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1386 An American Dilemma
the discriminations directed against all Negroes. But as far as his color is concerned, the
mulatto has less of a personality problem than does the dark Negro, and he certainly
has no loyalty to his white ancestors.
0/>. «/., p. 135.
Dollard, of, cit. Powdermaker, of. cit, and Davis, Gardner, and Gardner, of. cit.
Also the studies of Negro youth prepared for the American Youth Commission, cited
in footnote 9 of Chapter 30, have been framed with a main view on the Negro class
system.
Many earlier studies of the Negro, which could not be described as “community
studies,” also divided the Negro population into three classes.
If we add together all the following occupational groups of male Negroes, we
arrive at a figure of 80 per cent of all male Negro gainful workers in 1930: owners of
less than 20 acres of land used for agriculture, agricultural cash tenants having less
than 50 acres, agricultural share tenants having less than 50 acres, all agricultural share-
croppers and wage laborers, and all nonagricultural gainful workers in the unskilled and
semi-skilled groups in Edwards’ social-economic classification. For purposes of general
description, this would seem to be a most useful description of the Negro lower
classes defined in purely occupational terms. One of the major weaknesses of the
definition is that it includes all servant employees, and in the Negro world some of
these have middle or even upper class status. On the other hand, some skilled workers
with restricted employment opportunities—especially in building construction—^will
have lower class status in the Negro community. (Sources: (i) United States Bureau
of the Census, Negroes in the United States: ig2o-ig32, pp. 602-605. (2) United
States Bureau of the Census, Alba M. Edwards, Social-Economic Groufing of the
Gainful Workers of the United Statesy ig^o [1938], pp. 58-59.)
For the Southern rural population Charles S. Johnson estimates— . . on the basis
of occupation, income, education, family organization, relationship to property, and
general community recognition of standing”—^that the lower class amounts to 82 per
cent, while the middle class takes 12 per cent and the upper class only 6 per cent
{Growing Uf in the Black Belt, p. 77). Johnson’s criteria could, of course, be varied
according to the needs of the investigator and different percentages would result, but
no one has ever said that the bulk of Southern rural Negroes are not lower class. Frazier
informs us that in urban communities in the Border cities like St. Louis and Washington,
the lower class comprises “about two-thirds of the Negro population/* (Frazier, Negro
Youth at the CrosswaySy p. 263.) Warner, Junker, and Adams tell us that the “great
masses of Chicago Negroes belong to the lower class.” (Of. cit.y p. 22.) Davis, Gardner,
and Gardner state that “the overwhelming majority of colored persons are considered
lower class, according to the colored groufs own standards/* And that “in most Ameri-
can colored societies the middle and upper classes together ... do not include more
than one-fourth of the population.” (Of. cit,, p. 222.) These estimates are not very
exact and they are apparently not made on similar criteria. In this context our only point
is that all authors include the majority of the Negro population in the lower class.
88
“The critical fact is that a much larger proportion of all Negroes are lower class
than is the case with whites. This is where caste comes to bear. It puts the overwhelming
majority of Negroes in the lowest class group and keeps them there.” (Davis and
Dollard, of, cit,, p. 65.)
Thomas Nelson Page’s vision was “. . . a vast sluggish mass of uncooled lava
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