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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 7. Population - 4. Ends and Means of Population Policy
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i68 An American Dilemma
of a decrease of the Negro population is not necessarily hostile to the Negro
people. It is shared even by enlightened white Americans who do not
hold the common belief that Negroes are inferior as a race. Usually it is
pointed out that Negroes fare better and meet less prejudice when they are
few in number.
There is an important qualification to be made to these statements. As
we have found at many points in this study, people are not always con-
sistent in their valuations. Many white Southerners live by exploiting
Negroes, and many fortunes have been built up by cheating Negroes j
many
white Southerners realize their economic dependence on the Negro and
would not like to lose him. Many white Southerners have opposed all
^‘back-to-Africa” or ^^forty-ninth State” movements, which would eliminate
Negroes from their midst. When Negroes began to migrate northward in
great numbers during the First World War, many white Southerners made
strenuous efforts to stop them: propaganda was distributed j
threats were
madej Negro leaders were bribed j
favors were bestowed; Northern labor
agents were prohibited, fined or beaten up. The dominant upper and middle
classes of whites in the South realize, for the most part, that they would
stand to lose economically if the Negro were to disappear. With the
decline of the cotton economy, which we shall analyze in Chapters 1 1 and
12, the valuation is not so strong now as in 1917-1918. Too, the valuation
is not held by most Northerners or by Southern poor whites. And this
valuation in the economic sphere is not necessarily tied to the Negro. If
poor whites could be exploited with the same facility, the dominant white
Southerners would be glad to be rid of the Negro. The valuation in the
socio-political sphere, however, is tied to the Negro: the Negro is a
problem and practically all Southerners (as practically all Northerners)
would like to get rid of him. More important from a practical and polit-
ical standpoint is that the valuation in the economic sphere is only a short-
time attitude. Southerners who gain economically from the presence of
the Negro are concerned only that the Negro should not disappear during
their lifetime or, at most, their children’s lifetime. When they think in
terms of a long span of future generations, the valuation that the Negro
should be eliminated is almost completely dominant. And as we shall
presently see, all white Americans agree that, if the Negro is to be elimi-
nated, he must be eliminated slowly so as not to hurt any living individual
Negroes. Therefore, the dominant American valuation is that the Negro
should be eliminated from the American scene, but slowly.
The Negroes cannot be expected to have the same view on the quanti-
tative goal of Negro population. Of course Negroes are familiar with the
general fact that prejudice against them is in part a function of their num-
ber. But I have never met a Negro who drew the conclusion from this that
a decrease of the American Negro population would be advantageous.
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