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The President's Commission on Race has come and gone, in a time when segments of the Nation are still gripped in a profound antipathy, a deep and abiding hatred that has its expression in the mutilations and violence as recently seen in Jasper, TX. The Commission, chaired by the able historian John Hope Franklin, is seen as a polite political tool of the White House; a relatively cheap solution to an intractable problem; a talk-fest that barely satisfies; a rational discussion of that which is, at base, irrational: Race. Let us play a game. What follows are the words of prominent Americans, who give their thoughts on race. Can you tell who is speaking? At the end their signatures will be given (no fair peeking!) Here goes. 1. That the first difference which strikes
us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular
membrane between the skin an scarf-skin, on in the scarf-skin itself; whether
it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the difference is fixed in nature,
and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is
this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater
or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of
red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions
of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns
in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the
emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant
symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared
by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan
(Orangutan) for the black woman over those of his own species…./ advance
it, therefore, as a suspicion only that the blacks, whether originally
a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior
to the whites in the endowment of both of body and mind.
Now, before we give the answers please take a moment; re-read the 3 sections, and write down your answers. They are
Surprised? Americans have been talking about race
for centuries, but it is not what we say, but what we do that matters.
Sources:
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American
Thoughts on Race