The racial problem is badly obscured by its historical
retrospect and presentation, much of which is unsound and untrue; it is
obscured also by ancient hatreds and national jealousies. These are inherent in
human nature but are fed and fostered by prejudice and those who are animated
by ulterior and selfish intentions. New and rapidly arising ambitions are also
fomenting the difficulty; these ambitions are right and sound, particularly in
the case of the Negro. These ambitions are often exploited and distorted by
selfish political interests and trouble-making agencies. Still other factors
conditioning the racial problem are the economic distress under which so many
labour today, the imperialistic control of certain nations, the lack of
educational attainments, or a civilization so ancient that it is showing signs
of degeneration. These and many other factors are everywhere present,
conditioning human thinking, deluding the many affected by the problem and
greatly handicapping the efforts of those who are seeking to bring about right
action and develop a more balanced and constructive attitude among these
minorities. Minorities, along with the rest of mankind, are subject to the
unerring forces of evolution and are struggling towards a higher and better
existence, towards more wholesome living conditions, towards more individual
and racial freedom and a much higher level of right human relations.
The sensitivity of these minorities, the inflammatory
condition of their immediate and expressed ambition and the violence and
prejudice of some of those who speak and fight for them prevent the majority
from approaching their problem with the calmness, the cool calculation and the
recognition of relation to the whole of humanity which their problem
fundamentally requires. Racial faults are more widely recognized than racial
virtues; racial qualities find themselves in conflict with national
characteristics or world trends and these still further increase the
difficulty. The efforts of well-meaning citizens (and they are many) and the
plans of the convinced humanitarian to aid these minorities are too often based
solely upon a good heart, Christian principles and a sense of justice; these
fine qualities are, however, often implemented by a profound ignorance of the
true facts, of the historical values and of the various relationships involved.
They are also often impulsed by a fighting fanaticism which borders on a hatred
for the majority who (as the fighting protagonist sees it) are responsible for
the cruel injustices under which the racial minority labours. They fail to
recognize that the minority itself is not free from faults but is in a measure
also responsible for some of the difficulties. These racial faults and
difficulties are usually frankly ignored by the minority itself and its
friends.
Racial faults may be entirely the result of the point
reached in evolution, of unfair environing conditions and of a certain type of
temperament, as is the case with the Negro minority in the United States of
America, which leaves them basically not responsible for the difficulty; or the
responsibility of the struggling minority may be far greater than it is willing
to admit, as is the case with the Jewish minority in the world who are an ancient
and civilized people with a full culture of their own, plus certain inherent
characteristics which may account for much of their trouble. The difficulty
again may be largely a historical one and based upon certain essential
incompatibilities such as those which can exist between a conquered and a
conquering people, between a militant group and a negative, pacifist group.
These can be found existing today between the Moslem and Hindu populations of
India—an ancient problem which the British inherited. To all these contributing
factors in the problem of the minorities must be added the separative
tendencies which the differing religious systems have fostered and which today
they deliberately continue to foster. The narrowness of religious creeds is a potent,
contributing cause.
At the very outset of our discussion, it would be wise to
remember that the entire problem we are considering can be traced back to the
outstanding human weakness, the great sin or heresy of separateness. There is
surely no greater sin than this; it is responsible for the entire range of
human evil. It sets an individual against his brother; it makes him consider
his selfish, personal interests as of paramount importance; it leads inevitably
to crime and cruelty; it constitutes the greatest hindrance to happiness in the
world, for it sets man against man, group against group, class against class
and nation against nation. It engenders a destructive sense of superiority and
leads to the pernicious doctrine of superior and inferior nations and races; it
produces economic selfishness and leads to the economic exploitation of human
beings, to trade barriers, to the condition of have and have not, to
territorial possessiveness and to the extremes of poverty and riches; it sets
an important emphasis upon material acquisitiveness, upon boundaries, and the
dangerous doctrine of national sovereignty and its various selfish
implications; it breeds distrust between peoples and hatred throughout the
entire world and has led since time began to cruel and destructive wars. It has
today brought the entire planetary population to its present dire and dreadful
condition so that men everywhere are beginning to realize that unless something
is fundamentally changed, mankind is practically already destroyed. But who
will engineer the needed change and where is the leadership which will bring it
about? It is a state of affairs which mankind itself must face as a whole; and
by meeting and facing this basic expression of universal wrongdoing, humanity
can bring about the needed change and is offered a new opportunity for right
action, leading to right human relations.
From the angle of our subject, the problem of the
minorities, this sense of separateness (with its many far-reaching effects)
falls into two major categories; these are so closely related that it is
well-nigh impossible to consider them apart.
First, there is the spirit of nationalism with its sense of
sovereignty and its selfish desires and aspirations. This, in its worst aspect,
sets one nation against another, fosters a sense of national superiority and
leads the citizens of a nation to regard themselves and their institutions as
superior to those of another nation; it cultivates pride of race, of history,
of possessions and of cultural progress and breeds an arrogance, a boastfulness
and a contempt of other civilizations and cultures which is evil and
degenerating; it engenders also a willingness to sacrifice other people's
interests to one's own and a basic failure to admit that "God hath made
all men equal". This type of nationalism is universal and everywhere to be
found and no nation is free from it; it indicates a blindness, a cruelty and a
lack of proportion for which mankind is already paying a terrible price and
which will bring humanity down in ruins if persisted in.
There is, needless to say, an ideal nationalism which is the
reverse of all this; it exists as yet only in the minds of an enlightened few
in every nation, but it is not yet an effective and constructive aspect of any
nation anywhere; it remains still a dream, a hope and, let us believe, a fixed
intention. This type of nationalism rightly fosters its individual civilization
but as a national contribution to the general good of the comity of nations and
not as a means of self-glorification; it defends its constitution, its lands
and its people through the rectitude of its living expression, the beauty of
its mode of life and the selflessness of its attitudes; it does not infringe,
for any reason, the rights of other people or nations. It aims to improve and
perfect its own mode of life so that all in the world may benefit. It is a
living, vital, spiritual organism and not a selfish, material organization.
Secondly, there is the problem of the racial minorities.
They present a problem because of their relation to the nations within which or
among which they find themselves. It is largely the problem of the relation of
the weaker to the stronger, of the few to the many, of the undeveloped to the
developed, or of one religious faith to another more powerful and controlling;
it is closely tied up with the problem of nationalism, of colour, of historical
process and of future purpose. It is a major and most critical problem in every
part of the world today.
As we consider this crucial problem (upon which so much of
the future peace of the world depends), we must make an effort to keep our own
mental and national attitude well in the background and to see the emerging
problem in the light of the Biblical statement that there is "one God and
Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all". Let us
regard that statement as a scientific one and not as a pious, religious hope.
God has made us all of one blood and that God—under some name or aspect,
whether transcendent or immanent, whether regarded as energy or intelligence,
whether called God, Brahma, the Abstract or the Absolute—is universally
recognized. Again, under the great Law of Evolution and the process of
creation, men are subject to the same reactions to their environment, to the
same pain, to the same joys, to the same anxieties, to the same appetites and
the same urges towards betterment, to the same mystical aspiration, to the same
sinful tendencies and desires, to the same selfishness, and to the same amazing
aptitude for heroic divine expression, to the same love and beauty, to the same
innate pride, to the same sense of divinity and to the same fundamental
efforts. Under the great evolutionary process, men and races differ in mental
development, in physical stamina, in creative possibilities, in understanding,
in human perceptiveness and in their position upon the ladder of civilization;
this, however, is temporary, for the same potentialities exist in all of us
without exception, and will eventually display themselves. These distinctions,
which have in the past set peoples and races so far apart, are rapidly dying
out with the spread of education, with the uniting discoveries of science
bringing us all so close together and with the power to think, to read and to plan.
All evolution is cyclic in nature; nations and races pass
through the same cycles of childhood, growth, manhood, maturity, decline and
disappearance, as does every human being. But behind these cycles, the
triumphant spirit of man moves on from height to height, from attainment to
attainment and towards an ultimate goal which as yet no man visions but which
is summed up for us in the possibility of being in the world as Christ was;
this is the hope held out to us in the New Testament and by all the Sons of God
down the ages and in every land and by all religious faiths.
In considering our theme we need now to do two things: first
of all consider what makes a people, a race or a nation a minority, and then
consider along what lines a solution may lie. The world today is full of [Page
91] clamouring minorities who—rightly or wrongly—are making claims upon the
majority. Some of the majorities are sincerely concerned in seeing justice done
to the struggling and appealing minorities; others are using them as "talking
points" for their own ends or are championing the cause of the small and
weak nations, not from any humanitarian reasons but for power politics.
The Minorities
There are both national and international minorities. In the
international situation there are powerful majorities—the Big Three, the Big
Four or the Big Five and numerous smaller nations, demanding equal rights,
equal votes and equal position. These smaller nations are afraid of the more
powerful nations and of their ability to enforce their will. They are afraid of
exploitation by some powerful nation or amalgamation of nations, distrustful of
favours and support because of future claimed indebtedness, and unable to
enforce their will or express their desires because of military weakness and political
impotence. You have, therefore, in the world today great and influential
nations such as the U.S.S.R., the British Commonwealth of Nations and the
United States of America; you have also powers which have been great and then
forfeited all right to recognition; you have other powers, such as France and
Spain, who are secondary in influence, but resent it greatly, and finally many
small nations each with its own individual life, civilization and culture. All
of these without exception are characterized by a spirit of nationalism, by a
determination to hold on to what is or has been their own at any cost, and all
possessing an historical past and local tradition which condition their
thinking; all have their own developed or developing culture and all are bound
together by what we call modern civilization. It is a civilization at present
founded on materialism and one which has signally failed to instill into men a
true sense of values—the values which alone can bind humanity together and
bring to an end the great heresy of separateness.
All these nations, great and small, have suffered cruelly
during the years of war (1914-1945) and are doomed still to suffer through the
years of immediate adjustment. Some have suffered more than others and have the
opportunity to demonstrate a resultant purification, if they so choose. Others
chose an easy way during the war and abstained from taking sides, losing
thereby a great spiritual opportunity, based upon the principle of sharing;
they will need to learn the lessons of pain in other ways and more slowly;
nations in the western hemisphere have not suffered in any acute manner, for
their territories have been spared, and their civilian populations have lived
in comfort, ease and plenty; they too have lost something and will also need to
learn in other ways humanity's great lesson of identification and
non-separateness.
Great and small today face a new world; great and small have
lost faith in the old ways, and few really wish to see the old manner of life
restored; all the nations, great and small, are fighting diplomatically,
politically and economically for all they can get for themselves; distrust and
criticism are widespread; there is no true sense of security, especially among
the minorities. Some of the great nations, with a sound realization that there
is no peace for the world unless there is justice for all, are struggling to
create an organization which will give place and opportunity to all nations but
their efforts are largely based on a selfish common sense; they are founded
also upon the knowledge that material security and a sufficiency of material
supplies must be the result of a compromise between that which has been and
the—as yet—impossible vision of the idealist. Their objectives, however, are
still material, physical and tangible and are presented idealistically but with
selfish motives. This is, however, a great step forward. The ideal is
universally recognized even if it remains as yet a dream.
As we face the world picture today, we must see it in its
true colours and must realize that if the best possible steps, spiritual and
material, were to be taken for the smallest and least important of the
minorities, it would create a situation which would completely reverse world
politics and usher in an entirely new and more enlightened cultural and
civilized age. This, however, is not likely to happen; so close are the
interlocking selfish interests that the use of a system of perfect justice and
fairness in any one case would upset major material interests, infringe the
so-called rights of powerful nations, encroach on settled boundaries and
outrage powerful groups even in most distant lands.
Today—on an international scale—the battle of the minorities
is going on; Russia is reaching out after influence in many directions; the
United States of America is seeking to hold the place of paramount control in
South America and in the Far East commercially and politically and is earning a
name in those countries (rightly or wrongly) as imperialistic; Great Britain is
endeavouring to protect her "lifeline" to the East by political moves
in the Near East; France is attempting to regain her lost power by obstructing
the work of the U.N. and by championing the cause of the smaller nations in
Europe. As the Great Powers play politics and angle for place and position, the
masses of the people in every land—great and small—are full of fear and
questioning; they are worn by the war, sick of insecurity, underfed and
frightened as they look toward the future, tired to their very souls of
fighting and quarrelling, weary of the tyranny of striking workmen, and wanting
only to live in safety, to own the necessities of existence, to raise their
children in a certain measure of civilized culture and to live in a land where
there are sound economics, a living religion and an adequate educational
system.
In every country the great sin of separateness is again
rearing its ugly head; minorities abound and are abused; cleavages are
everywhere to be found; parties are clamouring for attention and adherents;
religious groups are spreading dissension and seeking to gain in membership at
the expense of other groups; the rich are organizing so as to control the
finances of the world; the poor are fighting for their rights and better living
conditions; the tyranny of selfish politics permeates both capital and labour.
This is a true and tragic picture. It is, happily, not the
only one. There is another; a study of this other picture will lead to renewed
optimism and to constant faith in divine planning and the beauty of the human
being. In every nation there are those who see a better vision of a better
world, who are thinking and talking and planning in terms of humanity, and who
realize that those who form the various groups—political, religious,
educational and labour—are men and women and essentially, if unconsciously,
brothers. They see the world whole and are working towards an inevitable
unification; they recognize the problems of the nations, great and small, and
the difficult situation in which the minorities today find themselves; they
know that the use of force produces results which are not truly effective (for
the cost is far too great) and are usually transient. They realize that the
only true hope is an enlightened public opinion and that this must be the
result of sound educational methods and just and exact propaganda.
It will be obvious that it will not be possible to take up
the tale of all the minorities in the international field [Page 95] and deal
for instance with the struggle of the little nations for recognition and for
what they consider (rightly or wrongly) their just rights. The story of the
little nations would take years to write and years to read. It would be the
story of humanity. All we can do is to recognize that they have a case to be
presented and a problem to be solved, but that justice and fair play, full
opportunity and equal sharing of the world's economic resources will only be
possible when certain broad and general principles have been enforced by the
weight of public opinion.
The problems of two minorities are attracting at this time
much public attention. If they can be solved a tremendous step forward will
have been made towards world understanding. They are:
1. The Jewish Problem. The
Jews constitute an international minority of great aggressiveness, exceedingly
vocal, and they also constitute a minority in practically every nation in the
world. Their problem is, therefore, unique.
2. The Negro Problem. This
is another unique problem, with the Negro constituting a majority in that great
(and as yet undeveloped) continent of Africa, and at the same time constituting
a minority in the United States of America and one which is attracting great
attention. This problem is unique in the sense that it is essentially the
problem of the white people and one which they must solve because they produced
it and have perpetuated it.
If we can get some idea of the significance of these
problems, materially and spiritually, and can gain some insight into the
responsibilities involved, much of usefulness may be gained. In the case of the
Jews, the sin of separateness is deeply inherent in the race itself, as well as
among those among whom they live, but for the perpetuation of the separation
the Jews are largely responsible; in the case of the Negro, the separative
instinct derives from the white people; the Negro is struggling to end it and,
therefore, the spiritual forces of the world are on the side of the Negro.
1. The Jewish Problem
This problem is so old and so well known that it is
difficult to say anything about it which will not be in the nature of a
platitude, that will not indicate a bias of some kind (from the point of view
of the reader) and that will not arouse in the Jewish reader above all an
undesirable reaction. There is little usefulness, however, in saying that which
will be acceptable or which agrees with all points of view or is a statement of
all that has hitherto been said. There are things to be said which are not so
familiar and which have seldom been said, or have been said in a spirit of
criticism or of anti-Semitism instead of in a spirit of love, as is attempted
here.
Let us look for a moment at the situation of the Jews, prior
to the bitter and unpardonable attack made upon them by Hitler and prior to the
war 1939-1945. They were to be found in every land and claimed citizenship in
every country; within the nation of their birth, they preserved intact their
own racial identity, their own peculiar way of life, their own national
religion (which is everybody's privilege) and a close adherence to those of
their own race. Other groups have done this but to a much lesser degree and
have been eventually absorbed and assimilated by the land of their citizenship.
The Jews have always constituted a nation within a nation, though this has been
less marked in Great Britain, Holland, France and Italy than elsewhere, and
therefore, in none of these countries has there been any strong anti-Semitic
feeling.
[PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY, 1947, pp. 85-121]
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