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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 4. Racial Beliefs - 8. Specific Rationalization Needs - 9. Rectifying Beliefs
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io8 An American Dilemma
These beliefs are all of a nature to discourage miscegenation and to keep
up biological distance even in regard to cross-breeds. The assertion, partic-
ularly common among Southerners, that there are infallible signs to detect
everyone with the slightest amount of Negro blood, which is so easy for
the observer to disprove by experiment, is a reassuring belief with a similar
function.
The belief that practically all Negro women lack virtue and sexual
morals bolsters up a collective bad conscience for the many generations of
miscegenation. At the same time, it is, occasionally, a wishful expression of
sexual appetite on the part of white men. The belief in the strong sexual
urge and the superior sexual skill and capacity of Negro women (the
^‘tigress” myth) has more obviously this latter function. The belief that
Negro males have extraordinarily large genitalia is to be taken as an
expression of a similar sexual envy and, at the same time, as part of the
social control devices to aid in preventing intercourse between Negro males
and white females.
There are also popular beliefs which are friendly and actually ascribe
some sort of superiority to the Negro: for example, that he is more gifted
in music, the arts, dancing, and acting than white people j
that he is better
in handling animals or, sometimes, children; that he is loyal and reliable
as a servant (often the opposite is, however, asserted); that he Is, on the
whole, a more happy and mentally balanced human being; that he has
more emotional warmth; that he can take sorrows and disappointments
more easily; that he is more religious in his nature. All such favorable
beliefs seem to have this in common, that they do not raise any question
concerning the advisability or righteousness of keeping the Negro in his
place in the caste order. They do not react against the major need for
justification. They rather make it natural that he shall remain subordinate.
The list of beliefs with specific purposes could be made much longer.
The underlying hypothesis is this, that in analyzing the popular beliefs,
we have to work as a detective reconstructing the solution of a crime from
scattered evidence. For both the student of popular beliefs on the Negro
and the detective, the guide to the explanation is given in the question:
To whose good? Beliefs are opportune; they are in the service of interests.
It is these general and specific rationalization needs which give the beliefs
their pertinacity. They give to the stereotypes their emotional load, and
their "value” to the people who hold to them.®^
9. Rectifying Beliefs
The rationalization needs do not work in an intellectual vacuum. They
must have raw material to shape into the desired form. This material con-
sists of white people’s experiences of Negroes, how they behave and what
they are, from his point of view. We have already observed that the
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