The American Missionary — Volume 44, No. 05, May 1890 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 70 pages of information about The American Missionary — Volume 44, No. 05, May 1890.

The American Missionary — Volume 44, No. 05, May 1890 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 70 pages of information about The American Missionary — Volume 44, No. 05, May 1890.

The Government will refund the $3,000 necessary for the erection of the building, and one church in Connecticut has provided a little over $2,000 to defray current expenses for the first year.  This sum will scarcely be adequate for this year, and that generous church, as well as others, must be relied upon to meet future expenses.  We believe the hero missionaries will be found, and that a generous support will be given to an enterprise at once so bold, so needed and so promising.

* * * * *

SOUTHERN NOTES.

BY SECRETARY A.F.  BEARD.

In the relationship of the races we are accustomed to speak of the “color prejudice.”  We know very well that there is a most assertive prejudice against colored people.  Rev. Dr. Wright, in his admirable address at Chicago, said, “The cause is this:  All free-born people in every age and clime have a contempt for slaves.  The sole reason of the persistence of the caste feeling is that the black man belongs to a race which has been enslaved.”  The inference is, “therefore your character is a servile character.”

The common judgment has been that the prejudice is against color.  A little observation, however, will show that Southern people have no prejudice against color as such.  Color ceases to be repugnant when it ceases to be unfamiliar.

I have been led to conclude that a great part of what is called the color prejudice, may be charged up to the fact of feature.  The features, in the people of every race, are offensive when they are coarse and carnal.  For example, among a class of the Irish peasantry long ignorance and lowdown life have given to the children an heredity of ingrained coarseness.  It is visible in a certain stamp of the features.  Education and elevation will gradually reduce the animalism of the face.  With good breeding, in generations the lips grow thinner; the face takes on character and even changes in shape.

The Negro condition at present is one of immaturity.  The Uncle Rastus side of Negro character and life may be seen every day in the Southern Negro.  The immaturity of the race and its revelation and expression in feature and in character, repel more than color does.  The antipathy against color in the South is reduced to its very lowest terms, as facts prove.

The way to destroy the prejudice which exists both by association with the ideas of bondage and by features which are not refined, is a common one.  Education is the only way.  I have been surprised to see how rapidly education, especially religious education and the refining influence of good associations, are eliminating both the idea that color is a badge of a servile mind, and the inherited coarseness of features.  The educated children of educated parents are in many instances already showing in their faces the mettle of their pasture.  There is a perceptible growth away from immaturity and coarseness of feature, along with the growth away from immaturity of mind.

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The American Missionary — Volume 44, No. 05, May 1890 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.