Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 44. Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community - 3. Mental Disorders and Suicide - 4. Recreation
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
982 An American Dilemma
pensation of carelessness in personal behavior. If these and other group
experiences are reflected in the incidence of mental disease, it may be
possible to learn about Negro culture and personality through a study of
characteristic mental aberrations of Negro individuals.
In contrast to the high mental disease rate, Negroes apparently have a
very low suicide rate. It is only 4.0 per 100,000 population ( 1940), as com-
pared to 15.5 for whites, 8.4 for Indians, 45.2 for Chinese and 26.0 for
Japanese.^^ One of the reasons for the low suicide rate for Negroes is a
younger age composition, since suicide rises rapidly with age. But it also
seems that Negroes are actually less prone to escape their problems by
taking their lives.®
4. Recreation
Negro recreation is conditioned by three factors: First, Negroes are barred
from using public recreational and amusement facilities in many places even
in the North, and are inadequately supplied with private facilities.’* Second,
their geographical concentration in the South means that many of their
recreational patterns follow those of the rural South. These are carried
over to the urban North by the migrants from the South and are further
shaped by the fact that the great bulk of the Negro population is of low
economic status and lives in slum areas. Third, because recreation and
amusement must be carried on almost entirely within the isolated Negro
community, Negro recreation has developed peculiar traits of its own, dif-
ferent from those that characterize recreation in the white community. One
of the most striking characteristics of Negro amusements and recreation is
their tendency to be informal, intimate and sociable.
Life in rural areas is generally dull and uneventful.®® There is little to do
during a large part of the yearj at other times farm work takes up all the
time.®® Recreation may become the means of filling up empty, dull days or
serve as relief from long, hard, monotonous labor. Because of the lack of
facilities, recreation tends to be informal and unorganized. Besides swim-
ming, hunting, and fishing,^® a considerable amount of time is spent in
loafing, talking, boasting, telling tall stories, singing. Everybody partici-
pates, and the behavior is free, easy, and spontaneous. Loud good-natured
^^banter” is part of itj it often deteriorates, however, into aggression and
obscenity.’*^ The laughing, boisterous groups, frequently seen by the whites,
give them the idea that Negroes have a wonderfully happy time. While it
is true that the Negroes’ recreational behavior is relatively unrestrained
especiaWy sttiklng in view of tVie fact tViat few Negroes arc CatVioVics, and
Catholics have a low rate because of religious injunctions.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
