Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

RACE RELATIONS AND PUBLIC OPINION-TA YLOR

493

Our memories recall only too vividly the series of race riots and instances of mob
violence which disgraced such northern cities as our national capital, Coatesville and
Chester, Pennsylvania, East St. Louis, Illinois, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Chicago. Only
a few years earlier the memory of Abraham Lincoln had been dishonored in his home
city of Springfield, Illinois, by as terrible an exhibition of mob fury as any that has
brought shame to the nation.
No longer can the South say that it alone knows the problem and should be left to
solve it in its own way; nor can the North longer point the finger of scorn at the states
which previously maintained almost a monopoly of violations against the Negro.
Henceforth, as never before, the people of all sections of the United States must face
unitedly the task of bringing about a better basis of race relations.
It can never be too strongly emphasized, to use the language of the report of the
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, that the problem is not of the Negroes' making; that no group in our population is less responsible for its existence; that the
Negroes alone of all our immigrants came to America against their will and by the
special compelling invitation of the whites; that the institution of slavery was introduced, expanded, and maintained in the United States by the white people and for their
own benefit; that they likewise created the conditions that followed emancipation.
The white people of the country may point out needed improvements in the living
habits of the vast majority of Negroes, though not without remembering the mote in
their own eye, but it must not be forgotten that higher standards of education and life
among the Negroes create the very demands which arouse the most intense prejudice
on the part of many white citizens.
At the core, therefore, of our consideration of race relations, are the mental attitudes of the people of one race toward those of the other. We must study what is in
the minds of people, how it came there, and how the distorted conceptions, upon which
opinion and action are so frequently based, may be modified.
It requires only the briefest study to learn that the whites know far less about
Negroes and what they are thinking about than Negroes know about whites and their
thoughts. Practically every Negro in America able to read reads some newspaper
published by whites as well as some Negro newspapers. Rarely do we find white people,
even in an audience of social workers, with their effort to put themselves in the "other
fellow's place," who have any familiarity with the Negro press. With this greater lack
of knowledge on the part of the whites as to Negroes, with the greater responsibility
of the whites as the dominant race, and with the whites' greater prejudice and more rigid
expression of it, it is a misnomer to refer merely to "the Negro problem." The big
problem is the problem of the white mind.
You have already heard a scholarly analysis of the beliefs, conceptions, and theories which have arisen traditionally in each race about the other. I wish only to
emphasize the fact that among whites at least the conceptions about Negroes are too
frequently generalized from inadequate and unrepresentative experiences. Too often
are imputed to the Negro race as a whole the qualities of character which some one
Negro, a servant for example, may exhibit. I remember distinctly the pride with which
one Chicago editor said that he always consulted a certain Negro before printing any
item of news which concerned Negroes. But a little inquiry amongst the Negro population revealed the fact that this particular Negro was considered as very unrepresentative of the Negro race.