THE PASSING TRADITION AND THE AFRICAN CIVILIZATION



A close examination shows that what we know about the Negro both of the
present and the past vitally affects our opinions concerning him. Men's
beliefs concerning things are to a large extent determined by where they
live and what has been handed down to them. We believe in a hell of roaring
flames where in the fiercest of heat the souls of the wicked are subject to
eternal burnings. This idea of hell was evolved in the deserts of the
Arabian Peninsula where heat is one of the greatest forces of nature with
which man has to contend. Among the native tribes of Northern Siberia
dwelling in the regions of perpetual ice and snow, hell is a place filled
with great chunks of ice upon which the souls of the wicked are placed and
there subjected to eternal freezings. This idea of hell was evolved in the
regions where man is in a continual battle with the cold.

The beliefs of Negroes concerning themselves have to a large extent been
made for them. The reader no doubt will be interested to know that the
prevailing notions concerning the inferiority of the Negro grew up to a
large extent as the concomitant to Negro slavery in this country. The
bringing of the first Negroes from Africa as slaves was justified on the
grounds that they were heathen. It was not right, it was argued, for
Christians to enslave Christians, but they could enslave heathen, who as a
result would have an opportunity to become Christians. These Negro slaves
did actually become Christians and as a result the colonists were forced
to find other grounds to justify their continuation of the system. The
next argument was that they were different from white people. Here we
have a large part of the beginnings of the doctrine of the inferiority of