:

Congressman Diggs of Michigan and others are planning a conference on Negro economic rights. This is most timely, and as a matter of fact, such conferences cannot be held too often. However, it seems to this observer that they should be named conferences on Negro economic opportunities, because the Negro's economic opportunities are almost immeasurable. Indeed, Negroes have wasted a whole lot of time on their so-called civil rights, which in the last analysis can never amount to much unless and until they have commensurate economic power. In a country which passes more laws than any other on earth, and promptly disobeys or ignores them, getting some more civil rights laws on the book is nothing to wax ecstatic about. It may be all well and good to have such laws on the book, but without economic power to implement them, they amount to little.

Let us take the matter of discrimination in housing about which there is much pother these days. What laws have been passed in this connection have been largely honored in the breach. And yet, when you get right down to it solving this problem requires no race of Einsteins. What it requires is a group of people who know how to organize their assets and go into the real estate market in a big way. With a few million dollars available for investment, it is quite possible to buy or construct good housing in practically any district without time-and money-wasting furore, and it has been for a long time. Indeed, some Negroes have done it in many parts of the country, including the South.

Similarly, the improvement and expansion of Negro-owned businesses (the backbone of any group aspiring to get anywhere in our capitalistic society) is not a difficult matter, except to the defeatists. Socialists, fellow-travelers and professional mendicants who have been the race's leaders by default for the past 30 or 40 years. I can see no sound reason why American Negroes cannot organize their liquid capital like the Japanese-Americans, the Chinese-Americans, the Greek, Italians and others who started out with as many strikes against them as the Negroes, and yet today have infinitely more economic enterprises on a going basis than have the colored brethren. If Negroes had as much invested in an economic program as they have in religion, political and propaganda organizations, they could stop yelling for help (which is becoming a nuisance even to the more thoughtful Negroes.) For example, there are few hotels and restaurants which Negroes could not have purchased in the past 20 years (and they have certainly had enough experience in this field), but instead invested their cash in fields that brought forth little or no revenue.