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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
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598 An American Dilemma
outrages practiced on the Negro group. They are the interested party in
economic discrimination against Negroes, keeping Negroes out of jobs
which they want themselves. But even in their case, the general attitude
of hatred toward Negroes collectively is modulated by occasional friendly
relations with individual Negroes, and the most brutish of them have had
some contact with the humanitarianism of the American Creed and of
Christianity.®^
The unfriendly attitudes on the part of the lower class whites become,
as we have seen in earlier chapters, especially detrimental to the Negroes
since upper and middle class whites are inclined to let them have their
way. Plantation owners and employers, who use Negro labor as cheaper
and more docile, have at times been observed to tolerate, or even cooperate
in, the periodic aggressions of poor whites against Negroes. It is a plausible
thesis that they do so in the interest of upholding the caste system which
is so effective in keeping the Negro docile.®® It is also difficult to avoid
the further reflection that the hatred of lower class whites toward Negroes
shows significant signs of being partly dislocated aggression arising from
their own social and economic frustrations in white society:
Although the poor white’s antagonism toward the wealthy white is denied expres-
sion by considerations of economic and legal expediency, Negro dependents of hated
landowners or other employers, offer vulnerable targets for suppressed antagonisms.
The poor white utilizes every opportunity for asserting “white supremacy,” partly
because in his case it is a very meager and uncertain superiority, partly as an outlet
for the hatreds generated by the social system of the South. Thus, the Negro is the
target of the poor white not only because he is a competitor but also because of the
Negro’s identification with the upper-class white group of the South.®^
Thus, in the three-cornered tension among upper class whites, lower class
whites, and Negroes, the two white groups agree upon the Negroes as a
scapegoat and the proper object for exploitation and hatred. White solidar-
ity is upheld and the caste order protected. This hypothesis—if it could
be confirmed by further research—^would tend to raise some hope of a
change for the better. Displaced aggression is less stable and less deep-
rooted than other aggression. It cannot only be eradicated by such economic
developments and reforms as mitigate the primary frustration, but it can
also be redirected more easily by education.
The bitterness of racial feelings on the part of whites seems to be slowly
declining, and the lower classes are probably following the trend. But stiU
they are apparently the most prejudiced. There is one big factor of change,
however, which works directly on the lower classes of whites. If labor
unions should spread and increasingly come to include both white and
Negro workers in a common solidarity, this development would revolu-
tionize the situation. The author has seen how a quick and radical change
in racial attitudes has been brought about in some places where the tie of
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