Color Psychology

Presbyterian James H. Robinson, 45 and a Negro, knows the taste of race prejudice. A Tennessee boy who went to college in Pennsylvania, he came near being lynched years ago when he went back to Tennessee and preached about civil rights. As a minister, he has known the "utter humiliation" of standing in line at a joint communion service, while white clergymen invented some kind of excuse to avoid marching with him.

But when the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions asked him to take a leave of absence from his Harlem pulpit last year and tour Europe and Asia as an ambassador-at-large, Pastor Robinson accepted. He had something to say about his country and its churches. In interviews since he got back, and in a series of articles ending in this week's Presbyterian Life, Robinson tells how it went.

Admit the Worst. In five months Pastor Robinson spoke to at least 400,000 students (he averaged four speeches a day). Indians followed him on trains, begging him to stay longer. Japanese Buddhist priests brought their friends to hear him. In Berlin, during the 1951 Youth Rally, he argued into the small hours with young Communists. Wherever he went in Asia he ran into Jim Crow in reverse--his color got him places where white Americans are scarcely tolerated.

"Most people in both Europe and Asia," says Dr. Robinson, "were amazed to find a Negro who wasn't a Communist."* He found Indians, Lebanese and Pakistanis surprisingly well informed about discrimination in the U.S. Communists peppered him with loaded questions. Sample: "But can you be President of this fine country of yours?" "By taking five minutes to admit the worst," says Robinson, "I could then spend an hour saying what you can do in a democracy, and showing them what an excellent expectancy there is for the next ten years in U.S. race relations."

The Village Level. Besides giving foreigners something to think about, Pastor Robinson brought home some words for his countrymen. He warned U.S. Christians that the "younger churches" of Asia are growing up and want to be run still more by their own leaders. "It is time to drop the word 'missionary,' which becomes increasingly offensive." More generally, he feels, Americans, Christian or otherwise, have not got their message across to Asia: "Many of us have not yet learned the elementary psychology of color."

Expensive U.S. press and radio propaganda programs seldom reach the mass of Asians. The only way to convince them of American aims and sincerity, says Robinson, is by talking to them as he did. "We must get down to the village level . . . This is where Communists always concentrate. We've got to outmatch the Communists where it counts--with the people." At the moment, Pastor Robinson believes the very best unofficial ambassadors the U.S. can send are qualified Negroes: "Such people would be the best answer to Communist propaganda, because white people in Asia are apologists at best about race problems."

* He was almost mobbed in East Berlin by cheering Reds who mistook "Robinson" for Robeson."

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