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Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 37. Compromise Leadership - 11. In the North
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778 An American Dilemma
The Negro leaders are also much freer in their actions. They do not fear
violence, intimidation and banishment. Even the controls over their eco-
nomic prospects are much less tight. But white protection and assistance
mean much in the North also. Negro preachers in the North get hand-outs,
too. Negro teachers and other public employees are mostly appointed by
whites in the North, too. But since the jobs are actually considered as
concessions to Negro power and protest, the jobholders are not appointed
entirely without consideration of the desires of the Negro community.
And the civil service regulations are usually more effective in the North
in protecting the independence of jobholders.
It is, thus, surprising that one meets in Northern Negro communities the
same complaints about the great incompetence and venality of Negro lead-
ers. One observes also much of the same keen and destructive personal
rivalry of leaders. Part of this may be explained as a cultural heritage from
the Southern situation. The greater freedom requires a radical reeducation
which is far from finished among Southern-born Negroes in the North and
among their children. Another part may be due to the fact that the Negro
protest is not only much freer in the North but is also more widespread and
more intensely felt. As the constructive outlets for this more intensive
Negro protest are not too wide in the North either, it turns back on the
Negro community and results in internal suspicion and vicious competition.
But more important in explaining dissatisfaction with leaders is the fact
that the share in power which the Negroes hold in the North creates a much
greater stimulus for various white interests to buy the Negro leaders. As
the Negro people are poor and inexperienced in holding power, the
temptations seem strong. Political parties have a reason in the North, which
they do not have in the South, to bribe Negro newspaper editors, preachers,
and other community leaders before elections. Employers occasionally feel
inclined to do the same in order to keep Negro workers hostile to the
trade unions. And even other white interests in the North, where it is less
possible than in the South to frighten the Negro community in the direction
wanted, will instead buy off its leaders.
It is possible—^and, judging from the many sorry stories told to the
present author, even probable—^that there is just as much or more outright
corruption in the Northern Negro leadership as in the Southern. And even
in the absence of corruption, the Northern leaders, like the Southern ones,
are apparently often interested in their own advancement more than in the
cause they pretend to serve. Nevertheless, the Negro community also gets
something—and indeed comparatively much—out of the greater freedom
and out of its share in power. And the Northern situation is conducive to
a gradual education of the Negro people to the opportunities and the duties
of free citizenship. The masses can demand that their leaders be struggling
protest leaders, clarifying and defining the Negro demands, and m^ing
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