The Negro as a Beast: The Racial Climate in Griffith’s Time
By Erin Meinert, with comments by Samuel Olsen and Taylor Kite
[1] America’s racial climate in the early 1900s as depicted by Charles Carroll in his work The Negro a Beast (1900) is atrocious, unnerving, and irrefutably racist. He defends the low social status of African Americans on the grounds that their place within society is modernly, biblically, and scientifically supported and appropriate. The book opens with this short poem that crystallizes Carroll’s heavily biased view of blacks: “The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech / and hands, that he may be of service to his master / â€"the White man†(Carroll 1). He also examines the Negroes and their physical and emotional being according to his own beliefs along with the opinions of others that he supports with factual evidence and primary sources. Carroll employs the infamous scientist Charles Darwin as well as the teachings of both The Scriptural School of Divine Creation and The Atheistic School of Natural Development to support his prejudicial views. Though the argument Carroll makes regarding the degrading state of African Americans is both ludicrous and wildly fictitious, he does create a compelling argument that allows readers to understand how films and societies such as The Birth of a Nation and the Ku Klux Klan came into existence and had such a devout following during the early 1900s.
[2] Carroll first highlights the physical differences between whites and blacks by using the measurements of facial features to liken African Americans to apes. He claims that among the immense variety of differences between the two races, the strongest disparities occur in their physical compositions. He opens his argument with the contrast between the fine and silky hair of the Caucasian race against the thick and wooly hair of African Americans. Carroll continues his work illuminating the slender shape of white noses, the prominent nature of their fine chins, and the chiseled jaw line of the typical Caucasian. However, in describing Negroes, Carroll finds their noses broad, their chins receding, and their jaws extending outward like that of a chimp’s. For Carroll, blacks are less evolved than whites, therefore they are more similar to apes, which are obviously thought to have been our first ancestors by some scientists and, more specifically, The Atheistic School of Natural Development. Carroll uses these broad similarities between the two groups to illustrate African Americans as savage beasts, clearly born of a different species than that of white humans. (see comment by Taylor Kite)
[3] Furthering this idea of the Negro as an ape is Carroll’s repetition of the line “This is another character of the ape which the Negro presents,†which he skillfully places at the end of each paragraph comparing the two races. This redundancy is a rhetorical technique that continually drills the thought of African Americans as beastly creatures into the reader’s minds. Finally, to solidify this image of blacks is Carroll’s use of a Dr. Winchell’s medical expertise. Winchell claims that during his multiple years as a practicing doctor that African Americans have always needed twice the average dose of medicine as whites because their systems can not break down drugs as efficiently. Ultimately, this argument concludes Carroll’s physical depictions of blacks and cements their image as disproportionate to that of their white superiors.
[4] Aside from the physical shortcomings of blacks, Carroll also finds their mental capabilities to be debilitating in comparison with whites as well. He depicts African Americans as void of sensitivity, essentially emotionless black holes who wander helplessly through life surviving solely by the life-giving hand of the whites. Both he and Charles Darwin believed that because they had such numbed senses and a lack of emotional complexity, that they made idyllic slaves who were created solely to work mercilessly for whites. As Carroll describes their emotional state, he claims, “Fear is usually the only thing that controls them. Very few of the finer feelings find any lodgment in their natures. Having been once taught to obey, they do moderately well†(30). In stark contrast, the developed nature of whites would not be fit to do such manual labor because their mental and emotional capacities are so great that their potential would be wasted performing rudimentary work. Further supporting the idea of blacks as exemplary slaves is their lessened educational abilities. According to Carroll, African American’s learning aptitudes are severely less capable: “They read well if they have a good teacher, and nearly all write well. In arithmetic, grammar, geography and the higher branches, they are mostly deficient. They learn definitions tolerable well, but fail in the application†(30). Using all of these negative depictions of blacks, Carroll looks to justify the maltreatment of Negroes and their lowered rank within society during the early 1900s.
[5] Employing religion and implying that even God advocated the dehumanization of blacks is yet another facet of Carroll’s compiled argument against Negroes. He opens this dispute by presenting two separate schools of belief that both agree with the degradation of blacks but for different reasons. First, he explains the theory from the Scriptural School of Divine Creation, which believes that “The Negro is the son of Ham, and his inferiority to his white brother is the result of a curse which Noah put upon Ham for his disrespectful conduct toward him†(35). Conversely, Carroll believes that African Americans were created from an entirely separate species, ultimately that they descended from apes and are not even human. By affirming that even God believed blacks to be unequal to whites, Carroll takes his argument to a new level: it is no longer a societal thought but rather a divine proclamation that Negroes are subhuman and inferior to whites. Secondly, the religious aspect of this issue is further addressed when Carroll asserts that because God made beasts and man separately, and because man was created in the image of the deity, that African Americans, or descendants of beasts, are not even recognized by God. Carroll claims that “The Negro, in common with the rest of the animals, made his appearance upon the earth prior to the creation of man†(46). Through this argument, Carroll essentially claims that blacks do not even have souls. (see comment by Samuel Olsen)
[6] The final verification that Carroll provides in his argument is the scientific evidence that supports his theory that blacks and whites are of two distinct species. He begins his argument first with a table of data collected by Sanford B. Hunt that displays the average weights of various brains according to race. Appropriate to Carroll’s argument, the 100% pure Caucasian brain is the heaviest and the pure Negro brain is the lightest, with mixed race brains in between and varying depending upon the percentage of Caucasian DNA in the subject’s blood. Though it is currently known that there is no correlation between brain weight and intelligence, Carroll used this evidence to manipulate his audience into believing that blacks are scientifically proven to be of a lower intellect. Similarly, because the brain weight of a 1/16th black person is still lower than that of a pure Caucasian person, Carroll argues that once there are African American genes present in DNA they can never be bred out: “They prove that the Negro belongs to the flesh of beasts, from the fact that his offspring by man, though mated continuously with negroes will not revert to the Negro, but approximates a lower grade of animal†(52). Apparently, the ape DNA is so strong that even if African Americans were to reproduce continually with white persons, they would still never be considered fully human.
[7] In conclusion, Carroll’s The Negro a Beast presents degrading and licentious evidence regarding African Americans and provides a clear depiction of the racial climate during the early 1900s. He felt so intensely that blacks were unequal to whites that he claimed they lacked souls, mental ability, emotional value, defining physical characteristics separate from apes, and, ultimately, that they were such disgraceful beasts that God himself would not even recognize them. To support these various viewpoints, Carroll enlisted the use of scientific evidence, primary sources such as the Bible, and various organizations and schools of thought. Imagining that such material was not only present but rampant during the early 1900s provides audiences with the startling reality of the era in which Birth of a nation was produced and its biased racial viewpoints. Though the theory he wished to validate in his work was wildly outlandish and unbelievable, Carroll still created a cohesive and compelling argument that would leave any reader questioning the humanity of blacks.
Comments
I found Carroll's essay to be not only disturbing and rather upsetting, I also found the evidence presented to be decently compelling to someone who lived in 1900, which served to further my worry that information like this can still be disseminated into society. Erin did a good job summing up the points that were particularly offensive, such as the biblical "facts" that God put the Negro on the earth the same time as the animals and that they have been cursed. In the 1900s, if someone told you God thought one way and you thought the other, you were going to hell. For someone who would probably live for 40 or 50 years, an eternity in the afterlife of fire would probably be enough to not question the accepted truths of the time. Carroll goes so far as to say that white men are doing black men a favor by supporting the Negro in ways he would not be able to do himself. He calls the white man life-giving while stating that whites are too intelligent to do physical labor and to do so would be to waste Caucasian potential. This almost killed me. Carroll is unbelievably absorbed in his work to the point where he takes unrelated facts and weaves them together to fit his story.
While this essay contains even more despicable points on the horrors of Carroll's essay and his abominably racist comments than this particular section demonstrates, I felt there were some interesting points in this section that weren't found elsewhere. Throughout the rest of her issue essay, Meinert talks about some of the arguments Carroll makes about racism. Many of them focus on emotional and intellectual differences between whites and blacks. These are characteristics that one cannot physically see but rather that one infers for themselves and works to use numbers to support. This Meinert section references strictly tangible, physical differences that cannot be supported by numbers, rather just with the eyes. For Carroll to say that blacks are inferior because of their physical differences with whites is a point that truthfully makes me laugh. This particular point is, in every way, immature, superficial, and demonstrates a cultural problem. Rather than pointing out physical differences that accompany different cultures, we should all celebrate them. I understand there is a time span between today and the essay and that telling people to "celebrate" all cultural differences is as cliche as it is (at times) unrealistic. However, I really think we could take Carroll's points about physical differences and make a great point about them. There are undoubtedly some physical features of whites that could also be identified with some sort of animal on this earth, but Carroll choses not to do that. Further, from the perspective of a white person, yes, the features of blacks will be different and thus could be interpreted as "unattractive." However, were a black author to pen this essay, we surely would have seen a much different interpretation of the way white people look. It frustrates me so much that essays like Carroll's were allowed to be distributed in some fashion, and the few (if any) that challenged him at all were not doing so enough. How could people have ever read these comments and adopted the viewpoint as their own?
Well, just as we must celebrate cultural differences today, we must try to understand that back then it was a very different time and the conventional wisdom was so far removed from that of today that we probably will never be able to fully understand it. And, honestly, we learn from past mistakes and take every historical event as a treasure because it helps us get to where we are today. And while racial relations are far from perfect today, as a society we are working in the right direction and just need to continue to remind ourselves of the imperfections of our past so that we can further educate ourselves for the future.
