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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 14. The Negro in Business, the Professions, Public Service and Other White Collar Occupations - 3. Negro Finance - 4. The Negro Teacher
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31 8 An American Dilemma
When evaluating the Negro’s performance in the world of finance, one
should not overlook the fact that similar white institutions have once passed
through a period when inefficient and even irregular practices prevailed.
In the case of banks and of building and loan associations, that time was
not so long ago. The early ’thirties, when thousands of banks failed, re-
vealed some appalling weaknesses in American banking organization. Thus,
the difference in performance between Negro- and white-managed institu-
tions may, in part, be a difference in the stage of development. This is not
to say, however, that there is much prospect that there will be a second
stage in the development when Negro institutions will grow strong enough
to be comparable in quality with white financial establishments. The Negro-
managed bank and insurance company will not get away from the fact that
the Negroes are poor and that the segregated Negro community cannot
offer any range of investment opportunities such that investment risk can
be minimized.
Indeed, it is difficult to see a real future for a segregated Negro financial
system. Basically, it is nothing but a poor substitute for what the Negroes
really need: employment of Negroes in white-dominated financial institu-
tions and more consideration for them as insurance or credit seekers.
4. The Negro Teacher
In 1930 over 5 per cent of all male workers in nonagricultural pursuits
and almost 15 per cent of the female nonfarm workers were professionals,
that is, teachers, clergymen, physicians, dentists, trained nurses, musicians,
artists. The corresponding figures for Negro workers were much lower:
2.6 and 4.5 per cent, respectively.®^ Thus the Negro’s chance of getting a
job as a professional was only one-third or one-half that of the white
worker. Still, compared with the Negro’s chances in other “higher” occu-
pations, this is a relatively good record.
For the total American population, the professional occupations had
about the same relative importance in the nonagricultural economy in the
South as in the North. For Negroes, however, it was different, particularly
for women. In the South, more than 5 per cent of the Negro female workers
were in professional occupations. The corresponding figure for the North
was less than 3 per cent.®® The main reason, of course, is that the Negro’s
chances in the teaching profession are much smaller in the North than in
the South.
School teaching, of course, is the principal Negro profession. Yet Negroes
did not have more than about half the representation in the teaching profes-
sion as in the total population. There has been a spectacular increase in the
number of Negro teachers, but the white school system, too, has been
growing rapidly, so that since 1910 the relative gain for Negroes was
limited, except on the college level.®* By and large, the limitations in the
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