CHAPTER V.

COLOR.

Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for or to show the “cause” of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum, a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle, constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark, blonde or brunette, just as the “coloring” matter might happen to be dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it is simply a fact, and no more a cause than it is an effect. Cause and causes in natural phenomena are known only to Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden from us as the cause of their existence at all—as wholly beyond the scope of human intelligence, and therefore of rational inquiry, as the cause of the return of the seasons, or why men and animals at a certain time arrive at maturity or finally decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect fitness of the fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are able to see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter impossibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of God perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, therefore, such a monstrosity as a “colored man”—or a being like ourselves in all except the color of the negro—is not merely absurd, but as impossible in fact, though not so palpable to a superficial intelligence, as a white body with a negro head on its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of any other animal or form of being.

The face of the Caucasian reflects the character, the emotions, the instincts, to a certain extent the intellectual forces, and even the acquired habits, the virtues or vices of the individual. This, to a certain extent, depends on the mobility of the facial muscles, and the general anatomical structure and outline of the features; but without our color, the expression would be very imperfect, and the face wholly incapable of expressing the inner nature and specific character of the race. For example: What is there at the same time so charming and so indicative of inner purity and innocence as the blush of maiden modesty? For an instant the face is scarlet, then, perhaps, paler than ever in its delicate transparency; and these physical changes, beautiful as they may be to the eye, are rendered a thousand times more so by our consciousness that they reflect moral emotions infinitely more beautiful. Can any one suppose such a thing possible to a black face? that these sudden and startling alternations of color, which reflect the moral perceptions and elevated nature of the white woman, are possible to the negress? And if the latter cannot reflect these things in her face—if her features are utterly incapable of expressing emotions so elevated and beautiful, is it not certain that she is without them—that they have no existence in her inner being, are no portion of her moral nature? To suppose otherwise is not only absurd, but impious; it is to suppose that the Almighty Creator would endow a being with moral wants and capacities that could have no development—with an inner nature denied any external reflection or manifestation of its wants or of itself. Of course, it is not intended to say that the negress has not a moral nature; it is only intended to demonstrate the fact that she has not _the_ moral nature of the white woman; and, therefore, those who would endow her inner nature with these qualities, must necessarily charge the Creator with the gross injustice of withholding from her any expression of qualities so essential to her own happiness, as well as to our conception of the dignity and beauty of womanhood. This same illustration is extensively diversified in regard to the other sex. It is seen every day in our social life, and confronts us at every step. The white man is flushed with anger, or livid with fear, or pale with grief. He is at one moment so charged with the darker passions as to be almost black, and the next so softened by sorrow or stricken by grief that the face is bloodless and absolutely white. All these outward manifestations of the inner nature—of the moral being with which God has endowed us—are familiar to every one. They form a portion of our daily experience, and constitute an essential part of our social life.

There are great differences among our people in regard to the general expression of the features. Some reflect in their faces all the emotions by which they are moved, while others are so stolid, or they have acquired such a control over themselves in these respects, as to appear impenetrable. But this has no connection with color, or any relation to that great fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative conditions of the several human races. Like all the other great facts involved, color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character. The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most superior, the latter the most inferior—and between these extremes of humanity are the intermediate races, approximating to the former or approaching the latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom and ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more radical or universal, or no more a difference between white men and negroes, than any other fact out of the countless millions of facts that separate them. It is more palpable to the sense, more unavoidable, but no more universal or invariable than the difference in the hair, the voice, the features, the form of the limbs, the single globule of blood, or the myriads and millions of things that constitute the Negro being. It would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this palpable distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard His work from any possible desecration, and therefore had marked it so legibly, that human ignorance, fraud, folly, or wickedness, could by no possibility mistake it. And indeed it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us who clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their hideous theories on others, and would rather have their own families utterly perish from the earth than to practice or live up to their doctrine in this respect. The term “colored man,” or “colored person,” though natural enough to Europeans, or to those who had never seen negroes, or different races from themselves, could never have originated in a community having negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but an absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird. Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of the race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physical condition of the individual. The highest health of the white man is distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs from this, his color is clouded and sallow; while that of the negro is marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is to dirty brown, almost ash-color—thus, as in everything else, revealing the eternal truth that life and well-being, social as well as individual, are identical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it is only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a certain approximation to color or to equality become possible.