26 Negro Migration 



throughout the remainder of this study. No matter what 

 other forms of race discrim ination exist in tSe Sou th, there 

 is no bar t o the i\ egro m tfie directionof buying land, as is 

 the case with th e Japane se in California, and in so far as he 

 makes effort to improve himself as a tenant, his interests 

 and those of the white landlord are practically the same. 



THE EXTENT OF PREJUDICE 



To the mind unaccustomed to the intricacies of the race 

 questions, the foregoing picture of Negro agricultural op- 

 portunity may seem too bright. Accounts of discrimination 

 and race prejudice probably play a larger part in the for- 

 mation of the popular belief concerning the colored people 

 than do statistics of improvement. To a large number of 

 people the Negro appears a very much down-trodden in- 

 dividual, the opportunity in the South wholly a white man's 

 opportunity, and the life in the South an inter- racial strug- 

 gle. Though this pessimistic view overemphasizes discrim- 

 ination, it is to be remembered that along side of the stream 

 of opportunity for the Negroes there is the parallel stream 

 of phenomena which are loosely grouped under the terms 

 race discrimination and race prejudice. These two, flowing 

 side by side, sometimes act on one another, and create 

 queer cross currents and eddies of policy which are ex- 

 tremely difficult to understand. To describe one without 

 describing the other is to give but one set of the complex 

 factors of race problems. 



Therefore, as this study is to mainly be concerned with 

 the agricultural opportunities of Negroes it may be well 

 to emphasize in the beginning some of the other factors 

 which are most widely known. For the past twenty years 

 thinking Negroes and friends of the Negro have been di- 

 vided into two schools, which agree fundamentally on the 

 question of what is needed for the betterment of the race, 

 and yet clash in their contentions as to the best methods to 



