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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 13. Miscellaneous Ideologies
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Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories 809
tion to hold to the American Creed. Bowen summarizes a study of Negro
opinion thus;
But admitting the division of public opinion among Negroes, this survey found that
on some matters Negro opinion is more united than white opinion is upon almost any-
thing. It found for instance, that Negro opinion is, so to speak, completely united
on the proposition that, given the necessary technical qualifications, Negroes should
be equally eligible with whites for any job in the United States. It found Negro
opinion united on the proposition that skin color should not be penalized in any
way whatsoever. It found division of opinion as to how this can be brought about,
but the division is as to ways and means, not as to objective. In other words, the
color line itself is unjust and tyrannical.^^
It is true that all Negroes down to the poorest Southern sharecropper are
attached to Uncle Sam and expect more justice from Washington than from
the state capitol, and more from the state capitol than from the county
courthouse. The Negro people have a clear and unanimous view on the
problem of ^^state rights versus federal rights.” They are for centralization.
“They feel themselves as Americans and want to be nothing else,” observes
Schrieke:
But there is the real problem; they are American and Negro. As Negroes they see
themselves constantly through American eyes. That unreconciled double-consciousness
is their greatest trouble.’*®
This dual pull is the correspondence in the Negro world to what we for
the white world have called the American Dilemma. Du Bois has expressed
the tragedy of it:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at
one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world
that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American,
a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals
in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.^®
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