My stay in Washington, instead of being two or three days, was two or three weeks.  This was my first visit to the national capital, and I was, of course, interested in seeing the public buildings and something of the working of the government; but most of my time I spent with the doctor among his friends and acquaintances.  The social phase of life among colored people is more developed in Washington than in any other city in the country.  This is on account of the large number of individuals earning good salaries and having a reasonable amount of leisure time to draw from.  There are dozens of physicians and lawyers, scores of school teachers, and hundreds of clerks in the departments.  As to the colored department clerks, I think it fair to say that in educational equipment they average above the white clerks of the same grade; for, whereas a colored college graduate will seek such a job, the white university man goes into one of the many higher vocations which are open to him.

In a previous chapter I spoke of social life among colored people; so there is no need to take it up again here.  But there is one thing I did not mention:  among Negroes themselves there is the peculiar inconsistency of a color question.  Its existence is rarely admitted and hardly ever mentioned; it may not be too strong a statement to say that the greater portion of the race is unconscious of its influence; yet this influence, though silent, is constant.  It is evidenced most plainly in marriage selection; thus the black men generally marry women fairer than themselves; while, on the other hand, the dark women of stronger mental endowment are very often married to light-complexioned men; the effect is a tendency toward lighter complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race.  Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line.  I do not think so.  What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all, most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might be called an economic necessity.  So far as racial differences go, the United States puts a greater premium on color, or, better, lack of color, than upon anything else in the world.  To paraphrase, “Have a white skin, and all things else may be added unto you.”  I have seen advertisements in newspapers for waiters, bell-boys, or elevator men, which read:  “Light-colored man wanted.”  It is this tremendous pressure which the sentiment of the country exerts that is operating on the race.  There is involved not only the question of higher opportunity, but often the question of earning a livelihood; and so I say it is not strange, but a natural tendency.  Nor is it any more a sacrifice of self-respect that a black man should give to his children every advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries than that the new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry.  I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words:  “It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.”