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20 An American Dilemma
by no means a Negro characteristic. It is a common American disease of
the democratic spirit which is on the way to becoming chronic.
We shall meet this tendency as it affects various aspects of the Negro
problem as we go along. A few critical remarks on the general theory that
‘^stateways cannot change folkways’^ need to be made at the start. In this
abstract form and as applied to various specific problems, the theory cannot
be true, since in other parts of the world similar changes are effectuated
by means of legislation. The theory must, therefore, be qualified in the
light of specific American conditions. But even in America new legislation,
infringing upon old customs and upon individual and local interests, is
often made fairly watertight nowadays.“^ The general explanation why
some laws have been more successful than others in America is that they
have been better frefared and better administered.
This means that, among the explanations for the general disrepute and
deficiency of law and order in America, there are two other factors: the
habit of passing laws without careful investigation^ and the relatively low
standard of American administration of law. To the latter point we shall
return in a later chapter," where we shall point also to the new but strong
tendency in America toward the building up of an independent and legal
administration. On the former point we shall restrict ourselves to quoting
a high authority: ‘^For nothing is done with so little of scientific or orderly
method as the legislative making of laws.”“^
These two factors are strategic. When the foolish attempts to suppress
symptoms of ills while leaving the causes untouched become censored, and
when lawmaking increasingly becomes an important task of scientific social
engineering, and when, further, administration becomes independent, legal,
impartial, and efficient, better laws will be made, and they will be better
enforced even in America. It is a problem to explain why lawmaking and
administration have been so backward in a nation where private business
and also private agencies for public good are often excellently organized.
The mere possibility of change in these two factors shows the fallacy
of the general theory that law cannot change custom. In the face of the
tendency in American society toward more careful lawmaking and improved
administration the theory appears politically as well as theoretically biased;
biased against induced change. In this book we shall meet other dynamic
tendencies in American society favoring the same development, the chief
among them being, perhaps, the growing cultural homogeneity and the
increasing political and social participation of the masses. Many social
scientists tend not only to ignore these changes, but to deny them and, in
some cases, to oppose them.
If in the course of time Americans are brought to be a law-abiding
people, and if they at the same time succeed in keeping alive not only their
• See Chapter aa
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