Reading, writing, memorizing, whatever is imitative, or may be learned by rote, will be rapidly acquired; and no schools have yet advanced far enough to show what the average negro mind will do when it grapples with higher branches that require original thought.
Reid reflects on the potential of Black individuals to engage with more complex forms of learning beyond rote memorization.
Share
More from Whitelaw Reid
No matter what we wish, the old continental isolation is gone forever.
As a foreign critic said in comment on one of the addresses: "The author is one man who knows what he thinks about the new policy required by the new situation in which his country is placed, and has the courage and candor to say it.
It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill.
But why should a sensible man deal with such folly?