Color, Communism, and Common Sense - Manning Johnson




Wisdom Needed

All other racial and national groups have their respective organizations. No Negro belongs to any of these organizations, nor is his membership sought or welcome. Moreover, no Negro is called upon to decide what is best for any one of these groups. What is most important is that no one of these groups considers itself "segregated" because no Negro belongs, is invited, nor has his opinion sought. Yet the Negro intellectual contends that to get together as Negroes, to discuss common problems as Negroes, to decide what is best for Negroes, without white participation, is "segregation."

Such an attitude speaks for itself. It is a hangover from slavery when the Negro had to depend on the master for everything necessary for his well-being. At the same time, it proves that no "Proclamation of Emancipation" is capable of freeing those who do not wish to be free. The Negro intelligentsia, by far and large, is physically free but mentally slave. After nearly a century removed from chattel slavery, they are unwilling and incapable of throwing off their slave psychology. Reds and political charlatans of all shades, aware of this fact, find the Negro intellectual easy prey.

Fundamentally, there is deep racial consciousness among Negro Americans. They have, in spite of the divisive influence of the Negro intellectual, the same instinctive urge to group together as have other racial and national groups.

They desire progress through the medium of education, reliability, know-how and productivity, all so essential in competitive society. They know that to hold a comparable job they must be just as good and in most instances better, though a number of Negro intellectuals try to convince them that the cry of discrimination is a good substitute.

Furthermore, they know that a number of Negroes developed skills during the war, but that the great majority are not highly skilled or trained to fit into industry during this atomic age. (Thanks to W.E.B. DuBois and Monroe Trotter for their indefatigable toil to defeat the industrial training program of Booker T. Washington which would have made the Negro an indispensable part of American industry.)

Booker T. Washington's philosophy of education was to prepare the majority of Negroes through vocational training, to play a vital role in the rapidly developing American economy before and after the turn of the century. He undoubtedly foresaw the process of industrialization, the ensuing demand for trained, qualified personnel, i.e., skilled tradesmen who could be relied upon to do a job efficiently and well. Such training would enable the Negro to maintain his favored position, after slavery, and place him in a better competitive position against immigrants in the labor market. He stressed pride of race, home ownership, land ownership along with industrial and agricultural training.

Leftists, DuBois and Monroe Trotter bitterly assailed this philosophy. Consequently, most Negro youths avoided the skilled trades as "menial." According to Mr. Carter G. Woodson, the vacuum was filled by white immigrant labor.

Many Negroes realize that DuBois was wrong then, as he is today, in his attempt to steer them down the road to Communism. Further, the average Negro realizes that his happiness and well-being are not served to him on a silver platter, but come as a result of hard and difficult struggle. He therefore seeks (1) practical solutions to all his problems, and (2) a way to get along with other Americans with the least possible friction. Sagely, he realizes that a man cannot live constantly in the miasmic fog of race hostility without stifling to death, nor can he live fighting all other Americans all the time.

On the other hand, the vociferous Negro intellectuals, along with the reds, through their impractical, unrealistic, alien behavior, turn race relations into a shambles. Every Negro who opposes integration and the N.A.A.C.P. becomes a traitor or an "Uncle Tom." Every white person taking a similar stand is branded a "criminal" and "outside of the law." The fact that courts have been known to reverse themselves and that under our system of government every American has the right to protest and oppose any ruling considered onerous or prejudicial is ignored. Stupidly, they go about their business of forcing everybody to conform or be damned, thus building up fires of resentment that will require the work of centuries to extinguish.

Already, under the guise of "struggling for Negro rights," they have created all the explosive material for racial violence by making impossible demands, resisting sane and just decisions, opposing compromise and adjustment and demanding that everything must be done forthwith or not at all.

They have no love for their own people. They have no love for America. Naturally, they get the Kremlin's support and approval. Feeling frustrated and inferior, they run to communism and civil disobedience in their folly. They play Moscow's game and they deserve whatever red reward that is due them.