It is immensely difficult, I say, for us to look at one of these
international questions from the point of view of another race,
cherishing other religious and social ideas, having another style of
government.
And there is another illustration of it that has recently occurred here
in our country, which is sadder still to me. Only a little while ago a
postmaster in the South was shot by a mob. The mob surrounds his house,
murders him and his child, wounds other members of the family, burns
down his home; and why? Under no impulse whatever except that of pure
and simple race prejudice, the utter inability of a white man to put
himself in the position of a black to such an extent as to recognize,
plead for, or defend his inherent rights as a man.
I am not casting any aspersion on the South in what I am saying, none
whatever. Were the conditions reversed, perhaps we should be no better.
It is not a practical problem with us. If there were two or three times
as many colored men in the State of New York as there are white men,
then we might understand the question. Let us not mentally cast any
stones at the people across the line. I point it out simply as
illustrating the difficulty that we have in recognizing the rights, the
moral rights, of people beyond the limits of that sympathy to which we
have been accustomed and for a long period trained.
I believe the day will come when we shall be as jealous of the right of
a man as we are now of the right of an American.
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