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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 33. The American Pattern of Individual Leadership and Mass Passivity - 1. “Intelligent Leadership” - 2. “Community Leaders”
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Chapter 33. Leadership and Mass Passivity 711
ity has been the object of their own and others^ ironical and often scornful
comments. What has less often been pointed out is that this success cult in
America is not particularly self-centered j
instead it is generous. Usually it
is not in his own but in other ’persons* success that the ordinary American
rejoices and takes pride. He identifies himself with those who succeed. He
is inclined to “jump on the bandwagon,” as the American expression runs,
to “be on the winning side.”
Americans have thus come to develop an unmatched capacity for vicari-
ous satisfaction in watching others fight. The immense and agitated crowds
of spectators, who can always be counted on to fill the stadiums when a
hard struggle is staged, testify to this, as does also the manner in which
international and national news is presented by press and radio to suit the
American public. In America, as everywhere else, ninety-nine out of a
hundred do not “succeed,” of course—or “succeed” only if the standards
arc set low. But the extraordinary fact is that these ninety-nine less success-
ful individuals in America, when they see their own hopes disappointed and
their ambitions thwarted, are less likely than similar individuals in other
countries to retreat into sour chagrin. The individual who is rising in
America is not held back much by the mortification of his fellows and
compeers. Occasionally he may even be pushed ahead.
Let us not be misunderstood. Of course there is personal envy in
America, too. But there has been decidedly less of it than in the more
static, less “boundless” civilizations of the Old World. Luck, ability and
drive in others are more tolerated and less checked in America. Climbing
is more generally acclaimed. Leadership is more readily accepted.
2. “Community Leaders”
So it becomes more natural, and more possible, in America, to associate
the dynamic forces of society with individuals instead of with masses. In
the Negro* problem it is evident to the observer that the “community
leaders” are given an astonishingly important role. When the white people
want to influence Negro attitudes or behavior in one direction or another
to get the Negro farmers to plant a garden around their shacks, to screen
their windows, to keep tVieir children in school, to cure and prevent syphilis,
to keep Negroes more respectful to the whites, to prevent them from join-
ing trade unions, and to frighten them against “outside meddlers” or “red”
seducers—the natural device (besides the long-range one of “education”)
is to appeal to the “community leaders.” These leaders are expected to get
it over to the Negro masses, who are supposed to be rather passive.
There are, as we shall point out, special reasons in the caste situation ror
this practice. But more fundamentally this is a common American culture
pattern. Caste accentuates it, but in the sphere of the Negro problem both
whites and Negroes display a general attitude toward leadership and follow-
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