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APf»BNt>lX 9
RESEARCH ON NEGRO LEADERSHIP
The study of leadership and followership should not start out from an attempt to
define on a friori grounds the two principal concepts involved. In this tangled and
uncultivated field of study such an attempt would almost inevitably land the investig^tof
in hollow and doctrinal squabbles on the meaning of words. We have only to settle that
zve are discussing the role and importance of individual persons in the sphere of social
and political power and—as a power basis for these individuals as well as a concept for
contrast—the role of the masses. This statement of the problem has to be made more
definite by a realistic conception of the general pattern of leadership and followership
in American culture as a whole.
The general American pattern has to be assumed to be modified considerably in the
Negro people because of caste. In this problem, caste particularly implies two things:
First, that the identification on the part of Negroes with the American nation as a whole
and with national groups of various types, as, for instance, the workers, becomes abnor-
mally weak or totally lacking.® Second, that Negroes, because of their subordinate caste
position, find all their power relations confined to the narrow orbit of accommodation
or protest, or to a compromise between accommodation and protest. Besides this realistic
axis of behavior in power relations, there are unrealistic outlets in extrovert or introvert
aggression and in psychological and ideological escapism. As we saw in Chapter 38,
Negro popular theories generally, because of caste, become fixated, negatively or
positively, on white theories on the Negro; outside the Negro problem these popular
theories become amorphous and unstable.
The primary effect of the caste situation on Negro leadership—compared with a
“normal” American situation—is to enhance tremendously the importance of Negro
leaders as liaison agents between the two groups. Negro leaders have a “function” to
fulfill for both castes. As the Negro class structure is also closely determined by caste,
there is a relation to be investigated between class and leadership. The Negro leaders
should be viewed from the standpoints of the two castes and their interests. The white
caste has an interest in supporting those Negro leaders who can transfer their influence
upon the lower caste. The Negro caste has two interests: one, to express the Negro
protest as far as it does not damage its immediate welfare; two, to get as much as
possible from the whites. The partly contradictory interests of the Negro community
can be taken care of by the same individual leaders or by several diflFerent leaders in a
division of responsibility.
A most important problem, which, to be solved, would require much more factual
research, concerns the operation of the selective social mechanism by which Negro
“The chapter on Negro ideologies enlarges upon this topic (Chapter 38).
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