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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 2. Encountering the Negro Problem - 7. Negro and White Voices - 8. The North and the South
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44 An American Dilemma
liberal in his attitude toward the Negro and on the race question and is not a man
of moral worth.
The white man is driven to apologies, not by the Negro, because the
Negro is not so strong, but by his own moral principles. We shall have to
study those apologies intensively in this inquiry. Only as a foretaste we
quote James Truslow Adams, who pleads:
The condition of the portion of that continent from which he came was one not
only of savagery but of chronic warfare, quite irrespective of the activities of the
slave traders. A negro in his native land was liable at any mpment to be attacked,
captured, enslaved by other blacks, torn from his family, or killed and in some cases
eaten. Would the 12,000,000 of negroes in the United States today prefer that their
ancestors had never been enslaved and that therefore they themselves, if alive,
should at this moment be living as savages or barbarians in the African jungle?
Would a DuBois prefer to be head man to an African chief instead of a Harvard
graduate, scholar and writer? Would a Robeson prefer beating a tom tom to thrilling
audiences throughout the world with his beautiful voice? Would the colored washer-
woman 1 had in the North give up her comfortable house and her car, i;i which
she motored her family to Virginia each summer, for the ancestral grass hut in the
jungle?
An editorial commenting upon certain demands raised by a committee
of Negro citizens of the City of New York and presented under the
auspices of a wartime organization for the propagation of democracy in
America reads:
... as a group, even in this great free city, they [the Negroes] haven’t enjoyed
equality of opportunity. They have been at a disadvantage in housing. . . . For no
reason except color, they iind many jobs closed to them . . . the Negro suffers from
an undeserved historic misfortune. He docs not enjoy, anywhere in th-^ United
States, opportunities equal to his individual capacity. ... It is time that more of his
white neighbors stopped being so patient about this situation. An injustice to any
group, whether we realize the truth or not, hurts all of us.-^
And so the conflict in the troubled white man’s soul goes on.
8. The North and the South
In the North the observer finds a different mental situation in regard to
the Negro problem. The South is divergent from the rest of the country
not only in having the bulk of the Negro population within its region but
also in a number of other traits and circumstances—all, as we shall find,
directly or \i\d\rect\y couuected wvtVv t\ve ’^e^ro ^ro\Aem.
There has been less social change \ri the South. Industrialization has
lagged until recently. The South is more agricultural and rural. Parts of
it are isolated. There has been relatively little immigration from foreign
countries or from the North j
practically all migration has been internal
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