A Brief Racial Philosophy

My “racial philosophy” is not far removed from my general philosophy of life: that the greatest happiness comes from altruistic service and this is in reach of all of whatever race and condition. The “service” here meant is not a pious idea of being used; any sort of exploitation whether active or passive is, to my mind, hateful. Nor is the “Happiness” a mere bit of Pollyanna stuff. I am as sensitive to handicaps as those who are always whining about them and the whips and stings of prejudice, whether of color or sex, find me neither too calloused to suffer, nor too ignorant to know what is due me. Our own men as a group have not inherited traditions of chivalry (one sided as it may be among white men) and we women are generally left to do our race battling alone except for empty compliments now and then. Even so, one may make the mistake of looking at race handicaps through the wrong end of the telescope and imagining that oppression goes only with color. When I encounter brutality I need not always charge it to my race. It may be—and generally is—chargeable to the imperfections in the civilization environing me for which as a teacher and trained thinker I take my share of responsibility.

The extent, then, of the optimism in my philosophy is that (statisticians and social science research compilers to the contrary notwithstanding) the solutions of our problem will be individual and not en masse; and the habit of generalization and deductive logic has done its worst.

For, after all, social justice, the desired goal, is not to be reached through any panacea by mass production—whether Du Bois’s preachment of the ballot box and intermarriage or Kelly Miller’s one time suggestion of self effacement, or even Booker Washington’s proposal of the solid hand and separate fingers. For human selfishness will always arise as the domineering thumb to over ride and keep down every finger weak enough to give up the struggle. The ballot operates just so far as dominant forces agree to respect it. Which again is reasoning in a circle to insure justice by having men become just, and the spectacle of gangster dominance among ballot holding Americans invites little hope for solution when the element of race is added to the problem. As I see it then, the patient persistence of the individual, working as Browning has it, “mouth-wise and pen-wise” in whatever station and with whatever talent God has given, in truth and loyalty to serve the whole, will come as near as any other to proving worth while.

To me life has meant a big opportunity and I am thankful that my work has always been the sort that beckoned me on, leaving no room for blasé philosophizing and rebellion’s resentment and with just enough opposition to give zest to the struggle, just enough hope of scoring somewhere among the winners to keep my head “unbowed though bloody.”