Orleans High School - Sword Yearbook (Orleans, VT)

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cans when brought up in this country. Race prejudice is a deter- mination to keep people down. It makes people cruel. It is the opposite of good character. All races have made their contributions to human knowledge. Those who have lived at the crossroads have invented most and those who have been isolated on islands or away from other people have lived content with the traditional methods of living. In the United States, there are people of different races and from different nations which makes it the greatest crossroads of the world. About every race is represented among our citizens. These races brought their own ways of cooking food so that our American diet is made up of about a dozen different racial contributions. Our salads came from the French and Italians, cranberries from Russia, vegetables from Italy, sea foods from the Mediterranean lands, and appetizers from the Scandinavian countries. At the same time, Americans have popularized ice cream, beefsteak, breakfast foods and corn on the cob. Machines have been made to take the place of hand skills which were brought here from every quarter of the world. If it hadn’t been for the skills of these different races, we wouldn’t have known how to do various things. It is the same way with music and building patterns. Race prejudice is not an old subject. It is hardly a hundred years old. Before that, people persecuted Jews because of their religion instead of their blood. It is not our custom any more to k.ll a man because he has a different religion. Today, weak nations are afraid of strong nations; the poor are afraid of the rich; the nch are afraid they will lose their riches. People are afraid of each other’s political power. Freedom from such fear is the only cure for race prejudice. The Russian nation has shown how race prejudice can be driven out of a country made up of many kinds of people. Instead of letting the people change their minds, they made racial discrimination illegal. They welcomed different customs and dress of many tribes. People that were backward were helped to catch up with the more forward people. The people were helped to develop their own ways and in time the interchange of customs was practiced until each group became a part of the whole. The racial problem has had a greater success in Russia than any other program. What can be done about the race problem? The only way to change the Germans and Japanese is to change the environment of the countries. This can be done by sending books and teachers to these countries. Immigrants from European countries who have learned the American ways can return to their own country and spread the American ways. One other way to help solve this prob- lem is by the interchange of business clubs and trade unions between nations. The United States has quite a number of organizations that are working for race equality such as the China Institute, which PAGE TWENTY.EI G HT

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Race prejudice turns on the point of inferiority and superiority. One who is race prejudiced says of a man of another race, No matter who he is, I don’t have to compare myself with him. I’m superior anyway. I was born that way.” In order to see which of the two objects is superior, you have to test the abilities of both objects. The first thing we want to know is what traits a man is born with. If he is lucky, he will have good food, care, education and a good start in life. A man cannot say that these were things he was born with. If a person were born in France but brought up in China, he would speak Chinese. He wasn’t born to speak French. He speaks the way people around him speak. This is not a racial trait but is due to the person’s environment. The different customs among peoples of the world are not racial traits. To marry in church after a courtship or to marry a bride that you have never seen are customs due to environment. One race is not born to build skyscrapers and do the plumbing in their houses and another to build huts and carry their water from rivers. These are examples of ways of doing things which are brought about by usage instead of heredity. A man of one race would be the same as a man of another race if he had had the same environment. In America, there have been many investigations into the intel- ligence of negroes and whites. The scientists have found that some of the degree of intelligence of a person depends upon what happens to him after he is born. There are several proofs of this. Here is one. In the first World War, the American Expeditionary Forces were given intelligence tests. The results showed that Northerners, black and white, scored higher than Southerners, black and white. Southern states spend only a fraction of the amount spent in North- ern states for schools. This seems to prove that education governs a person rather than racial traits. The second superiority that a man claims when he says I was born a member of a superior race” is that the character of his race is better. The Nazis boast of their racial character. They believe that the only glorious death is that of dying on the battlefield. When they wanted to make a whole generation into Nazis, they made cer- tain kinds of teaching compulsory in schools, they broke up homes where the people were anti-Nazis, they required boys to join Nazi youth organizations. After doing all of this, they got the kind of character that they wanted. The Japanese have done the same thing to make fighters of a new generation. They are spiritually more like the Germans than like their racial brothers, the peace-loving Chinese. Some people think that the Germans and Japanese are born aggressors and the only way to change them is by force. Some say that they have the wrong kind of education and environment and that it is not a racial trait. Even though the Japanese are of a dif- ferent origin from that which we come from, they are good Ameri- P A G E T W E N T Y - S K V E N

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promotes the work of Chinese students in America, the Phelps-Stokes Foundation, which has brought many African students here and the East-West Association, which emphasizes the importance of racial understanding, especially between Asiatic and Western peoples. The Rosenwald Foundation has sponsored in the South Negro schools in order to make up for the deficiencies of Southern Negro education. They have also helped to get better Negro housing and health projects in the North. The churches have helped to make people realize that ideas of race superiority or inferiority are un- Christian. There have been unions organized to promote inter- racial understandings. In our own country there have been riots in different cities caus- ed by race prejudice. There were the riots in Detroit and Chicago between the Negroes and the whites about two years ago. In the South the Negroes are put in a class by themselves. They have separate street cars and separate divisions in theatres. America is a democracy. Are we going to let race prejudice exist in this coun- try? Of course we are not. Because the United States is so power- ful and because there are racial difficulties to overcome in this coun- try, we should work to promote tolerance as much as possible. We should clean house and prepare for a better last half of the twentieth century. Then, we could put our hands to the building of the Unit- ed Nations and be sure of support from all races. Elaine Dean, ’45, Salutatorian. Valedictory THE AIR-AGE WORLD When the war has been brought to a successful close, both in Europe and the Pacific, we Americans will be entering a new world in which the development of wings for mankind will prove to be of greater importance than the inventions of the ship or the steam engine. Our country, our freedom, and our lives will be changed by the airplane. Everything we do, every plan which we make for the future will be affected by the airplane. Here are a few facts which may serve as a background for an understanding of Air Age progress. These facts are of such tre- mendous importance to civilization that the world which we are now making has been acclaimed the Air Age.” First, air is universal. Unlike the oceans of water, the air ocean reaches every home on earth. It is a universal highway which knows no boundaries or barriers like mountains, bridges or deserts. The airplane is free to go to any point on the earth regardless of any earthbound obstructions. Because of these barriers, the people have PAGE TWENTY-NINE