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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 3. Facets of the Negro Problem - 4. The “Rank Order of Discriminations”
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Chapter 3. Facets or the Negro Problem 61
Rank 3. Thereafter follow the segregations and discriminations in use of public
facilities such as schools, churches and means of conveyance.
Rank 4. Next comes political disfranchisement.
Rank 5. Thereafter come discriminations in law courts, by the police, and by other
public servants.
Rank 6. Finally come the discriminations in securing land, credit, jobs, or other
means of earning a living, and discriminations in public relief and other
social welfare activities.
It is unfortunate that this cornerstone in our edifice of basic hypotheses,
like many of our other generalizations, has to be constructed upon the
author’s observations.’^ It is desirable that scientifically controlled,
quantitative knowledge be substituted for impressionistic judgments as soon
as possible.® It should be noted that the rank order is very apparently
determined by the factors of sex and social status, so that the closer the
association of a type of interracial behavior is to sexual and social inter-
course on an equalitarian basis, the higher it ranks among the forbidden
things.
Next in importance to the fact of the white man’s rank order of dis-
criminations is the fact that the Negroes own rank order is just about
parallely but inverse^ to that of the white man. The Negro resists least the
discrimination on the ranks placed highest in the white man’s evaluation and
resents most any discrimination on the lowest level. This is in accord with
the Negro’s immediate interests. Negroes are in desperate need of jobs and
bread, even more so than of justice in the courts, and of the vote. These
latter needs are, in their turn, more urgent even than better schools and
playgrounds, or, rather, they are primary means of reaching equality in the
use of community facilities. Such facilities are, in turn, more important
than civil courtesies. The marriage matter, finally, is of rather distant and
doubtful interest.
Such reflections are obvious j
and most Negroes have them in their minds.
It is another matter, however, whether the white man is prepared to stick
honestly to the rank order which he is so explicit and emphatic in announc-
ing. The question is whether he is really prepared to give the Negro a good
job, or even the vote, rather than to allow him entrance to his front door
or to ride beside him in the street car.
Upon the assumption that this question is given an affirmative answer,
that the white man is actually prepared to carry out in practice the implica-
tions of his theories^ this inverse relationship between the Negroes and the
white man’s rank orders becomes of strategical importance in the practical
and political sphere of the Negro problem. Although not formulated in this
way, such a relationship, or such a minimum moral demand on the ordinary
white man, has always been the basis of all attempts to compromise and
come to a better understanding between leaders of the two groups. It has
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