608 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the control of the deliberative centers. But for all its intensity, race-prejudice, like the other instinctive movements, is easily dissipated or converted into its opposite by association, or a slight modification of stimulus. There is no stronger contrast among the races than that between the black and white, but travelers relate that after long residence with African blacks they look on the white skin with something akin to prejudice:
One feels ashamed of the white skin ; it seems unnatural, like blanched celery or white mice. 1
Stanley reports his feelings on first meeting white men after crossing Africa:
As I looked into their faces, I blushed to find that I was wondering at
their paleness The pale color, after so long gazing on rich black and
richer bronze, had something of an unaccountable ghastliness. I could not divest myself of the feeling that they must be sick ; yet, when I compare their complexions to what I now view, I should say they were olive, sunburnt, dark. 2
The negro, for his part, not only loses race-prejudice in the presence of the white man, but repudiates black standards. In America the papers printed for black readers contain advertise- ments of pomades for making kinky hair straight and of washes to change the Ethiopian's skin; and the slaves returned to Sierra Leone in 1820 assumed the role of whites, even referred to themselves white, and called the natives "bush niggers."
Then Chinese are today regarded by many, particularly by the southern whites, as the most repulsive of races in physical appearance more shocking to the sensibilities than the negro even. The Japanese, on the other hand, are also a yellow race and have all the physical marks of aliens, but contact with them has revealed a surprising fund both of charm and ability, and it is an interesting fact that they have many enthusiastic white admirers, and that the sympathy of a large part of the white world is with them in their war against a white group. It is, indeed, probable that in the event of a successful struggle with Russia little will remain in the way of prejudice against this smallish, yellow people, or of impediment to social and matri-
1 LIVINGSTONE, The Zambesi and Its Tributaries, p. 379.
a Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 462.
