HUhAN RIGHTS FOR ALL MINORITIESa

By W. E. Burghardt DuBois

Dubois begins his speech by mentioning various minority groups across the globe who were
suffering. He considers that all such minorities together form a majority, and the majority is a
minority with power to enforce its will. Even though the minorities together form a majority,
there is no inter minority unity among the group. In some cases even frictions occur between the
minority groups themselves. What these groups have in common is that repeatedly and in
various ways their rights have been denied and that the vast human congeries of groups subject
again and again to inhuman treatment.

Another common denominator among the group is the poverty with the resultant ignorance and
disease of the mass of mankind and the desperate fear of the few. This has led to the
prolongation of the ancient belief that there never has been, is not and never will be enough of
goods and services to satisfy the needs of more than a small minority of men. Another belief is
that the selection of the rich must be an act of God or the deserved reward of human effort. It
also stresses that any attempt to distribute wealth more widely is a sacrilege and poverty,
ignorance and disease can only be alleviated but never eradicated.

This myth strengthened the denial of rights and privileges to different faiths, nations and groups .
Whenever a wave of sentiment or even a scientific hypothesis starts to challenge this basic and
wide spread belief of mankind, immediately violence, hate and intolerance breaks forth and it
ultimately results in a much more serious denial of the basic rights. The new wave propounded
during the reformation and the renaissance was not only met by fear and intolerance, but by an
astonishing new theory of human effort based on the discovery of a new world, a vast migration
of labor and a revolution in industrial processes more fundamental than any of the world had
ever seen. It was accompanied by a new attack on
humanity.

The rich were envisaged as the white nations of earth, armed with new and miraculous
techniques and the congenital poor were the peoples of the tropics born to be slaves and fulfill
their destiny and the glory of God by working for the comfort and luxury of the whites.

It should be kept in mind that the methods of exploitation of human toil could not be confined by
barriers of race only. Néw patterns of cruelty and contempt that were based on a doctrine of the
inferiority of most men was announced as a scientific law and it was spread by the
education of youth and the teachings of religion. It started regarding all labour as mere
commodities and bodies of men in the slums of London as well as the plantations of Virginia
were trafficked. Thus a new culture pattern was built which was used even after chattel slavery
of Negroes disappeared, to suppress any group different in body, thought and wish from the
dominant group.

Dubois considers a spirit of understanding and sharing of knowledge and experience as the need
of the hour to overcome all these and he calls it democracy. Democracy is not merely a
distribution of power
among a vast number of individuals. It is something that can be interpreted through the
experience of a large number of individuals. The decisions that evolve out of this pooled
knowledge will be more fundamental and far reaching than can be had in any other way.

There are certain fundamental assumptions for the effective functioning of democracy. The
people participating effectively in this pool of democracy must be alive and well. They must
know the world which they are interpreting and they must know themselves. lt is here that
frustration of democracy comes particularly in the case of minorities. When the minorities are
sick and ignorant and are having not enough to eat or live decently, democracy turns to be all the
more frustrating.

He considers that the colonies, as centers of this frustration of democracy, are the starting point
of injustice and cruelty toward all groups of people who form minority groups. Anyway this kind
of colony has changed in modern days. Either it became an independent state with its own
economic organization; or it became a part of the economic organization of the mother country.

The conception of labor as a commodity is being illustrated and carried out logically by this part
of our economy which was begun in the days of African slavery where there were no floor to the
price of labor. Once labor, paid at the lowest conceivable price, became the basis of prosperity in
America and England under the capitalists system, than a pattern was laid which gripped the
world. It led to land seizure and land monopoly in colonial regions and in civilized lands as a
method of further reducing the price of labor, and increasing the profits of investors.

In the organized and dominant states also, there are groups of people who occupy the quasi-
colonial status. All these people occupy what is really a colonial status and make the kernel and
substance of the problem of minorities. They are the least noticed group that people often forget
that they are so inextricably part of our modern life that it would practically be impossible for us
to get on without them.
The daily required materials are raised by such labor which does not receive in return enough
income to keep it healthy trained or effective. In order to force this labor to work they are
deprived of ownership of land and a share in the free bounty of nature.

They are kept in ignorance as the investors feel that intelligence would bring active or passive
revolt against these conditions. Also they feel that the cost of education would reduce their
profits This means that every civilized man is part and parcel of the colonial system and is
depending for his welfare
and convenience, not to mention his luxury, upon the degradation of the majority of men.

Dubois proceeds his speech with a more detailed study of colonial injustice citing example from
the cocoa crop that illustrates the methods of modern colonial exploitation and its results even
under a liberal administration.

The world consumption of cocoa has increased from 77,000 tons in 1895 to 700,000 tons at
present.
Formerly three-fourths of the cocoa was raised in South America. Now two—thirds is raised in
West Africa.
This development of Cocoa industry has an interesting history. A black laborer, Tetteh Quarsie,
in 1879
brought cocoa beans from Spanish Africa and distributed them among his friends on the Gold
Coast, British West Africa. In a very short period, out of purely indigenous enterprise of black
peasant farmers, the cocoa cultivation got flourished in a large scale. On their own little farms,
they increased crops and made the cocoa and chocolate in wide demand throughout the civilized
world. The cocoa and chocolate business, as per Dubois is a five hundred million dollar business.
But out of each dollar of this, less than three cents goes to the cocoa farmer and it turns to be
another instance of the manufacture of poverty out of progress.
The Cocoa in West Africa came not from plantations as it is in other countries. The traders and
manufacturers tried to make profit by beating down the sale price and by manipulation of the
world market. For this reason there was a variation of Cocoa price which served to be beneficial
to cocoa farmers.
For correcting this price fluctuation, but really for controlling the price, the thirteen main British
buyers
the Gold Coast tried to come into agreement so as to make one price and one bid for all the cocoa
offered. They came to a buying agreement on which the cocoa farmers desperately resisted and
staged a boycott for eight months, reducing the sale of cocoa from 250,000 tons to 50,000 tons.
The buyers resisted. The natives were advised that the proposal was for their benefit and to
accept it. But he natives demanded to see the copy of agreement to which the buyers were not
willing. Finally the British Government agreed and sent a royal commission to the Coast. This
commission secured a copy of the agreement, but made public only a part. After careful
investigation, they recommended that the buying agreement be terminated and that co-operative
enterprise be instituted with representation of the African farmers.
Before this plan could be implemented, the war broke out and the government proposed to take
charge of the cocoa crop, set prices, and sells it for the farmers and to distribute the profit among
the farmers. This was satisfactory to the farmers, although they protested at the low price per ton
which the government set in order to guard itself against loss.
The African colonial governments are virtually ruled by investors in England. Investors not only
dictate
the choice of governors, but these governors have broad rights of legislation under the colonial
office in London. They are "advised" by councils, on which business interests are directly
represented. Even though local natives have been elected to such councils, most of the real
power still rests in the hands of the governor. Government conduct of industry in West Africa, is
therefore conducted by London investors. The whole economy of the colony is rigged by outside
business interests. Export duties were levied which ultimately gave nothing for the hardships of
the farmers. At the same time, English exporters of goods to Africa need pay no import tax. As a
result the cost of im-
ported goods in Africa increased.

The result of this situation is that today many of the farmers have been completely impoverished
and paralyzed economically. When labour party came in to power and took over the colonial
office, the Negro farmers were optimistic. But their policies to compel the farmers to sell and
rush the crop immediately to Europe regardeless of price conditions made the situation static.
The net profit might have been doubled.
The labor party’s new proposal to put all West African produce, under control of a board sitting
in England, with representation of the manufacturers of cocoa and other materials, and with no
representation of the farmers is also against the farmers’ will. In addition, instead of returning the
profits of the cocoa pool to the farmers as promised, the government now proposed to use it "for
their benefit," including the hiring of a number of English "Experts“ at high salaries to protect
the cocoa
trees from disease. The farmers protested bitterly. They wanted the profits turned over to them
and their own men trained as experts. It ultimately resulted in the establishemnet of two
organisations in Gold Coast and Nigeria which serves as the final authority regarding price,
licence and all such things related to cocoa industry. The boards have only nominal number of
representatives from the famers.

In other words the whole industry is strongly weighted in favor of the merchants.

The results of these beliefs and practices, has been unrest and revolt in colonies, strikes in
imperial
countries and war and suspicion among the exploiting peoples.

Dubois urges for purposeful efforts for the cause of the oppressed. He considers the right path as
a path of economic reorganization and reform. It means the definite refusal further to follow
longer the dictates of classical economics; the definite rejection of the myth of a self-regulating
world market; the refusal longer to regard labor as a commodity or land as a private monopoly
and the rejection of the idea of any one commodity like gold must be the inevitable measure of
exchange. He proposes four tuthd for the path of reform

l. Poverty is unnecessary
2. Production of goods should be planned according to need and not for private profit.
5. Distribution of goods and services should be made according to reason and right and not by
chance, birth or privilege.
4. Education and health should be free and compulsory.

The old beliefs and myths should be put in a shelf. Production must not depend upon the
individual profit. Production must be carefully and scientifically planned, according to the
rational needs
of human beings. the goods and services of tho world should be distributed in accordance
with a rational plan. It should not be a matter of birth, chance or of good luck. health should be
compulsory. Finally education must not be a luxury for the few or propaganda for the privileged
but a compulsory discipline for every human being at public cost. It is perfectly clear that if we
have people who live decently with a healthy and agreeable amount of work; and who know the
world, past and present with the accumulated results of scientific research that then we can begin
to have
a real democracy.
One of the first results of such democracy will be greater areas of freedom and less compulsion.
This is the democracy which is the solution and the only solution to the problems of minorities
and to tho
question of human rights for all men.