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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 2. Encountering the Negro Problem - 8. The North and the South
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46 An AMfiRtcAN Dilemma
There are few Negroes living in most of the North. This is especially
true of the rural regions. Where Negroes live in small cities, particularly
in the New England states, they are a small element of the population
who have never been much of a problem. In the big cities where the
greater part of the total Northern Negro population lives, the whites are
protected from getting the Negro problem too much on their minds by
the anonymity of life and the spatial segregation of racial, ethnic, and
economic groups typical of the metropolitan organization of social relations.
The Northern whites have also been able to console themselves by
comparing the favorable treatment of Negroes in the North with that of
the South. Negroes have votes in the North and are, on the whole,
guaranteed equality before the law. No cumbersome racial etiquette in
personal relations is insisted upon. The whole caste system has big holes
in the North, even if prejudice in personal relations is pronounced, and the
Negroes are generally kept out of the better jobs. Reports of how Negroes
fare in the South tend to make the Northerners satisfied with themselves,
if not smug, without, in most cases, making them want to start again to
reform the South. We fought a Civil War over the Negroes once, they
will say 5
it didn^t do any good and we are not going to do it again.
The mass migration of Southern Negroes to the North since the begin-
ning of the First World War leads naturally—especially in periods of
economic depression—to the reflection on the part of the Northerners that
improvement of conditions for Negroes in their own communities is
dangerous as it will encourage more Southern Negroes to come North.
Most white Northerners seem to hold that the Negroes ought to stay on
Southern land, and that, in any case, they cannot be asked to accept any
responsibility for recent Negro migrants. Few Northerners have a?iy idea
that the Negroes are being pushed off the land in the South by the develop-
ment of world competition against Southern agricultural products in com-
bination with a national agricultural policy discriminating severely against
the Negroes. This argument that Negroes should not be encouraged to
come North—which is in the minds of many Northern city authorities—is
a chief factor In hampering a sound welfare policy for Negroes.
This ^‘passing the buck” is, of course, not only a device of Northerners
to quiet their conscience. It is prominently displayed also by Southerners.
The latter get satisfaction out of every indication that Negroes are not
treated well in the North and, indeed, that groups other than Negroes are
living in distress in the North. Such things help to assuage their own
conscience. They need a rationalization against their sympathy for the
underdog and against their dislike of the caste pressure inflicted upon the
Negro. This situation has prevailed since before the Civil War. The horrors
of Northern free-labor slavery and Northern city slums have never left
the Southerner’s mind. The object of this maltreatment, namely, the poor
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