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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 31. Caste and Class - 3. The Caste Struggle
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68o An American Dilemma
holding him back. Du Bois has expressed the Negroes feeling of caste in
poetic language:
It is difficult to let others see the full psychological meaning of caste segregation.
It is as though one, looking out from a dark cave in a side of an impending moun-
tain, sees the world passing and speaks to it; speaks courteously and persuasively,
showing them how these entombed souls are hindered in their natural movement,
expression, and development; and how their loosening from prison would be a
matter not simply of courtesy, sympathy, and help to them, but aid to all the world.
One talks on ev’enly and logically in this way but notices that the passing throng does
not even turn its head, or if it does, glances curiously and walks on. It gradually
penetrates the minds of the prisoners that the people passing do not hear; that some
thick sheet of invisible but horribly tangible plate glass is between them and the
world. They get excited; they talk louder; they gesticulate. Some of the passing
world stop in curiosity; these gesticulations seem so pointless; they laugh and pass on.
They still either do not hear at all, or hear but dimly, and even what they hear,
they do not understand. Then the people within may become hysterical. They may
scream and hurl themselves against the barriers, hardly realizing in their bewilder-
ment that they are screaming in a vacuum unheard and that their antics may actually
seem funny to those outside looking in. They may even, here and there, break
through in blood and disfigurement, and find themselves faced by a horrified,
implacable, and quite overwhelming mob of people frightened for their own very
existence.^®
The counterpart to white solidarity on the Negro side of the caste gulf
is the ‘^protective community.” It is revealing of the nature of the system
of superior and subordinate castes that this Negro cohesion is defensive
instead of offensive, and that, compared with white solidarity, it is imper-
fect. The individual Negro, as a member of the lower caste, feels his weak-
ness and will be tempted, on occasion, to split Negro solidarity by seeking-
individual refuge, personal security and advantages with the whites. Com-
menting upon the Atlanta riot in 1906, when 10 Negroes were killed and
60 wounded, Ray Stannard Baker remarked:
It is highly significant of Southern conditions—^which the North does not under-
stand—that the first instinct of thousands of Negroes in Atlanta, when the riot broke
out, was not to run away from the white people but to run to them. The white man
who takes the most radical position in opposition to the Negro race will often be
found . . . defending “his Negroes” in court or elsewhere. . . . Even Hoke Smith,
Governor-elect of Georgia, who is more distrusted by the Negroes as a race probably
than any other white man in Georgia, protected many Negroes in his house daring
the disturbance.^^
The historical background of this attitude lies in the patriarchal relations
between master and slave.® Its tenacity is explained by the power situation.
On the other hand, there has been a growing tendency on the part of
“See Chapter jo, Section 2.
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