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Chapter 30. Effects of Social Inequality 655
fields is true also of the athletic field, in which Negroes have achieved
notable successes.*
Besides the respectable entertainment fields in which Negroes excel,
there are the ^^low-brow” and shady ones. ^‘Black-and-tan” cabarets are
sought as amusement centers by many levels of urban whites, occasionally
if not frequently. White cabarets, theaters, and burlesques in the North
often have the popular attraction of Negro dancers and performers. Negro
prostitutes are often considered to be especially desirable. In the South as
well as in the North. More often they compete by underselling white
prostitutes. The effect on white attitudes toward Negroes of contacts in
these circumstances Is problematical. Probably such contacts serve only to
strengthen the stereotype that Negroes have wilder passions and that their
excellence Is limited to emotional activities. At most, they increase the
favorableness of attitudes toward Negroes in Individual cases only.
We mentioned criminal contacts as the third most important field
of Negro-white relationship. Ordinarily in American societies, as in prac-
tically all other societies, criminal relationships are minor. The fact that It
is so important In Negro-white relationships has unique causes and unique
effects. The actual extent of Negro crime will be discussed In a subsequent
chapter at this point we are interested only in the fact that whites
believe the Negro to be innately addicted to crime.® The Importance of
Negro crime as a basis of social relations arises not only out of this fact,
but also out of the fact that Negro crime gets great publicity. Even today
a large proportion—^perhaps a majority—of the news about Negroes that
appears in the white newspapers of both South and North is about Negro
crimes.”^ When a Catholic or Jew, Swede or Bulgarian, commits a crime
that is serious enough to get into the newspapers, it is not usual for his
religion or nationality to be mentioned. When a Negro commits a news-
worthy crime, on the other hand, only rarely is an indication of his race
not prominently displayed. To many white Northerners, this crime news
is the most important source of information they get about Negroes. To
white Southerners, the crime news reinforces the stereotypes and sometimes
serves to unite the white community for collective violence against the
individual Negro criminal or the local Negro community in general.
The crime news is unfair to Negroes, on the one hand, in that it em-
phasizes individual cases instead of statistical proportions (a characteristic
of all news, but in this case unfair to Negroes because of the racial associa-
tion with especially disliked crimes) and, on the other hand, in that all
* See Chapter 44, Section 5, for a discussion of Negro achievements,
’’See Chapter 44, Section z.
* This belief is connected with two more basic beliefs: that the Negro cannot control his
passions and so is addicted to crimes against persons ^ that the Negro has no sense of morals
and thus is addicted to crimes against property.
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