II. Southern Conditions That Influence Negro Criminality
The Arena (Feb. 1901) Vol. XXV: pp. 190-197
1. Domestic Life and Training.
Emphasis is now being placed upon the prevention of crime. The most promising field for the accomplishment of this result is found in the domestic life and training surrounding the child. There is no race outside of barbarism where there is so low a grade of domestic life, and where the child receives so little training, as among the negroes. In slavery, the negro knew no domestic life. The continuance of family life depended upon the will of the master, and his attitude favored immorality. His desire was to secure as many slaves as possible regardless of family ties or obligations. The negro has had not quite forty years to recover from this condition— in which to create and establish all the sound principles and practise of domestic life.
There are those who decry the influence of education and declare that it has failed to enlighten or reform the negro. But we have not educated the negro. Only in a small degree has he been shown the example and the need of morality, sobriety, and fidelity in his domestic life. In matters of cleanliness, sanitation, prevention of disease, etc., he has been left to look out for himself. Where from five to ten persons cook, eat, sleep, and die in one or two rooms, what can the moral effect be? The environment of the Jukes family was not worse than this; yet upon this fragile domestic basis is placed the mental training. Instruction in reading and writing, history, arithmetic, theology, etc., is given, and then we marvel that the negro is not more moral. The result is often a mental comprehension of things without their having any personal value or practical application; for the sympathetic and moral instincts often remain undeveloped, or are warped.
There are other reasons for the loose domestic relations of the negroes. The whites during slavery, and even to-day, set no example for them. Often it is jealousy of a white man's relations in the home that destroys its peace. Negro women yield to white men quite as readily as in slavery. Until there is greater respect for the negro home, the morals in that home will be lax. The mutual training of the children, with educational and cultural interests and pursuits, often makes domestic relations more durable. These are often lacking in the negro's life. Possession of property and its entailment are also influential but almost unknown to the mass of negroes. Marriage is more of a religious ceremony and does not give them the consciousness of new legal and social obligations. The fact that so few women are virtuous when they enter matrimony must lower the standards. Further causes appear under other heads.
If the home life lack the interests, comforts, and integrity that are deemed so essential, what is the training of the child? What can one mother accomplish for each child, when there are from five to fifteen to be trained, disciplined, and taught? Often she is also a laborer, and is lacking in even rudimentary education. I ask the Northern mother, with her smaller family and with trained assistants in the home, school, and church, what the possibilities are for individual training. We deplore and comment upon the mortality of the negro. What care and necessities can one sick child have in the midst of such numbers, and in such squalor and want? Think of the cost and attention often required to save one child in the North! During slavery the whites were interested in the life of the negro child. It had a cash value, and all efforts were made to save it. It was often taken into the mansion itself and carefully nursed. Now all the knowledge and means required for such care devolve upon parents that have had but little preparation. The child has no labor value now, for the adult market is often overstocked. I do not mean that the whites are disloyal to their old slaves, or deny help when it is asked; only that there is no interest in the condition of the masses. With this lack of supervision over its associates, knowledge, and habits, the child passes into the school. There are no kindergartens to serve as a medium. The labor of the negro child often begins early. When many white children are entering the kindergarten, the negro child is beginning her duties as a nurse-girl, or his duties as bootblack or at street jobs about stations. The one class in the North with which the negro child is comparable is the laboring class crowded in tenement districts. The habits, training, and opportunities are somewhat alike. In the North it is from this class (whose training is largely in the street or in depraved homes) that the children in reformatories come.
One of the primary needs of the South is enlightenment and ideals in domestic life, together with such knowledge as will secure training and discipline for the child. In the absence of other agencies, free public kindergartens are desirable for both mothers and children. Kindergartens will assist in supplying this need, because the children are particularly deficient in the sense of responsibility. They are not taught it; they are not placed in responsible positions. This sense is necessary to successful functioning in the world. Slavery deprived the negro quite effectually of this sense, if he ever had it; for he was required to be imitative rather than initiative. Responsibility can be developed under a directorship, but only with difficulty under a mastership. The negro is said to be a "petty thief by nature." This may be true, but at least one of the reasons lies in the fact that in slavery his master's property was his own; he was never held strictly accountable. He protected the property against outsiders, but not against himself. There are many former slaves still living, and the atmosphere has not greatly changed. Neither is the child taught respect for property, as is the Northern child. This respect is not a born trait, and often the capacity for its acquirement varies. It has to be taught the infant, and the offense is rigorously punished during childhood. The negro child has but few possessions with which to develop the property instinct.
Aside from these conditions in the home, little assistance comes from the whites. They have come to expect, justly, undoubtedly, thieving and immorality in the negro. If he is honest, he obtains little recognition for it. It is difficult to reach an ideal of self-respect if no one has faith in that ideal for you. Many men are moral and honest because they prize the respect of their fellows. The restraining power of others' opinions is often underestimated. At home the negro is seldom taught the value and dignity of self-respect, and in the world about him he understands that it is not accorded him. It is easier to succumb to the standard held for you than to surpass it, especially when less than 50,000 in a race of 7,000,000 have attained such a standard.
2. Education
In the preceding paragraphs I have touched upon education. The present education of the negro is both illogical and impracticable. 1 refer chiefly to the common schools, for they reach the masses. First, the time given to education is inadequate, averaging about four months a year in the country and perhaps six in the towns. Secondly, the instruction is inferior. The negroes prefer negro teachers, but the instruction given by them cannot, in quality or quantity, approximate that given by white teachers. There is the further difficulty that there is social prejudice among the whites against white teachers of negroes. Almost no use is made of libraries, and the supplementary work so well developed in the North is unknown. The negro in many instances is being fitted for vocations in which there is but little opportunity for him. Agricultural and industrial eras precede those of commerce and professions. The negro cannot omit these, simply because he is transplanted in the midst of a race that has experienced them. They were essential in developing that race. In the North how many generations of fathers identified with agricultural and industrial interests have laid the foundation for their sons' professional careers?
Economic independence must accompany enlightenment. The negro race is not trained to meet successfully the demands of the occupations open to it. Romans were not trained for merchants when warfare was the commerce in use. Latin,
Greek, and French must have but a superficial influence when a race has no literature of its own, and the cultural influence of a moral and educated family life is unknown. I am not opposing higher education; 1 am speaking for the mass of the race, and asking for an extension of time and rationalizing of the studies in the common schools. The training needed is one that will put the child in conscious control of himself. That the system of education is not accomplishing this is shown by the fact that negro teachers and ministers are frequently the most immoral of their race. This is true because the educational system gives so much knowledge of facts, while the moral and sympathetic sensibilities, the perceptions of domestic, social, and political life, in relation to the negro himself, are neglected. The result is a mental equipment that puts the individual in the place of a leader-a place that he uses to degrade his race. The criminal who has good mental capacity is always the most dangerous because the most capable. In training capable intellects a corresponding stress should be placed upon the developing of the moral, social, and sympathetic side, because the range of influence is greater. The ability, sagacity, and energy of the newsboy hold more promise of a good business career or of an astute criminal than do the feebler intellect and inactive body. The capacity may be due to heredity; the channel may be determined by environment. I have shown that the education of the negro is not such as to prevent crime. It does not meet the needs existing in the race, and when these defects exist it is not reasonable to attribute to education failures that may be due to the system rather than to its application.
3. Financial and Economic Conditions
The possession of sufficient of this world's goods prevents many from committing crime. Often when finances are inadequate to the demands of the individual's vanity, love of luxury, or avarice (qualities under some circumstances quite as capable of inducing only fastidiousness and esthetic tastes), he becomes a criminal. Money often prevents the criminal from becoming a convict burden to the State. The negro is almost without this aid, and,
once arrested, he is reasonably certain of conviction. In the North this greater ability to provide for one's self reduces theft; in the South, shiftlessness and the lack of knowledge as to the use of money induce it. If a negro is economically independent and has his own farm or trade, what is the necessity for theft? Few criminals steal without an incentive, even though it be the simple one of demand exceeding supply. Property interests create responsibilities and broader interests, and often deepen self-respect. Property raises the standard of the class possessing it, and this is one essential way in which the Northern small landowner differs from the negro. With the acquirement of small farms, and with the financial and commercial standing that goes with it, he will more nearly attain to the condition of the whites. To-day the huts in which many negroes live existed in slavery days, without more air, light, cleanliness, and furniture than then. The sense of possession and property is not much more developed.
The extent of this low financial standing is better understood when it is known that the negroes have few or no banks, no loan associations or building organizations, and no credit system. There are few or no ways in which they can assist one another. How important these are to the white man ! The negro must be taught their value and use. The negroes are much imposed upon by the whites in whom they have faith. High rents, high-interest mortgages, and the purchase of whisky, cheap jewelry, useless ornaments, and unnecessary articles are among some of the results. There is but little knowledge of the true value of these things and of the extent to which money will go, so they become easy dupes. On the river-boats, employers will often pay the negro his salary in advance and encourage gambling with "craps," advancing money for stake during the voyage; so that at the end of the trip the negro is bankrupt and must reship with him. These are conditions attending untrained and unaccustomed minds, and are otherwise peculiar to the negroes, in that they possess artistic and musical and emotional natures rather than practical ones.
4. Religion
This is a very grave subject. The negroes possess a religious form, emotionally conceived and having but little moral or ethical basis. Practical Christianity is known only to the few. Their services, sermons, and prayers are intended to arouse sentiment and superstitions, but not thought resulting in improved action. Religion as a growth through childhood is unknown. They must experience the definite consciousness of seizing it in some revival meeting, or else they doubt its existence in themselves. Their religion is characteristic of an undeveloped race. This must be so, for slavery did nothing to change it. The slave's religion was not rational. The life of the future world was emphasized, and but little stress placed upon daily living. It was not desirable that slaves should discuss practical things, and there has never been the application of religion to them. In the North, Christian influences and training are a restraint; in the South these are largely negative or else predisposing to crime. Religious gatherings are not infrequently the scene of many quarrels and crimes, and during the excitement of "revivals" many acts occur that are both degrading and immoral. There are no restraining white influences; for the negroes are excluded from the white churches, have their own organizations, and control their own affairs. The Catholic Church is an exception in this; but very few negroes are Catholics. There can be no question that the negroes' religion is inferior, and stands in the way of progress. It also prevents a closer identification of the interests of negroes and whites, and a harmonious solution of the present problem demands a closer sympathy and affiliation rather than estrangement. Contempt for the negroes' religion must be changed to respect. The negro's strong tendency to church affiliations can be used as a great educational and cultural agency. His nature is highly susceptible to religious influences, but these must be wholesome and permanent, rational and not hysterical, constructive rather than destructive, civilized instead of barbarous, educational and cultural as well as "spiritual." This is not an impossible change.
While my problem does not deal with the poor whites of the South, there still exist conditions among them calling for the warmest sympathy and aid. I would urge those who contribute to foreign missions—to the civilizing of races of whose ideals, habits, and beliefs they know little—to make these contributions ultimately useful and far reaching, by having the funds more directly under their control, and by aiding a class having few comforts and luxuries; for education, culture, opportunities, would mean these. It is principally from this class that the white criminal comes. These conditions, together with the neglected guidance and assistance which the negro needs, should bring a blush of shame when money is sent abroad, and when well-trained educators desert their country. Judged purely in terms of dollars and cents, the same amount of money expended at home would insure a greater return in each individual life. The passage abroad alone would keep one child at the Tuskegee Institute a year, and Tuskegee contributes no criminals. It matters not to God if the soul be negro or Chinese; but it does matter to us if the race is an integral part of our domestic and national life. If we have taken them from an environment in which they were func tioning successfully, and placed them in the midst of our own, which they as yet barely comprehend, there is a national duty added to the Christian duty. Every dollar that goes abroad, with this great struggling mass at home, robs the State and nation of so much progress and sets aside a proba bility in favor of a remote possibility. Until the negro's domestic life and religion are more intelligent, he must fail in the highest duties of manhood and citizenship.