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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Introduction - 2. Valuations and Beliefs - 3. A White Man’s Problem
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Introduction li
political relevance and significance. Our value judgments are thus derived
and have no greater validity than the value premises postulated.
3. A White Man’s Problem
Although the Negro problem is a moral issue both to Negroes and to
whites in America, we shall in this book have to give frimary attention
to what goes on in the minds of white Americans. To explain this direction
of our interest a general conclusion from our studies needs to be stated at
this point. When the present investigator started his inquiry, his preconcep-
tion was that it had to be focused on the Negro people and their peculiari-
ties. This is understandable since, from a superficial view, Negro Americans,
not only in physical appearance, but also in thoughts, feelings, and in
manner of life, seemed stranger to him than did white Americans. Further-
more, most of the literature on the Negro problem dealt with the Negroes:
their racial and cultural characteristics, their living standards and occupa-
tional pursuits, their stratification in social classes, their migration, their
family organization, their religion, their illiteracy, delinquency and dis-
ease, and so on. But as he proceeded in his studies into the Negro problem,
it became increasingly evident that little, if anything, could be scientifically
explained in terms of the peculiarities of the Negroes themselves.
As a matter of fact, in their basic human traits the Negroes are inherently
not much different from other people. Neither are, incidentally, the white
Americans. But Negroes and whites in the United States live in singular
human relations with each other. All the circumstances of life—^the
‘^environmental” conditions in the broadest meaning of that term—diverge
more from the “normal” for the Negroes than for the whites, if only
because of the statistical fact that the Negroes are the smaller group. The
average Negro must experience many times more of the “abnormal” inter-
racial relations than the average white man in America.® The more impor-
tant fact, however, is that practically all the economic, social, and political
power is held by whites. The Negroes do not by far have anything
approaching a tenth of the things worth having in America.
It is thus the white majority group that naturally determines the Negro’s
“place.” All our attempts to reach scientific explanations of why the Negroes
are what they are and why they live as they do have regularly led to
determinants on the white side of the race line. In the practical and politi-
cal struggles of effecting changes, the views and attitudes of the white
Americans are likewise strategic. The Negro’s entire life, and, consequently,
also his opinions on the Negro problem, are, in the main, to’ be considered
as secondary reactions to more primary pressures from the side of the
dominant white majority.
•This is less true, of course, in communities where the ratio between the numbei of
Negrroes and the number of whites diverges sharply from the average ratio of one to ten
for the whole nation.
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