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The More Things Change
This season marks the centennial of the birth of James McBride
Dabbs (1896 1970), the farmer-writer from Sumter County who became one of
his region's and the nation's most eloquent spokesmen for social justice
and racial equity. He was the author of four major books on the identity,
history and culture of the South: The Southern Heritage (1958),
The Road Home (1960), Who Speaks for the South? (1964) and
Haunted by God (1972).
In recognition of Dabbs and in conjunction with the Dabbs
Centennial Symposium scheduled from April 10 to 12 at the University of
South Carolina, POINT here features the republication of an item
discovered in the Dabbs Collection at the South Caroliniana Library. Dabbs
made the following remarks at the Southwide Student Human Relations
Conference held at Pheiffer College, Misenheimer, N.C., in November 1958.
They are reprinted from The College Student and the Changing South:
Report of the Southwide Student Human Relations Conference.
James McBride Dabbs was a writer, theologian and civil rights advocate.
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 There are two basic issues, the one tied in link to the other. There
is some question which is more basic than the other. One is an issue of
belief
 and
attitude
do we
believe in this or do we believe in that?
and
the other is primarily an issue of action.
The first issue I would put in this argument we are having in the
South is an issue of belief. Do we really believe in equality of the
races? To narrow it down, do we really believe here in the South that the
white and Negro races are intrinsically equal?
Now, I'm not raising the question
"Are
they equal as of this moment?" I don't see any question about that. The
whites have been privileged too long and the Negroes unprivileged too long
for anybody to say they should now be equal as races.
In order to be a good citizen, you've got to consider these things and
answer yes or no truthfully.
The great religions of the world don't speak in terms of race. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition, there aren't any Negroes and whites
just
people.
As of the present and by and large, I think there are no real
exceptions; science has been unable to discover any differences between
the races, except very slight and very insignificant ones. Science does
not assert that the races are equal; it simply says it has not been able
to prove that one race is any better equipped than any other.
So, my feeling would be that, in the Judeo-Christian tradition and
yielding to the authority of science in things about which I know nothing,
I would have to take my stand and decide that Negroes and whites are
intrinsically and essentially equal and we ought to act accordingly.
I am raising this question because of several reasons. One is that
there are other people in the South that we have to talk to in order to
deal with and to get the consent of the majority of the people. Do the
large mass of white people in the South think deep down the races are
equal or do they think they are unequal? That's the question you have to
face.
Now also there is the fact that, over a long period of history, the
Negro has been disadvantaged and the whites have been advantaged. There
has been, and is, an actual political, educational, social inequality in
favor of the whites. I think the whites would be more than human if after
several centuries of that kind of situation they hadn't pretty well soaked
up the idea that they are better
Now, if white men are taught this is not only true, but just, then the
white man can stand up and die for his justice which is rank injustice. He
can say, "I should have twice what he has because I'm twice as good." And
he really believes it.
Now I come to the second issue, the one that is primarily action. Do
we in the South really want the material advantages of an industrialized
economy? There's all the moral issue you want
how
to make a good living and be a wise man.
If we really want to do it, to gain the good things of this world,
then we'll forget all about the first issue. If we are hardheaded enough
businessmen, we aren't going to care about the color of the tractor
driver, but whether he can drive a tractor.
The basic relations in this world are productive relations, the
relation between fellowmen and the natural world in the making of a
living. That is vital.
If we have spiritual values that are real spiritual values, they are
rooted around these facts and relations. If we forget the race issue and
handle the industrial issue wisely, we'd realize that our system of
enforced inequality won't work.
We could make it work pretty well as long as we held to the old
agrarian way. There's no place for segregation in an industrial society.
We've got to realize that long-term industry won't come to Arkansas or
Virginia with the school situation, because their highly paid skilled
workers, the good citizens who raise the standard of living of the
community, won't come.
One said to a friend of mine from South Carolina, who asked him to
look over a job, "I don't want to waste your money to come down. I'm not
bringing my children to a state where you people can't make up your mind
if the children are going to school."
I imagine that, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, most of us feel that
it is our duty to face up to the question of equality. But a lot of us
agree that before God all men are equal, and it's a sort of verbal, gray,
cynical way everybody is equal. It isn't worth anything but, in this
sense, everybody is equal.
I remind you that the great Jewish prophet Jesus never said anything
about equality after death, but in this world. If you believe in equality,
then you've got to face the thing now, to see that there's equality of
opportunity in food, in medicine, in the necessities of life, in
education.
I submit the proposition that, in general, the South is a good place
to live because there are two races. You, the Negroes, have helped make
you, the whites, what you are; and you, the whites, have helped make you,
the Negroes, what you are.
If you put us together in the dark and talk, you can't tell the
difference.
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Symposium to honor contributions of
South Carolina author
"James McBride Dabbs and the Southern Heritage: A Centennial
Symposium" will be held at USC April 10 12. The event will examine and
celebrate the work of this farmer, writer, philosopher, theologian and
advocate of social justice and racial equity.
Two days of panel discussions focusing on Dabbs' contributions as
thinker, writer and civil rights leader will be conducted in the chamber
of the Euphradian Society on USC's Horseshoe, where Dabbs lived as a
student. The symposium will feature a visit to Dabbs's Sumter County home,
Rip Raps Plantation, and to the Salem Black River Presbyterian Church
which he attended all his life.
In addition to members of the Dabbs family, panel participants will
include Jack Bass, Will Campbell, Walter B. Edgar, Rhett Jackson, Alonzo
Johnson, Charles Joyner, Robert J. Moore, Cleveland Sellers, Donald W.
Shriver Jr. and John G. Sproat. For information, call Tom Johnson at
777-3132.
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