Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 4. Racial Beliefs - 9. Rectifying Beliefs - 10. The Study of Beliefs
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
no An American Dilemma
principally through encouraging research and through exposing the masses
of people to its results that society can correct the false popular beliefs
—
by objectivizing the material out of which beliefs are fabricated. Seen in
long-range perspective, a cautious optimism as to the results of gathering
and spreading true information among the American people in racial mat-
ters seems warranted. The impression of the author is that the younger,
and better educated, generation has, on the whole, somewhat fewer
superstitious beliefs, and that, during the last decade at least, the racial
beliefs have begun to be slowly rectified in the whole nation.
A third line of strategy is, naturally, to attack the valuations for the
rationalization of which false beliefs are employed. This must mean
strengthening the American Creed in its primary function of bending
people’s minds toward equalitarianism. Everything done to modify the
caste order must diminish the moral conflict in the hearts of the Americans
and thus decrease the defense needs which give emotional energy to the
false racial beliefs. Indirectly, the valuations conflicting with the Creed also
are becoming deflated as beliefs are becoming rectified. Valuations depend,
to an extent, on the availability of functional beliefs in which they can be
^‘lived out” and expressed.*
In this way the moral and the intellectual tasks of education are closely
related. The interrelation extends even to our first line of strategy. Every
improvement of the actual level of Negro character will increase the
effectiveness of both the intellectual and moral education of white people
in racial matters and vice versa. It is this mechanism of mutual and cumula-
tive dynamic causation which explains the actual situation in theory and, at
the same time, affords the basis for constructive practical policy.
10. The Study of Beliefs
It should by this time be clear that it is the fofular beliefs^ and they
only, which enter directly into the causal mechanism of interracial relations.
The scientific facts of race and racial characteristics of the Negro people
are only of secondary and indirect importance for the social problem under
study in this volume. In themselves they are only virtual but not actual
social facts. . . to understand race conflict we need fundamentally to
understand conflict and not raceJ*^ We have concluded, further, from the
actual power situation in America that the beliefs held by white feofle
rather than those held by Negroes are of primary importance.^
The popular beliefs concerning the Negro race pose two different tasks
for scientific research. One task is to criticize and refute the beliefs when
they are wrong. American anthropology and psychology have, in recent
decades, worked in this direction. It was, in fact, a necessary work to be
• See Appendix i
.
^ See Introduction, Section 3.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
