Title:  The Conservation of Races

Author:  W.E.  Burghardt Du Bois

Release Date:  May, 2004 [EBook #5685] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 7, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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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 the race who have had the advantage of higher education and culture, rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of 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 seeking definite aims; and (b) The persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart the Negro at every step of his upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities.

The Academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish such papers as in their judgment aid, by their broad and scholarly treatment of the topics discussed the dissemination of principles tending to the growth and development of the Negro along right lines, and the vindication of that race against vicious assaults.

THE CONSERVATION OF RACES

The American Negro has always felt an intense personal interest in discussions as to the origins and destinies of races:  primarily because back of most discussions of race with which he is familiar, have lurked certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political , intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong.  He has, consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to believe intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an already dawning to-morrow.

Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme types of the world’s races have met, and the resulting problem as to the future relations of these types is not only of intense and living interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind.