The greatest stumbling block in the way of progress in the race has invariably come from within the race itself. The monkey wrench of destruction as thrown into the cog of Negro Progress is not thrown so much by the outsider as by the very fellow who is in our fold, and who should be the first to grease the wheel of progress rather than seeking to impede it. But notwithstanding the lack of sympathetic co-operation, I have one consolation—That I cannot get away from the race, and so long as I am in the race and since I have sense and judgment enough to know what affects the race affects me, it is my duty to help the race to clear itself of those things that affect us in common.
White Man's Solution for the Negro Problem in America
Immediately after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in America, the white man started to think how he could solve the new problem of the Negro. He saw that the Negro could not be slaughtered by wholesale killing in that it would be a blot on American civilization; he therefore had to resort to some means of solving the problem, which meant the extinction of the Negro in America. The plan he decided on was as follows:
"Now that America is undeveloped and we have but 34,000,000 in population (30,000,000 being white and 4,000,000 black) a number not large enough to develop the country as we want it, we will use the 4,000,000 blacks until we have built up the country, sufficiently and when we no longer need their labor, we will throw them off and let them starve economically and die of themselves, or emigrate elsewhere, we care not where. Then no one can accuse us of being inhuman to the Negro as we shall not have massacred him."
A hearty welcome is extended to white people from all parts of the world to come to and settle in America. They come in by the thousands every month. Why? The idea is to build up a vast white population in America, so as to make the white people independent of Negro labor; thereby depriving them of the means of livelihood, the wherewithal to buy bread, which means that in a short while they will die of starvation.
Those of us who study industrial conditions among the race must have noticed that Negroes in America have been thrown out of jobs that they occupied formerly, and their positions taken by European Immigrants. Now if the white people have not reached the apex of their intention industrially, as far as the development of the country is concerned, and they have exhibited such a degree of prejudice since they started their plan; how much more prejudiced will they not become in the next one hundred years when their population will be doubled by emigration and birthrate? This is the problem the Negro has to face in America.
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Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey
The Journal of Pan African Studies 2009 eBook
