Voice of the Negro (1904) Vol. 1, No. 1. pp. 31-32.

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The Negro and Public Opinion

The American Negro is a great deal of a foreigner to the average white American. It is true that he has been in this country almost longer than any one else, except the Indian, but the conditions under which he came and has been permitted to remain and increase have given him a character and a status that separates him from intimate and equality relationships with the rest of the countrymen.

The average white American knows the Negro only as he sees him on the street or engaged in some employment that does not permit of association. As this average American sees but little of the Negro and knows but little of him, he is at liberty to form any kind of erroneous opinions concerning him.

It is not too much to say that public opinion concerning the Negro in this country is largely based on ignorance of nearly everything that is good and prophetic in the life of the race. The ever increasing exceptions to Negro ignorance, Negro poverty, and social disorder have not as yet made much of an impression on public opinion. The status of the race is fixed by impoverished condition of the majority and not by the noble achievements of the ever increasing few.

That intangible, but all-sovereign, thing called public opinion is a good deal of a despot when it comes to showing favors or doing justice to those who are weak but deserve justice. Although public opinion is as apt to be wrong as right, and perhaps is more often wrong than right, it can not be easily changed or placated, and it yields neither to argument or tears, but to the dissolving processes of time.

In one age it will sanction the burning of Christians, in another the burning of witches and in still another the marketing of human beings as chattels and so on.

In turning from its habit of tyranny to the better habit of peace and good will toward all mankind, it can never be hurried. In answer to every appeal from suffering humanity, it always asks for time and more time. The price of justice is more injustice, the price of love is more hatred, and the price of peace is more battle fields.

It may not be very consoling to the colored people of this country to look longingly into the face of public opinion and read in its stern countenance a fixed purpose to keep us waiting, and no hint of how long. Our only assurance is, that given time enough, public opinion will change and change for the better. Every generation asks for a change in the nature of a more enlightened public opinion, but the answer is usually made to the succeeding generation and seldom to the one asking it.

The history of our own progress aptly illustrates the truth of all this. But few of the old abolitionists lived to witness the answer to their prayers and fulfillment of their prophecies. Many others became gray and ready for their reward before emancipation became a great fact in our history.

The statesmen and philosophers who fifty years ago were absolutely sure that human slavery was a "divine institution" and that the Negro was and always would be less than a man were always supported by public opinion. These false prophets and the opinion that supported them have nearly all perished from the earth.

In these better days, though days still fraught with vexing problems concerning our destiny, the descendants of those who taught and preached this mischievous doctrine, that a more enlightened public opinion had condemned, are now heard to preach and prophecy a new doctrine of degradation. This new doctrine is to the effect that the Negro is so much of a man and has such manly aspirations that all our principles and maxims of government, our ethical notions of right and wrong in civil, political, and social life must be stifled in order to prevent "social equality" and "Negro domination."

Public opinion today seems to give sanction to these miserable fears of the proud and chivalrous Anglo-Saxon.

Our special reason for fear today is that the colored people have not as many friends to do their fighting as they had about fifty years ago. Then more than half the white people of this country were arrayed against public opinion that sanctioned human slavery. Then the whole nation was interested in emancipation, and now only a few men and women of the white race are interested in the question of our emancipation for equality of opportunity. We cannot look to the successors of the Garrisons, the Phillippses, the Sumners, the Stowes, and the Lincolns. If men and women of like courage and like insistence are needed today we must look to ourselves and not to the white race. The voice of public opinion today seems to say: The white race quite exhausted itself in fighting for and winning emancipation and the amendments. Emancipation was the door of opportunity, it is for you to keep open this door for your progress.

This is your task and in this the strength of your race is to be tested as never before. To some of our people this sort of advice may not be at all comforting. Our race habit of looking up to somebody as superior to ourselves, of asking for everything and creating but little, of complaining more than trusting to our own individual efforts is a great handicap to the cultivation of manhood, courage and pride of race. If we are to change and win public opinion in behalf of our larger liberties we must become stronger in the virtue of patience, more efficient in good works, more deserving in our achievements, and more intelligent and co-operative in our contention for rights.

This is all very trite and has none of the stirrings of a "bugle blast," but this suggestion contains most of the requirements that make for power and must win respect.

As I before stated, public opinion is stubborn, stolid and self-sufficient. It will not be forced, it cannot be deceived and is without sympathy, but it can be taught, it can be convinced, and in time can be won by valiant men and noble women, helping us to deserve a place in the family of races.