From "Superman" to Man. J. A. Rogers
A black skin has ever been a livery of servitude. Isn’t this world-old slavery a sign of the Negro’s hopeless inferiority? My father had hundreds of slaves!”
Dixon noticed the senator’s increased agitation and determined to be calmer than ever. He replied with a blandness that exasperated the other still more:—“Strange as it may sound, sir, the Caucasian has never been really free. The vast majority of its members are today, industrially, the serfs, and mentally, the slaves of the few. But, if we accept the term literally, all or nearly all branches of the white variety of mankind have been slaves that could be bought or sold. Britons were slaves to the Romans. Cicero, writing to his friend, Atticus, said,—The stupidest and ugliest slaves come from Britain.’ Later they were slaves of the Normans. Palgrave, an English historian, says of the Anglo-Saxon period:
“ ‘The Theowe (Anglo-Saxon slave) was entirely the property of his master, body as well as labor; like the Negro, he was part of the live stock, ranking in use and value with the beasts of the plough.’
“Villenage persisted in England until the sixteenth century. Certain classes of Anglo-Saxon slaves were not even permitted to buy their freedom, since it was contended that their all was the property of their masters. Serfdom was not abolished in Prussia until 1807, and in Austria until 1848. Even here in America white persons were slaves. There were Irish slaves in New England.”
“Irish slaves in New England?” echoed the other in scornful surprise.
“Yes, sir, Irish men and women were slaves in New England, being sold like black slaves and treated not a whit better. Many of the most socially prominent in America have slave ancestors. Lincoln’s ancestors were white slaves. According to Professor Cigrand, Grover Cleveland’s great-grandfather, Richard Falley, was an Irish slave in Connecticut. There were also white slaves in Virginia. Black and white slaves used to work together in the fields in Barbadoes. Indeed, it would be quite possible to find white persons living in this country who were born in actual slavery, such having come from Russia, where slavery was abolished the same year our Emancipation Proclamation was signed … Ah, and that reminds me. The word, slave, has a white origin.”
“A white origin!”
“Yes, sir, it comes from ‘Slav,’ a very white-skinned people who were reduced to slavery by the Germans….”
“Never heard of that.”
“Nevertheless, sir, you’ll find it in the Century, or any other standard, dictionary.”
The senator was silent.
Dixon added. “As for Africa, white people were held slaves there for many centuries by the blacks. Read, for instance, the works of Abbe Busnot, who visited Morocco in the seventeenth century. Why, as you know, as late as 1815, white Americans were captured on the high seas and taken as slaves by the blanks into the Sudan. You probably remember, how President Madison sent Commodore Decatur and others to free them. You’ll find several books in the Congressional library written by these white American slaves, who had been fread.”
The senator was silent. He had never head of these things. They seemed incredible, yet he was in no position to contradict them. He would have his secretary hunt them up as soon as he got back to Washington.
Dixon went on, “Of course, I could say much about how Negroes bought white people as slaves in this country as late as 1818. But for the honor of the Negro, I think the less said of that the better. The slave-holder, white or black, was an odious creature, at least he is in twentieth century eyes. He was either a kidnapper or an abettor of kidnapping.” Remembering how the senator had been boasting of how his people had owned slaves, Dixon added, “If my people had owned slaves, I certainly wouldn’t broadcast it, because slaveholders were parasites of the most pernicious kind. In so far as any stigma is attached to slavery today, it should be placed, not on the descendants of the slaves, but on those of the slaveholders.”
The senator glared angrily. He was being hit in his most vital spot. The proud boast of himself and his aristocratic friends was that their fathers had held slaves. Moreover, he was exasperated at the argument but he felt himself held in it as a vise. He arose hastily, stopped, paced the smoker, then sat down again. After a few moments he insisted:
“But the Negro, himself, acknowledges his racial inferiority. Just look how he bleaches his skin, straightens his hair, and uses other devices to appear like the white man! Isn’t that a sign of inferiority? Imitation is acknowledgment of superiority. Do you see any other race thus imitating the looks of the white man? I can’t imagine a more comical sight than a Negro dandy with his hair all ironed out until it looks like the quills upon the fretful porcupine. Imagine a white man darkening himself to look like a Negro!” Then he added, sneeringly, “The Negro is ashamed of himself. If he believes himself the equal of the white man, his actions certainly do not show it.’
Dixon started. He had never looked at this matter in this light before. Now he pondered his reply.
The passenger noted his silence with a smile of satisfaction.
Dixon found his response.
“Yes, these Negroes, who ‘doctor’ themselves to appear white do acknowledge inferiority. I have always held that one’s hair or color of skin is as perfect as nature can make them, so perfect that to tamper with either is the surest way of uppiling them eventually.”
So much the worse for the black man, then,” retorted the senator, sarcastically, “that he should try to ape a race below him. He is just inferior, that’s all. The best proof is that he acknowledges it himself. When a man acknowledges his faults, don’t you believe him?”
“Indeed, sir,” retorted Dixon. “It is clearly the fault of the average white that these so-called Negroes should try to be other than they are. In a country where a drop of ‘Negro’ blood, more or less visible, and a ‘kink,’ more or less pronounced, in the hair may altogether change the current of one’s life, what can you expect?”
Dixon paused an instant, then continued: “I will give you an instance: two brothers intimately known to me arrived in New York from abroad. The hair of one brother did not indicate Negro extraction, that of the other did. The straight-haired one obtained a position commensurate with his ability. Incidentally, he went South and married a white woman. The other, the better educated and more gentlemanly of the two, too manly for subterfuge, after fruitless endeavor, had to take a porter’s job. He finally went back home in disgust.”
Dixon added reflectively, “Also do not forget that if certain Negroes iron their curly hair to make it straight, certain whites also iron their straight hair to make it curly. Madame Walker, it is said, made a million dollars by straightening the hair of Negroes; Monsieur Marcel made about twenty times that by the reverse process among the whites. The whites, also, by bleaching their complexion and hair, wearing false hair, and the like, not to mention the use of sun-tan lotions, make a false show too, don’t they? Whose superiority are they aping then?”
The senator shifted in his seat uncomfortably! ! After a few moments he responded a shade less confidently, but with greater bluster, “What about this, then:—the Negro shows no originality, not even so far as contemptuous epithets are concerned. The white man calls the Negro ‘nigger’ and yet the Negro accepts it even to the length of calling himself so. Fancy a white man calling himself by a name given to him by Negroes! The Negro is a mimic. He has the same amount of reasoning power as a poll-parrot.”
“Yes,” admitted Dixon, “a great number of uneducated Negroes, also a goodly number of those with mere book-learning, do act in a manner to warrant your statement. The habit that far too many Negroes have of calling themselves by those objectionable epithets given them by their white contemners cannot be too strongly condemned, and yet, isn’t the surest way of nullifying a nickname to call yourself by it? Anyway, I have been to South America and the Negroes there would never think of addressing one another thus. Indeed, even a full-blooded Brazilian Negro feels hurt if called a Negro in pretty much the same way that a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers would be if called an Englishman. The Brazilian wishes to be known solely by his national patronymic.”
“Because