The Status of Minorities as a Test of Democracy

We in America have been slowly groping our way toward liberalism and democracy. It has been a long, hard trek. We have not yet fully reached our goal. But, in spite of the waves of hate and tyranny that are now sweeping the world, we are determined to press on toward tolerance and free opportunity for all the people. From the beginning this nation has been in the war between freedom and tyranny. The very settling of America was a search for fresh opportunities, a revolt against the old restraints and dogmas. At first we had limited ideas as to the scope of freedom. We held one great group of our own population in slavery; many of the early settlements showed little regard for religious liberty; the rights of servants and of labor were subject to the privileges and power of the propertied class. But steadily throughout the history of the new nation. we have extended the theory and the practice of liberty and opportunity. We freed our slaves and have given these freedmen at least a share in American opportunities. We have slowly established the idea and the fact of religious liberty. The rights of the working classes have steadily grown, and the standard of living of the masses, while still far below what it might be in this country of abundance, is well above that known in any other great realm at any other time. Meanwhile we have greatly enlarged the positive services and safeguards to all the people: education, health, protection of the weak and needy. All this has come slowly. During the three hundred years of colonial and national progress the American people have found that freedom is not a gift but is something to be fought for inch by inch, to be won through wise planning and hard work. Each advance is a struggle against greed, an even harder struggle against lethargy and stupidity. The most glaring weakness of our democracy is our treatment of Negroes. Our attitude toward this race, which makes up one-tenth of our entire population, more than one quarter of the historic region of the South, is a threat to the whole theory and practice of democracy. So long as we degrade one segment of the people we set a pattern of caste and discrimination that may easily be transferred to other groups. No race or class can be firmly assured of fair play so long as we continue to treat any group unfairly. Consideration for the Negro, as for any minority group, rests not merely on the grounds of humanity and charity; it rests on the solid base of enlightened selfishness. It is a question not only of the rights of the minorities themselves: it is a question of the total health and strength of the nation. We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in

Democracy · Political science · Politics · Test (biology) · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Geology · Law

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