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The phrase 'Negro problem' has been used to refer to the problems caused by the presence of blacks in the New World, especially in the United States.

The nature of the problem

Although American blacks gained political equality after the Civil War whites were still reluctant to mix with them in terms of social equality. Intermarriage was widely considered a taboo. The races remained distinct and there was considerable animosity between them.

Thomas Carlyle argued in his pamphlet An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question that the emancipation of slaves was a mistake which led to decay of society. Opponents of racial equality in the 19th and 20th century used Haiti as an example of how blacks could not build succesful societies.

Proposed solutions

It has been hoped that miscegenation will lead to almost complete amalgamation of the two races in America which would eliminate blacks as a distinct ethnic group. William Hannibal Thomas wrote in 1841:

quote: The future American negro will part, undoubtedly, with many of his racial characteristics as he approximates in color and conduct the white race. Even now many persons of negroid ancestry are so fair in color that they readily pass for white people, and marry among that class without exciting the slightest suspicion as to their mixed race identity. Furthermore, white American marriages are constantly contracted with every variety of the colored races, and the fruit of such unions is certain to exert, hereafter, a considerable influence upon many existing social perplexities. The inevitable outcome of a perfect blending of our heterogeneous peoples would be the development of a composite type of American people of incomparable strength and beauty, who, if they clung fast to their best ethical instincts, would attain such heights as would make our country what it was ordained to be,—the cradle of world-wide liberty, the citadel of human fraternity,

and the seat and centre of universal righteousness.

Robert Shufeldt named this "most outrageous and vilest proposition that has yet been made on the part of any one as a solution of the negro problem in the United States". He wrote:

I can conceive of no greater calamity that could happen to my people, to my race in this

country than this. We have here at least a certain proportion of the population who can call themselves true Americans—a race that, although it came from the Old World, and is a composite stock of the Old World, has arrived at a stage of civilization unexcelled by any other nation in the entire range of history. This civilization speaks for itself, and it is not necessary for me to dilate upon it here, and it is this civilization, the building up of which has taken thousands of years that Thomas would have now jeopardized by the injection into it of a poison so foul and so hopelessly stagnant that whenever or wherever it mixes with it, the rottenness of the result is only too apparent. I refer distinctly to the

continued and systematic crossing of the negroes and whites in the United States of America.

Gunnar Myrdal wrote in his influential book “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy” that the Negro problem was essentially the consequence of racism. According to Myrdal the elimination of racism would lead to the elimination of Negro problem. Black intellectuals like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois who wrote on the Negro problem also stressed the importance of education.

Notes

1. Bruce, 1893
2. http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm
3. Shufeldt, 1907
4. Shufeldt, 1907
5. Myrdal, 1944

References

• The Negro problem by William Cabell Bruce. 1893
• The Negro - A Menace to American Civilization by Robert William Shufeldt, 1907
• The Negro problem by Booker T. Washington et. al. , 1903
• An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy by Gunnar Myrdal, 1944