Education and Race Relations

Lucy Diggs Slowe (1931)

Some one has said that education is the inflicting of the prejudices of an older generation upon the unsuspecting present generation. Although this is an exaggerated statement, yet it contains a great deal of truth, particularly in its application to race relations. Let me examine a few typical examples of race attitudes:

A few months ago I was on my way to the home of a friend to dinner. Being a little late I hailed a taxi cab driven by an Irishman and asked him to go as rapidly as the law would allow. When we pulled up to the house, evidently the driver noticed that it was attractive in design and surrounded by lovely lawns, evergreens and flowers. As I paid my fare and turned to go into the house, he naively asked, "Are you late for work"? So far as he was concerned, only white people could live in a house like that which I was entering and I, being a Negro would be going there only in the capacity of a servant. He probably did not know that there any Negroes in the world who occupied any other status than that of serving white people.

A friend of mine, making a trip from Washington to Detroit, went into the diner on the train and was placed at the table with a man of the white race, very intelligent and cultured in appearance. As soon as she was seated, he dramatically jumped up from the table, stalked out of the diner, exclaiming that he would be dammed before he would eat at the table with a nigger. He did not wait to find out whether she was offensive or inoffensive in manner; it was enough for him to know that she was a Negro. That stimulus caused him to lose his good manners, Ms temper, his peace of mind, and an intelligent attitude toward a new situation.

A third typical attitude was exhibited by an official of one of our large Universities in the North, for these attitudes are by no means confined to the ignorant classes. A woman of my acquaintance wished to enter her daughter in a certain University. The girl had the necessary academic qualifications, but the Dean of the school without seeing her sent her mother the following letter:

"While we could not exclude a qualified student on account of her color, I do feel that a colored girl would be very unhappily situated in this college since she necessarily would be very much isolated socially.------In view of these facts, we strongly recommend that you do not enroll your daughter in ------University".

Since these three examples taken from three different levels of American life represent the usual every day reactions of American white people to American Negroes, it is logical to inquire how these people developed these attitudes. Is racial antipathy or a feeling racial superiority born in people or do they acquire it themselves?

Fortunately, for those of us engaged in the work of educating the young we know that racial attitudes are not inherited but are acquired. This being the case, we know that these acquired attitudes can be modified, changed, eradicated; and better still that they need not be developed. Bruno Lasker in his studies "Race Attitudes in Children" has come to the conclusion that children brought up in an environment free from racial prejudices do not acquire it.

On the other hand we know how easy it is not only to acquire it but how assiduously some people cultivate it in their children. It is no exaggeration to say that all over America today the majority of white people are either directly or indirectly teaching their children that white people as a group are superior to colored people as a group.

This being the case, it is not surprising to find race proscription in every division of American life, civic, political, industrial and even religious. The inflicting of the thoughtless beliefs of older people on the young, the building up in them the belief that all Negroes are inferior to any white person has been so successful that the very word Negro connotes to most white people an ignorant, shuffling, unkept being fit for menial tasks and nothing more.

Out of this popular but thoughtless conception of Negroes have grown all sorts of practices in American life as that life touches the daily interests of the Negro. If he wishes to travel in his native land, he must ride in the South in separate cars regardless of his culture or his means. Almost no hotel run for the accommodation of the general public will accommodate him. It matters not whether it be situated North or South. He is required to pay taxes, to support the government in time of peace and to bear arms in time of war, but in several Southern states he may not cast his ballot for those who are to spend his share of the taxes.

Even before the present industrial depression he was the last man hired and the first fired. The whole range of commercial and industrial opportunities above the level of porter and janitor have been consistently closed to him. In many places, the so-called house of God in which white people worship does not welcome him. I have heard of several places where Negroes take holy communion in the basement, while white people take it upstairs.

If these conditions do exist, and you and I know they do, can we out of them build for the future in America a civilization characterized by respect for human personality and by high standards of fair play, of sympathy, justice and open-mindedness. Can our civilization endure upon any other basis? I am as much concerned with the sort of characters that we are developing in white boys and girls by our present race attitudes as I am in those of the boys and girls of my own people. When we realize that character is the result of one's daily acts as well as the result of one's environment in a very large degree, we should examine with very great care the actions of most Americans toward colored people. Can we be unfair, cruel and inhuman to any man without having our characters sullied? Dr. Felix Adler, who has contributed so much to American education through the Society of Ethical Culture, has pointed out the way for us toward better race relations through education. His philosophy concerns itself with man's relationship to man; with his attitude toward his fellow-man. He believes that every man must have opportunity to develop his latent gifts assisted by his associates who recognize him as a kindred spirit.

In a recent interview he said: "We have stood for the relief of the opressed, not merely that the downtrodden may take a deeper breath, but because the state of being oppressed and the state of the oppressor, too, are hostile to the development of the worth that is latent in man."

It is because I believe that racial antipathy cultivated as it has been in America will lead to the disinte ration of American character that I urge upon homes, schools and churches a concerted effort at education for racial appreciation instead of education for racial hatred. How is it to be done? First, we must set up worthy objectives in the education of our youth, and make a concerted effort in our schools to achieve these objectives. If, then, we wish to change the prevailing attitude of American white people toward the Negro, we must do three fundamental things:

1. We must make individuals more sensitive to the claims of justice in dealing with people regardless of race. It is my belief that we are in grave danger of a complete moral collapse in America, because we put such a low evaluation upon injustice when it concerns Negroes. It is easy to lose one's sense of fair dealing unless one exercises it unceasingly. Justice cannot be selective it must be co-extensive with humanity. It is an easy step from taking away the ballot from Negroes by subterfuge and unjust law to taking it away from white people by bribery and trickery. Justice cannot be selective; if it exists, it exists for all.
2. We must set up opportunities for getting authentic information, and for counteracting misunderstanding in matters affecting the two races. If in schools the contribution of the Negro to American history could be studied, what a different point of view many Americans would have. The intelligent open-minded way of finding out what all classes of Negroes think and do should be our mode of breaking down prejudice, of dissipating ignorance. Such books as Woodson's "The Negro in Our History," Moton's "What the Negro Thinks;" Charles S. Johnson's "The Negro in American Civilization would undoubtedly shed light on the historical and sociological background of this group of citizens and assist us in understanding why they are as they are. Moreover such studies would tend to make us realize that economic and political conditions are more potent factors in fixing the characteristics of any group than accident of color or birth. Open-mindedness which comes with based on facts rather than on feelings is as greatly needed in studying race relations as it is in making a new experiment in chemistry.
3. We need also to realize that every racial group has some qualities and achievements which are of universal value and therefore transcend the bounds of race. In America our cultural life is richer for the the music of such Negroes as Burleigh, Dett, Hayes and others: our literature is richer for the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and others. Appreciation through knowledge of these contributions will break down the stereotype Negro and bring us to realize that many, many individuals with various talents make up this group. This realization will compel us to deal with these individuals on the basis of their worth, and will force us to discontinue thinking of them as a group, legislative for them as group, looking down on them as a group.

In looking, then, at this whole question of race relations we are looking at something which needs our finest thought. The sort of training which has produced racial antagonism in the United States has produced it throughout the world. Race hatred based upon ignorance and emotion has led and will lead to war, to strife, to injustice, to selfishness and to the destruction of all that is ignoble in human beings. We owe it to our children to include in their subjects of study books which do justice to the best that has been produced by all the peoples of the world. Interracial conferences and commissions are doing some notable but our whole system of education and modes of thought concerning the Negro in America must be changed if this difficult problem is to be solved. It seems to me that the children of the next generation should be better prepared to deal with this question than their fathers and mothers new are and we who are interested in seeing the finest qualities of character developed must make it our task to set up right educational opportunities.

Bruno asker very wisely said:"Generation after Generation of children who are given the stones of fictitious stereotypes when they ask. for the bread of knowledge; children of all races and nationalities made potential cannon fodder of future wars because they are not permitted to develop in themselves those qualities of mind that make for a sense of fair play, for mutual appreciation, for mental flexibility in response to changing situations. It is to these children, burdened with the material costs of post wars and with the inheritance of limiting social attitudes that society owes its greatest unacknowledged debt."

In the interest of all the people of our land and country; in interest of saving our moral integrity; in the interest of the preservation and improvement of our social order we should deal with Race Relations in a scientific and dispassionate manner; the intellect must replace the emotions in dealing with this subject and this calls for the thought of our finest educators.

Source: Education and Race Relations, written by Lucy Diggs Slowe, 1885-1937, in Lucy Diggs Slowe Papers, of Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (Box 90-6, folder 133, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.) (District of Columbia) (1931)