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 - Introduction - 2. Valuations and Beliefs
<< 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.
xlviii Introduction
raged only between valuations held by different persons and groups of
persons. The essence of the moral situation is, however, that the conflicting
valuations are also held by the same person. The moral struggle goes on
within feofle and not only between them. As feofle^s valuations are con^
flictingy behavior normally becomes a moral comfromise. There are no
homogeneous ^^attitudes^^ behind human behavior but a mesh of struggling
inclinationsy
interestSy and idealsy
some held conscious and some suffressed
for long intervals but all active in bending behavior in their direction.
The unity of a culture consists in the fact that all valuations are
mutually shared in some degree. We shall find that even a poor and
uneducated white person in some isolated and backward rural region in
the Deep South, who is violently prejudiced against the Negro and intent
upon depriving him of civic rights and human independence, has also a
whole compartment in his valuation sphere housing the entire American
Creed of liberty, equality, justice, and fair opportunity for everybody. He
is actually also a good Christian and honestly devoted to the ideals of
human brotherhood and the Golden Rule. And these more general valua-
tions—more general in the sense that they refer to all human beings—are,
to some extent, effective in shaping his behavior. Indeed, it would be impos-
sible to understand why the Negro does not fare worse in some regions of
America if it were not constantly kept in mind that behavior is the outcome
of a compromise between valuations, among which the equalitarian ideal
is one. At the other end, there are few liberals, even in New England, who
have not a well-furnished compartment of race prejudice, even if it is usually
suppressed from conscious attention. Even the American Negroes share
in this community of valuations: they have eagerly imbibed the American
Creed and the revolutionary Christian teaching of common brotherhood j
under closer study, they usually reveal also that they hold something of
the majority prejudice against their own kind and its characteristics.
The intensities and proportions in which these conflicting valuations are
present vary considerably from one American to another, and within the
same individual, from one situation to another. The cultural unity of the
nation consists, however, in the fact that most Americans have most valua-
tions in common though they are arranged differently in the sphere of
valuations of different individuals and groups and bear different intensity
coefficients. This cultural unity is the indispensable basis for discussion
between persons and groups. It is the floor upon which the democratic
prpcess goes on.
In America as everywhere else people agree, as an abstract proposition,
that the more general valuations—those which refer to man as such and
not to any particular group or temporary situation—are morally higher.
These valuations are also given the sanction of religion and national
legislation, They are incorporated into the American Creed. The other
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
