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Chapter 2 . Encountering the Negro Problem 45
or outward. The South is poorer on the average: it is true both that there
are more poor people in the South and that they are poorer than in the
North." Farm tenancy is common in the South but rarer in the ’North. The
tradition of the ^^independent farmer” is largely a Northern tradition.
On the other hand, the tradition of aristocracy is much stronger in the
Souths ^‘the Southern gentlemen,” ^^the Southern lady,” and “Southern
hospitality” are proverbial, even if stereotyped.
Because of this tradition and because of the relative lack of industrial-
ization, a main way to get and remain rich in the South has been to exploit
the Negroes and other weaker people, rather than to work diligently,
make oneself indispensable and have brilliant ideas. The South has been
relatively intolerant of reform movements of any sort. Circumstances con-
nected not only with the Negro problem but also with such traditions as
state’s rights make change seem more hazardous than in the North. Educa-
tion for all groups and on all levels has been inferior in the South. The
trauma of the Civil War is still acute. The observer finds many Southerners
still “fighting” the Civil War. In the North it is forgotten. •
The mere existence of a more rapid tempo of life in the North, the
constant changes, and the feeling of progress push the Negro problem into
the background. And the human capacity for interesting oneself in social
problems is crowded by many other worries. There have been more
frequent clashes of political opinions in the North. The North has been
made to feel labor problems. The Northern farmers have been more
restless and articulate in their demands. The continuous mass immigration
of foreigners has created local problems of exploitation and poverty,
maladjustment and cultural assimilation. Placed beside these problems a
local Negro problem, where it existed in the North, became robbed of its
singularity and shrank in significance.
The Negro problem has nowhere, in the North the importance it has in
the South. “Too often we find,” complained a Southern student of the
Negro problem long ago, “that when our Northern journalism discusses
wrongs at the North or at the West, it criticizes the wrongs
y
but when it
discusses wrongs at the South, it criticizes the This is a correct
observation. But the explanation and, we must add, the justification of this
fact is, first, that the Negro problem actually is a main determinant of all
local, regional, and national issues, whether political, economic, or broadly
cultural, in the South, while this is not true in the Norths and, second,
that there is a “Solid South” backing the “wrongs” in the one region,
while opinions are much more diversified in the North.
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