Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1886 — Race Prejudice. [ARTICLE]

Race Prejudice.

In the North, American lieview Gail Hamilton dwells on the subject of “Race Prejudice,” a subject of neverfailing interest to Americans;—particularly to Americans of the Southern! States. She does not believe that the amalgamation of the races is a matter that concerns the churches, even the Congregationalist churches, which are nearer to heaven than any other. The negro, she thinks, hugs his race prejudice as closely as does the Caucasian, and though no one knows what is to come, the white and black should at present be let to work out their salvation each for himself, leaving God to shape the destinies of the races. She says: . “If the races are providential, the race line is providential. If it is God who made the white man white and the black man black, it is God who made each choose to consort with his own. To say that Providence intended the race line to be perpetuated is not to lay to Providence the bondage, injustice, and anguish which have attended its perpetuation. It is abundantly worth while to throw life and treasure and national existence into the resolution that no human being shall be enslaved. It is better to die a thousand deaths than to do this great wr< ng against man, and sin against God. But it is not worth while to put even the contents of one contribution box into an attempt to secure by external pressure what is much better left to the working of natural causes, the adjustment of social relations. It is kicking against the pricks where there is no occasion to kick at all.” * * * “Norwill it be bad discipline for the Congregationahsts to tarry in Jericho till their beards be grown, and they have learned that while we have the right and are under obligation to demand in the So., th absolute political equality and civil rights for all, we have no right whatever to meddle with the social relations of the ecclesiastical affinities in the South; that we might just as reasonably refuse to help educate their ignorant masses unless the white will wear a three-cornered hat instead of a derby, a< refuse it unless the white and black will go to the same church; that, in short, the pigments of Providence are not obliterated because we stubbornly prove ourselves to be color-blind.”