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Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 2. Encountering the Negro Problem - 4. Explorations in Escape - 5. The Etiquette of Discussion
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36 An American Dilemma
the whole public, nobody is actually going to buy it. Personally, 1 would not dare
to have it in the cellar of my house, still less in a room where I lived.” He answered,
“I know. I suppose that I have made this for myself. I am going to keep it in a
closet. This is the ‘American Skeleton in the Closet.’ That would be the right name
of my sculpture, ‘Soldier in Rain’ is only a fake, a deception between me and the
public down here.”
The situation described is a beautiful crystallization of moral escape. A
sculptor, with so much color in his skin and such life experiences because of
his skin color that a degree of identification with the American Negro
people has been established, is living out his aggression in a piece of art
which, in reality, is meant as an accusation against society. In the layer of
his mind where his artistic imagination works and directs his skilful hands,
he is clear and bent on his purpose 5
and the result is forceful and exact.
In the layer where he meets the community, there is twilight. He gave me
two contradictory statements as to what the sculpture actually represented,
and he was, as I believe, serious and honest both times. The art appreciative
public in this refined old city shares in his twilight. They accept his fake
with grace and gratitude. To some extent they also share in the deep
meaning of the sculpture to its creator. They probably even ^‘get a kick”
out of an obvious association which, however, they suppress. Probably none
of the visitors to the exhibition would ever take part in a lynching or have
anything but regret for its occurrence. But they partake in a national and
regional responsibility. I.ynching, further, stands only as a symbol for a
whole system of suppression measures, in which they daily are participants.
Their valuations are in conflict. Art, particularly when presented in such
a tactful way, has a function of releasing the tension of suppressed moral
conflicts.
5. The Etique’I’te of Discussion
Generally the form of a matter becomes important when the matter itself
is touchy. Explosives must be handled with care. Educators, reformers, and
journalists with liberal leanings in the South have a standard text which
they recite to please one another and the visitor. Everything can be said
in the South if it is said “in the right way.” Criticisms and even factual state-
ments should be phrased in such a manner that they do not “offend” or
create “embarrassment.” I have listened again and again to the pronounce-
ments of this theory of Southern indirectness from liberal white Southerners
who have been most eager that I should understand, not only the esthetics,
but also the pragmatic purpose of this escape machinery. I have been told
countless examples, where, as my interlocutor confided to me, he was able
to “get by” in saying so and so to such and such a person because he phrased
it in this or that way^ or how this or that change for the better in inter-
racial relations was “put over” on the public by letting it appear in a euphe-
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