Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
ourselves? For while the motive was pure and the outer menace undoubted,
is shielding and indulgence the way to meet it?
Some Negro parents, realizing this, leave their children to sink or swim
in this sea of race prejudice. They neither shield nor explain, but
thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as
they may from brutal fact. Out of this may come strength, poise,
self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing
deception, and self-distrust. It is, all said, a brutal, unfair method,
and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. Why not,
rather, face the facts and tell the truth? Your child is wiser than you
think.
The truth lies ever between extremes. It is wrong to introduce the child
to race consciousness prematurely; it is dangerous to let that
consciousness grow spontaneously without intelligent guidance. With
every step of dawning intelligence, explanation--frank, free, guiding
explanation--must come. The day will dawn when mother must explain
gently but clearly why the little girls next door do not want to play
with "niggers"; what the real cause is of the teacher's unsympathetic
attitude; and how people may ride in the backs of street cars and the
smoker end of trains and still be people, honest high-minded souls.
Remember, too, that in such frank explanation you are speaking in nine
cases out of ten to a good deal clearer understanding than you think and
that the child-mind has what your tired soul may have lost faith
in,--the Power and the Glory.
Out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing
balm. Once the colored child understands the white world's attitude and
the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life
motive,--a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing
man has. How many white folk would give their own souls if they might
graft into their children's souls a great, moving, guiding ideal!
With this Power there comes, in the transfiguring soul of childhood, the
Glory: the vision of accomplishment, the lofty ideal. Once let the
strength of the motive work, and it becomes the life task of the parent
to guide and to shape the ideal; to raise it from resentment and revenge
to dignity and self-respect, to breadth and accomplishment, to human
service; to beat back every thought of cringing and surrender.
Here, at last, we can speak with no hesitation, with no lack of faith.
For we know that as the world grows better there will be realized in our
children's lives that for which we fight unfalteringly, but vainly now.
So much for the problem of the home and our own dark children. Now let
us look beyond the pale upon the children of the wide world. What is the
real lesson of the life of Coleridge-Taylor? It is this: humanly
speaking it was sheer accident that this boy developed his genius. We
have a right to assume that hundreds and thousands of boys and girls
today are missing the chance of developing unusual talents because the
chances have been against them; and that indeed the majority of the
children of the world are not being systematically fitted for their life
work and for life itself. Why?
Many seek the reason in the content of the school program. They
feverishly argue the relative values of Greek, mathematics, and manual
training, but fail with singular unanimity in pointing out the
fundamental cause of our failure in human education: That failure is due
to the fact that we aim not at the full development of the child, but
that the world regards and always has regarded education first as a
means of buttressing the established order of things rather than
improving it. And this is the real reason why strife, war, and
revolution have marked the onward march of humanity instead of reason
and sound reform. Instead of seeking to push the coming generation ahead
of our pitiful accomplishment, we insist that it march behind. We say,
morally, that high character is conformity to present public opinion; we
say industrially that the present order is best and that children must
be trained to perpetuate it.
But, it is objected, what else can we do? Can we teach Revolution to the
inexperienced in hope that they may discern progress? No, but we may
teach frankly that this world is not perfection, but development: that
the object of education is manhood and womanhood, clear reason,
individual talent and genius and the spirit of service and sacrifice,
and not simply a frantic effort to avoid change in present institutions;
that industry is for man and not man for industry and that while we must
have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work
but the worker--not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the
development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and
beauty widened.
Back of our present educational system is the philosophy that sneers at
the foolish Fathers who believed it self-evident, "that all men were
created free and equal." Surely the overwhelming evidence is today that
men are slaves and unequal. But is it not education that is the creator
of this freedom and equality? Most men today cannot conceive of a
freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. They do not want
equality because the thrill of their happiness comes from having things
that others have not. But may not human education fix the fine ideal of
an equal maximum of freedom for every human soul combined with that
minimum of slavery for each soul which the inexorable physical facts of
the world impose--rather than complete freedom for some and complete
slavery for others; and, again, is not the equality toward which the
world moves an equality of honor in the assigned human task itself
rather than equal facility in doing different tasks? Human equality is
not lack of difference, nor do the infinite human differences argue
relative superiority and inferiority. And, again, how new an aspect
human differences may assume when all men are educated. Today we think
of apes, semi-apes, and human beings; tomorrow we may think of Keir
Hardies, Roosevelts, and Beethovens--not equals but men. Today we are
forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy
life, and excuse ourselves by saying that the world's work must be done.
We are degrading some sorts of work by honoring others, and then
expressing surprise that most people object to having their children
trained solely to take up their father's tasks.
Given as the ideal the utmost possible freedom for every human soul,
with slavery for none, and equal honor for all necessary human tasks,
then our problem of education is greatly simplified: we aim to develop
human souls; to make all intelligent; to discover special talents and
genius. With this course of training beginning in early childhood and
never ceasing must go the technical training for the present world's
work according to carefully studied individual gifts and wishes.
On the other hand, if we arrange our system of education to develop
workmen who will not strike and Negroes satisfied with their present
place in the world, we have set ourselves a baffling task. We find
ourselves compelled to keep the masses ignorant and to curb our own
thought and expression so as not to inflame the ignorant. We force
moderate reformers and men with new and valuable ideas to become red
radicals and revolutionists, since that happens to be the only way to
make the world listen to reason. Consider our race problem in the South:
the South has invested in Negro ignorance; some Northerners proposed
limited education, not, they explained, to better the Negro, but merely
to make the investment more profitable to the present beneficiaries.
They thus gained wide Southern support for schools like Hampton and
Tuskegee. But could this program be expected long to satisfy colored
folk? And was this shifty dodging of the real issue the wisest
statesmanship? No! The real question in the South is the question of the
permanency of present color caste. The problem, then, of the formal
training of our colored children has been strangely complicated by the
strong feeling of certain persons as to their future in America and the
world. And the reaction toward this caste education has strengthened the
idea of caste education throughout the world.
Let us then return to fundamental ideals. Children must be trained in a
knowledge of what the world is and what it knows and how it does its
daily work. These things cannot be separated: we cannot teach pure
knowledge apart from actual facts, or separate truth from the human
mind. Above all we must not forget that the object of all education is
the child itself and not what it does or makes.
It is here that a great movement in America has grievously sinned
against the light. There has arisen among us a movement to make the
Public School primarily the hand-maiden of production. America is
conceived of as existing for the sake of its mines, fields and
factories, and not those factories, fields and mines as existing for
America. Consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of
men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's
industrial efficiency.
Those who oppose this program, especially if they are black, are accused
of despising common toil and humble service. In fact, we Negroes are but
facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while
maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services,
increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius
for the common weal? Without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses
Democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends. Without a more careful
conservation of human ability and talent the world cannot secure the
services which its greater needs call for. Yet today who goes to
college, the Talented or the Rich? Who goes to high school, the Bright
or the Well-to-Do? Who does the physical work of the world, those whose
muscles need the exercise or those whose souls and minds are stupefied
with manual toil? How is the drudgery of the world distributed, by
thoughtful justice or the lash of Slavery?
We cannot base the education of future citizens on the present
inexcusable inequality of wealth nor on physical differences of race. We
must seek not to make men carpenters but to make carpenters men.
Colored Americans must then with deep determination educate their
children in the broadest, highest way. They must fill the colleges with
the talented and fill the fields and shops with the intelligent. Wisdom
is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom.
But why am I talking simply of "colored" children? Is not the problem of
their education simply an intensification of the problem of educating
all children? Look at our plight in the United States, nearly 150 years
after the establishment of a government based on human intelligence.
If we take the figures of the Thirteenth Census, we find that there were
five and one-half million illiterate Americans of whom 3,184,633 were
white. Remembering that illiteracy is a crude and extreme test of
ignorance, we may assume that there are in the United States ten million
people over ten years of age who are too ignorant either to perform
their civic duties or to teach industrial efficiency. Moreover, it does
not seem that this illiteracy is disappearing rapidly.
For instance, nine percent of American children between ten and
nineteen years of age cannot read and write. Moreover, there are
millions of children who, judging by the figures for the school year
1909-10, are not going to learn to read and write, for of the Americans
six to fourteen years of age there were 3,125,392 who were not in school