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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 32. The Negro Class Structure - 1. The Negro Class Order in the American Caste System
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CHAPTER 32
THE NEGRO CLASS STRUCTURE
I. The Negro Class Order in the American Caste System®
The caste principle, as insisted upon and enforced by white society,
would undoubtedly be best satisfied by a classless Negro communitj
wherein all Negroes in all respects—educationally, occupationally, and
economicaJly—^were in the lowest bracket and placed under the lowest
class of whites. That ^^all Negroes are alike” and should be treated in the
same way is still insisted upon by many whites, especially in the lower
classes, who actually feel, or fear, competition from the Negroes and who
are inclined to sense a challenge to their status in the fact that some
Negroes rise from the bottom even if they professionally and socially keep
entirely within the Negro community.^ The popular theories rationalizing
and justifying the caste order to the whites have been framed to fit this
principle of a homogeneous lower caste. None of the Jim Crow legislation
distinguishes between classes of Negroes.
This absolutistic principle has, however, never been fully realized even
in the South. Already in slavery society there came to be a social stratifica-
tion within the slave community, as house servants and skilled mechanics
acquired a level of living and culture and enjoyed a social prestige different
from that of the field slaves. The blood ties of the former group of slaves
with the white upper class widened this difference. There may also have
been some difference in status between the slaves owned by the aristocracy
and the slaves owned by the small farmers.^ Contemporary sources give
us the impression that the hatred between Negro slaves and ^‘poor white
trash” was largely due to this social stratification in the Negro group.^
It was mainly the superior slave who could be a challenge and danger to
the poor whites, and it was he who, on his side, would have the social
basis for a contemptuous attitude toward them. The early emergence of a
*In this chapter we shall confine ourselves to the relation between caste and Negro
classes. This does not mean that caste has no effect on the white class structure. Attitudes and
actions toward Negroes have always differentiated the various white classes in the South.
(See Chapter 28, Section 8.) Also there have been concrete effects: for example, when
practically all Negroes were below them during slavery, the lower class whites probably
felt less social distance from upper class whites in the South than today when they realize
that many Negroes have a class status above them.
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