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The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2
THE CONSERVATION OF RACES
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
1897
Announcement
The American Negro Academy believes that upon those of therace who have had the advantage of higher education and culture,rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for theemployment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planesof thought and action.
Two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (a)The lack of unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-sacrificing spirit, and no well-defined line of policy seekingdefinite aims; and (b) The persistent, relentless, at timescovert opposition employed to thwart the Negro at every step ofhis upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim tothe highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities.
The Academy will, therefore, from time to time, publishsuch papers as in their judgment aid, by their broad andscholarly treatment of the topics discussed the dissemination ofprinciples tending to the growth and development of the Negroalong right lines, and the vindication of that race againstvicious assaults.
The American Negro has always felt an intense personalinterest in discussions as to the origins and destinies ofraces: primarily because back of most discussions of race withwhich he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to hisnatural abilities, as to his political , intellectual and moralstatus, which he felt were wrong. He has, consequently, been ledto deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believeintensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and tospeak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility ofan already dawning to-morrow.
Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledgethat human beings are divided into races; that in this countrythe two most extreme types of the world's races have met, andthe resulting problem as to the future relations of these typesis not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms anepoch in the history of mankind.
It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, inguiding our future development, that at times we rise above thepressing, but smaller questions of separate schools and cars,wage-discrimination and lynch law, to survey the whole questionsof race in human philosophy and to lay, on a basis of broadknowledge and careful insight, those large lines of policy andhigher ideals which may form our guiding lines and boundaries inthe practical difficulties of every day. For it is certain thatall human striving must recognize the hard limits of naturallaw, and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest,which is against the constitution of the world, is vain. Thequestion, then, which we must seriously consider is this: Whatis the real meaning of Race; what has, in the past, been the lawof race development, and what lessons has the past history ofrace development to teach the rising Negro people?
When we thus come to inquire into the essential differenceof races we find it hard to come at once to any definiteconclusion. Many criteria of race differences have in the pastbeen proposed, as color, hair, cranial measurements andlanguage. And manifestly, in each of these respects, humanbeings differ widely. They vary in color, for instance, from themarble-like pallor of the Scandinavian to the rich, dark brownof the Zulu, passing by the creamy Slav, the yellow Chinese, thelight brown Sicilian and the brown Egyptian. Men vary