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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 8. Research on Caste and Class in a Negro Community
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1130 An American Dilemma
The ideal community study should start out from a careful statistical analysis of vital,
social, and economic data concerning the individuals and families making up the
community being studied. The less measurable data on attitudes, cultural traits, behavior
patterns in which social stratification is expressed, and the “feeling” of social status or
toward social status on the part of members of the various groups, should then be
observed and the results integrated into the framework of statistical knowledge. Only
when so treated do they reveal their full meaning. The entire analysis should be
dominated by the recognition that the Negro class structure is rapidly changing. The
dynamics of the problem do not consist merely in the tensions, frictions and movements
within the class structure. Even more important is the resultant movement of the whole
class structure and, incidentally, the actual import of a position in this structure for
Negroes in various social classes.
In such an approach it is of importance to keep clear at the outset that our class
concepts have no other reality than as a conceptual framework. They should, therefore,
be given instrumental definitions (in relation to the questions asked and the instruments
used for observations). Fundamentally we are studying a series of continua—on the one
side, incomes, occupations, educational levels, complexions, and so on j
on the other side,
family organization, ambition, moral standards, regard for respectability, social prestige,
class and caste attitudes, and so on. We know that there are monopolistic elements in the
social situation. Because of a causal mechanism—^which constitutes the very problem of
class dynamics to be investigated—there is a specific, but changing, correlation between
all these various series, and we attempt to observe the result of this correlation in terms of
social classes. But neither the particular series themselves nor the integration of the
series into a composite “social status” reveal any gaps from which we can infer “natural”
classes.^ If there are gaps in some of the series, they can be assumed, in a rapidly
changing society, to vary from community to community and from one time to another.
We must choose our class lines arbitrarily to answer certain specific questions.
Further, as usual, we must observe the differences in social stratification between
South and North, rural and urban districts, and city communities of varying size and
age. It is true that every Negro community—^no matter how small, and no matter how
insignificant are the apparent differences in wealth, education, and color—^has its social
cleavages. But the differences between different Negro communities are so great that
“The authors of the Warner group—to whom American social science is indebted, not
only for much of the recently acquired detailed knowledge about the Negro class structure,
but also for the impetus to overcome the popular American theory of the absence of class in
this country—often give the reader the impression that they believe that there are in reality
clearly demarcated social classes: “. . . well-defined upper, middle, and lower social classes
exist within each caste. Each of these classes has its distinctive pattern of familial, recrea-
tional, and general social behavior.” (Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R.
Gardner, Deef South [ 1941 ], p. 49,
footnote.)
Because of this misconception—which is sometimes called reification—these authors
became tempted to give us a somewhat oversimplified idea about social stratification in the
Negro community. The fault is not the simplification, which is an almost necessary method
when dealing with complicated social relations, but the reluctance to admit it and to make
adequate reservations. What they are actually presenting is an ideal-typical—and, therefore,
over-typical—description, based on much detailed observation which is all organized under
the conceptual scheme applied. By unduly insisting upon the realism of this analysis, how-
ever, they come to imply a rigidity in the class structure which is not really there.
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