The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

What up World!!! Today I will like to share with you a paragraph out of James Weldon Johnson famous novel “The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man”. While on a train he encounters a racist Texan who believes The Anglo-Saxon race has always been the masters of the world. Read how this Texan gets put in his place by a white northerner.

“Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of paintings, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals, and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these to their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Do you know the only original contribution to civilization we can claim is what we have done in steam and electricity and in making implements of war more deadly? And there we worked largely on principles which we did not discover. Why, we didn’t even originate the religion we use. We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance. We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it. After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history. The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it. If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn’t the German forest the birthplace of civilization, rather than the valley of the Nile?” [1]

References

[1] Gates Jr. Henry L., and Nelie Y Mckay. eds. "African American Literature" 2nd ed. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2004.