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The Intellect of the Negro Is Discussed,
1835
It is the popular opinion, both at the north and south, that
the negro is inferior in intellect to the white man. This
opinion is not, however, founded upon just experience. The
African intellect has never been developed. Individuals, indeed,
have been educated, whose acquirements certainly reflect honour
upon the race. Uneducated negroes have also exhibited
indications of strong intellectual vigour. And because, in both
instances, the negro has shown himself still inferior to the
white man, he is unhesitatingly pronounced an inferior being,
irremediably so, in the estimation of his judges, by the
operation of organic laws.
That the African intellect, in its present state, is inferior
to that of the European, is undeniable: but that, by any
peculiarity in his organized system, a necessary inferiority
ensues, will not so readily be admitted. Physiologists have
agreed, that physical peculiarities may be communicated from
generation to generation; and it is no less certain that mental
talents may thus be transmitted also.
Dr. King, in speaking of the fatality which attended the
house of Stuart, says, "If I were to ascribe their
calamities to another cause" (than evil fate), "or
endeavour to account for them by any natural means, I should
think they were chiefly owing to a certain obstinacy of temper,
which appears to have been hereditary, and inherent in all the
Stuarts, except Charles the second." The Brahmins are much
superior in intellect to all the other castes in Hindostan; and
it is mentioned, says Combe, by the missionaries, as an
ascertained fact, that the children of the Brahmins are
naturally more acute, intelligent, and docile, than those of the
inferior castes, age and other circumstances being equal.
"Parents," says Dr. Gregory, "frequently live
again in their offspring. It is certain that children resemble
their parents, not only in countenance and in the form of the
body, but in mental dispositions and in their virtues and vices.
The haughty 'gens Claudia' transmitted the peculiar mental
character of its founder through six centuries, and in the
tyrannical Nero again lived the imperious Appius Claudius."
If this theory be correct, there is something more to be done
before African intellect can be fairly developed.
If culture will expand the intellect of the untutored negro--take
one of the present generation for instance--according to this
theory, which experience proves to be true, it is certain that
he will transmit to his offspring an intellectual organization,
so to speak, superior to that which was transmitted to himself
by his parent; the mind of the offspring will be a less rude
soil for mental cultivation than was his father's; and when his
education is commenced, he will be one step in the scale of
intellect in advance of his parents at the same period. When he
arrives at maturity, he will, under equal circumstances, be
mentally superior to his progenitors at the same period of their
lives. His offspring will be superior to himself, and their
offspring yet a grade higher in the scale of intelligence, and
standing, perhaps, upon the very line drawn between human and
angelic intellect. His mind will bear comparison with that of
the white man; and, morally and intellectually, he will stand
beside him as his equal.
This is mere theory, but it is theory based upon the
operation of laws whose general principles cannot be
controverted: and when the negro, by the emancipation of his
species, has opportunity for the culture of his own mind-which,
if he is disposed to neglect, the philanthropist will nor be-a
few generations will leave no traces of those mental shackles,
which, like chains loaded upon the body, have so long borne him
down to a level with the brute. Till time proves this original
equi-mental organization of the white man and the negro, which
opinion fact has been strengthening for two or three generations
in individual instances, it is due, both to philanthropy and
justice, to suspend the sentence which condemns him as a being
less than man.
The South-West. By a Yankee [Joseph
Holt Ingraham] (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1835), II,
198-200.
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Provision for Schools for
Colored Children in New York, 1841
A school for colored children
may be established in any city or town of this state, with
approbation of the commissioners or town superintendent of such
city or town, which shall be under the charge of the trustees of
the district in which such school shall be kept; and in places
where no school districts exist, or where from any cause it may
be expedient, such school may be placed in charge of trustees to
be appointed by the commissioners or town superintendent of
common schools of the town or city, and if there be none, to be
appointed by the state superintendent.
Returns shall be made by the
trustees of such schools to the town superintendent at the same
time and in the same manner as now provided by law in relation
to districts; and they shall particularly specify the number of
colored children over five and under sixteen years of age,
attending such school from different districts, naming such
districts respectively, and the number from each.
The town superintendent shall
apportion and pay over to the trustees of such schools, a
portion of the money received by them annually, in the same
manner as now provided by law in respect to school districts,
allowing to such schools the proper proportion for each child
over five and under sixteen years of age, who shall have been
instructed in such school at least four months by a teacher duly
licensed, and shall deduct such proportion from the amount that
would have been apportioned to the district to which such child
belongs; and in his report to the state superintendent, the town
superintendent shall specially designate the schools for colored
children in his town or city.
Statutes at Large of the State of New York, III, pp
446-47
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Sources: Chapter VI. "The
Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight.
A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall.
Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951.Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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10 January 2012
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