"Through him, his race, a moment, lifted up Forests of hands to beauty, as in prayer, Touched through his lips the sacramental cup And then sank back, benumbed in our bleak air."
Yet, consider: to many millions of people this man was all wrong. _First_, he ought never to have been born, for he was the mulatto son of a white woman. _Secondly_, he should never have been educated as a musician,--he should have been trained, for his "place" in the world and to make him satisfied therewith. _Thirdly_, he should not have married the woman he loved and who loved him, for she was white and the niece of an Oxford professor. _Fourthly_, the children of such a union--but why proceed? You know it all by heart.
If he had been black, like Paul Laurence Dunbar, would the argument have been different? No. He should never have been born, for he is a "problem." He should never be educated, for he cannot be educated. He should never marry, for that means children and there is no place for black children in this world.
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In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith. All words and all thinking lead to the child,--to that vast immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents. Such thought as this it was that made the Master say of old as He saw baby faces:
"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea."
And yet the mothers and fathers and the men and women of my race must often pause and ask: Is it worth while? Ought children be born to us? Have we any right to make human souls face what we face today? The answer is clear: If the great battle of human right against poverty, against disease, against color prejudice is to be won, it must be won, not in our day, but in the day of our children's children. Ours is the blood and dust of battle; theirs the rewards of victory. If, then, they are not there because we have not brought them into the world, we have been the guiltiest factor in conquering ourselves. It is our duty, then, to accomplish the immortality of black blood, in order that the day may come in this dark world when poverty shall be abolished, privilege be based on individual desert, and the color of a man's skin be no bar to the outlook of his soul.
If it is our duty as honest colored men and women, battling for a great principle, to bring not aimless rafts of children to the world, but as many as, with reasonable sacrifice, we can train to largest manhood, what in its inner essence shall that training be, particularly in its beginning?
The first temptation is to shield the child,--to hedge it about that it may not know and will not dream of the color line. Then when we can no longer wholly shield, to indulge and pamper and coddle, as though in this dumb way to compensate. From this attitude comes the multitude of our spoiled, wayward, disappointed children. And must we not blame 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.