Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 8. Attitudes among Different Classes of Whites in the South
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chapter 28. The Basis of Social Inequality 593
it for granted that Negro cooks shall be allowed to pilfer food for their
own families from the white man’s kitchen. The other side of this paternal-
istic relation is, of course, that servants are grossly underpaid. But it is not
to be denied that on this point there is—in the individual case—a break
in the bitterness of caste relations. Negro beggars who make their appeal
to this old relationship will often be amply and generously rewarded by
white people who are most stingy in paying ordinary wages and who
deprive Negro children of their share of the state appropriations for
schools in order to provide for white children.’*’^
This is a survival of slavery society, where friendliness is restricted to
the individual and not extended to the group, and is based on a clear and
unchallenged recognition from both sides of an insurmountable social
inequality. There are obvious short-term gains in such relations for the
Negroes involved.’^® The whites in the South always stress that they, and
not the Northerners, like and love the Negro and that they provide for
him. The conservative Negro leaders in the Booker T. Washington line
and occasionally the others also—have endorsed this claim by pronouncing
that the “best people of the South” always could be counted among “the
friends of the race.”^^^ “No reputable Southerner is half as bad as Senator
Tillman talks,” exclaimed Kelly Miller, and even the most violent
Negro-baiting politicians occasionally show great kindness toward the
individual Negroes who are under their personal control.®^
The paternalistic pattern becomes particularly cherished by the white
men as it so openly denotes an aristocratic origin. This gives it its strength
to survive. It is a sign of social distinction to a white man to stand in this
paternalistic relation to Negroes. This explains why so much of the conver-
sation in the Southern white upper and middle classes turns around the
follies of Negro servants. Their Negro dependents and their own relations
to them play a significant role for white people^s status in society.
To receive this traditional friendliness on the part of Southern white
upper class persons, a Negro has to be a lower class Negro and to behave
as an humble servant. James Weldon Johnson observed;
... in fact, I concluded that if a coloured man wanted to separate himself from his
white neighbours, he had but to acquire some money, education, and culture . . . the
proudest and fairest lady in the South could with propriety—and it is what she
would most likely do—^go to the cabin of Aunt Mary, her cook, if Aunt Mary was
sick, and minister to her comfort with her own hands; but if Mary’s daughter,
Eliza, a girl who used to run around my lady’s kitchen, but who has received an
education and married a prosperous young coloured man, were at death’s door, my
lady would no more tliink of crossing the threshold of Eliza’s cottage than she would
think of going into a bar-room for a drink.^-
When the Negro rises socially and is no longer a servant, he becomes a
stranger to the white upper class. His ambition is suspected. He is disliked.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
