[87] He next takes up Caste, for which we must allow liberal space, since it makes so large a portion of the foundation of all human injustice.
V. The separation of children in the Public Schools of Boston, on account of color or race, is in the nature of Caste, and, on this account, is a violation of Equality. The facts in this case show expressly that the child was excluded from the school nearest to her dwelling, the number in the school at the time warranting her admission, ‘on the sole ground of color.’ The first Majority Report presented to the School Committee, to which reference is made in the statement of facts, gives, with more fulness, the grounds of this discrimination, saying, ‘It is one of races, not of color, merely. The distinction is one which the Almighty has seen fit to establish, and it is founded deep in the physical, mental, and moral natures of the two races. No legislation, no social customs, can efface this distinction.’ Words more apt than these to describe the heathenish relation of Caste, could not be chosen. This will be apparent from the very definition of Caste. This term is borrowed from the Portuguese word casta, which signifies family, breed, race. It has become generally used to designate any hereditary distinction, particularly of race. In India it is most often applied; and it is there that we must go in order to understand its full force. A recent English writer on the subject says, that it is ‘not only a distinction by birth, but is founded on the doctrine of an essentially distinct origin of the different races, which are thus unalterably separated.’ （Roberts on Caste, p. 134.) This is the very ground of the Boston School Committee. But this word is not now applied for the first time to the distinction between the white and black races. Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the negroes in Mexico, has characterized them as a Caste, and a recent political and juridical writer of France has used the same term to denote, not only the distinctions in India, but those of our own country. (Charles Comte, Traite de Legislation, tom. 4, pp. 129, 445.) In the course of his remarks, he refers to the exclusion of colored children from the Public Schools, as among ‘the humiliating and brutal distinctions’ by which their caste is characterized. It is, then, on authority and reason, that we apply this term to the hereditary distinction on account of color, which is established in the Public Schools of Boston.
