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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 1. American Ideals and the American Conscience - 11. Intellectual Defeatism - 12. “Lip-Service”
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21
Chapter i. American Ideals
conservatism In fundamental principles and their pride and devotion to
their national political institutions, but also some of their puritan eagerness
and courage in attempting to reform themselves and the world—redirected
somewhat from the old Biblical inclination of thinking only in terms of
prescriptions and purges—^this great nation may become the master builder
of a stable but progressive commonwealth.
12. ^^Lip-Service”
The conflict in the American concept of law and order is only one side
of the ^‘moral overstrain” of the nation. America believes in and aspires
to something much higher than its plane of actual life. The subordinate
position of Negroes is perhaps the most glaring conflict in the American
conscience and the greatest unsolved task for American democracy. But
it is by no means the only one. Donald Young complains:
In our more introspective moments, nearly all of us Americans will admit that
our government contains imperfections and anachronisms. We who have been born
and brought up under the evils of gang rule, graft, political incompetence, inade-
quate representation, and some of the other weaknesses of democracy, American plan,
have developed mental callouses and are no longer sensitive to them.^®
The fofular explanation of the disparity in America between ideals and
actual behavior is that Americans do not have the slightest intention of
living up to the ideals which they talk about and put into their Constitution
and laws. Many Americans are accustomed to talk loosely and disparagingly
about adherence to the American Creed as ‘4ip-service” and even ‘^hypoc-
risy.” Foreigners are even more prone to make such a characterization.
This explanation is too superficial. To begin with, the true hypocrite sins
in secret 5
he conceals his faults. The American, on the contrary, is strongly
and sincerely “against sin,” even, and not least, his own sins. He investi-
gates his faults, puts them on record, and shouts them from the housetops,
adding the most severe recriminations against himself, including the
accusation of hypocrisy. If all the world is well informed about the political
corruption, organized crime, and faltering system of justice in America,
it is primarily not due to its malice but to American publicity about its own
imperfections. Americans handling of the Negro problem has been criticized
most emphatically by white Americans since long before the Revolution,
and the criticism has steadily gone on and will not stop until America has
completely reformed Itself.
Bryce observed: *They know, and are content that all the world should
know, the worst as well as the best of themselves. They have a boundless
faith in free inquiry and full discussion. They admit the possibility of any
number of temporary errors and delusions.”^^ The present author remem-
bers, from his first visit to this country as an inexperienced social scientist
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