president's address. 11 



generally associate ou an equality with the intellectual brown 

 Hindu and the yellow Chinese and Japanese, thereby showing 

 that colour and difference of race by no means necessarily engender 

 aversion. Negroes visiting Europe and moving among whites who 

 have no experience of the black in his own country, are received 

 and treated with every mark of regard and equality, and admitted 

 to the social stratum for which their education and training befit 

 them. From this we may conclude that on the part of the modern 

 white the aversion towards the black has not a primary instinctive 

 foundation, as is sometimes held. It is something which is engen- 

 dered on acquaintance with him on intimate terms or en masse, 

 and is observed to come over every European on first settling in 

 South Africa. 



But even on intimate terms in South Africa no aversion is 

 displayed between white and black so long as certain relationships 

 are maintained. Tn domestic service the native is treated with 

 practically the same consideration as obtains in the corresponding 

 relationship between master or mistress and servant in Europe. 

 The regard in which Zulu servants are held in Natal and Johannes- 

 burg may be instanced. On the farms it is my experience that 

 the native receives just and considerate treatment, with due regard 

 to his self-esteem : also in offices, in places of business, and in 

 industrial occupations he is usually treated as considerately as are 

 white persons of similar status in Europe. Cases of harsh and 

 unreasonable treatment can always be adduced : but these are not 

 racial in their significance. They are merely illustrative of the 

 treatment met with everywhere from a certain class of employer 

 towards his dependents, or from a superior towards an inferior. 

 On the part of the better type of white people in South Africa ii 

 can with full justification be claimed that nothing but a just and 

 considerate relationship obtains towards the native, so long as the 

 latter maintains a defined position, and that no feeling of 

 antipathy, much less of hatred, exists. 



It is when the native attempts to assume an attitude or 

 position of equality with the white that antipathy is engendered 

 and also manifested. Thus white and black domestic servants will 

 not work together on terms of equality, nor will the white and the 

 black labour side by side on the farm, or on the mine, or in other 

 industrial occupation. The educated and maybe refined black, 

 be he preacher, teacher, lawyer, or doctor, does not receive social 

 recognition from the corresponding classes of white, and would 

 encounter resentment were he to claim it. 



The assumption or fear of assumption of equality is, in my 

 opinion, the foundation of the antipathy between white and black, 

 and has for its justification the following considerations. Every- 

 where it is admitted that the Negro race as a whole is greatly 

 inferior mentally and socially when judged from the standard of 

 the white man, just as individually he is held to be unattractive 

 in many of his physical attributes. When the Negro places him- 

 self side by side with the white he invites comparison. The dif- 

 ference in degree of civilisation between the two races is too great 

 4 



