A WORLD-WIDE COLOR LINE 485 



It is an unquestionable fact that the yellow as well as the negroid 

 peoples possess many desirable qualities in which the whites are 

 deficient. From this it has been argued that it would be advantageous 

 if all races were blended into a universal type embodying the excellences 

 of each. But scientific breeders have long ago demonstrated that the 

 most desirable results are secured by specializing types rather than by 

 merging them. The perfection of individual qualities insures a high 

 degree of general efficiency in case those qualities can be coordinated in 

 a systematic organization. This is particularly true of human types. 

 The doctrine of racial Darwinism no longer implies a struggle in which 

 the defeated type is exterminated. Under conditions prevailing in 

 modern civilized association it implies rather an application of the 

 selective principle through a combination of competition and coopera- 

 tion, by which the superior qualities of each race are sifted out and 

 brought to efficiency. It implies also a rough sort of interracial divi- 

 sion of labor. 



A group of negro leaders in America have advocated the principle of 

 a " group economy " for the colored people of the south, and the idea 

 is capable of a wider application to the great racial groups of the 

 world. In a world of free exchange and intergroup cooperation it is 

 absurd to suppose that the white race can get the benefit of whatever is 

 useful in the tropics, for instance, only by conquest and colonization. 

 Perhaps it is true that the tropical peoples will become efficient only 

 through the influence of organized white leadership, but Mr. Kidd's 

 plausible plea that the white race ought to master and hold the tropics 

 " in trust for civilization " is an empty phrase unless it means a real 

 overlordship. The question inevitably arises, "Whose civilization ? " 

 For when the colored races shall have developed an adequate race con- 

 sciousness it is inevitable that they should seek to devise their own 

 institutions according to their needs, and from the point of view of 

 world interest it is desirable that they do so. 



The color line is evidence of an attempt, based on instinctive choice, 

 to preserve those distinctive values which a racial group has come to 

 regard as of the highest moment to itself. Although sometimes based 

 on a blind prejudice surviving from the primal instincts of periods of 

 isolated savagery, it invariably, in its better phases, has in it the core 

 of a sound scientific truth, which is that specialization is the law of 

 efficiency. The fact that it is always the lighter race that puts the taboo 

 on the colored, and that the latter is everywhere eager to mix with the 

 whites, is only an evidence of the general trend of choice towards the 

 higher efficiency of the white race. 



