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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 15. The Negro in the Public Economy - 3. Education
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342 An American Dilemma
however, lose their economic interest in segregation. In fact they—and the
Negroes—^would have to pay for it in higher taxes, in so far as a segregated
set-up would then be more expensive than a mixed school system. It is open
for speculation to what extent this would change populanattitudes in respect
to segregation.
The whole system of discrimination in education in the South is not only
tremendously harmful to the Negroes but it is flagrantly illegal,^^ and can
easily be so proven in the courts. The main organization for guarding civil
liberties for Negroes, the N.A.A.C.P., has not waged, up to now, an exten-
sive legal campaign against school discrimination. Recently it has selected
a few strategic frontiers for an attack: equalization of teachers’ salaries®
and the admittance of graduate students to Southern universities.** In these
fields, it is exerting a considerable pressure upon Southern authorities. Not
only educators but politicians, even in the Deep South, are heard to say that
they must “do something” to raise Negro education so as to avoid too great
legal embarrassment. Northern philanthropic institutions have, for a long
time, been active in raising Negro education in the South. Many white
Southerners are trying to bring about reforms.
There is no doubt that under all these influences a gradual improvement
of school facilities for Negroes, as for whites, in the South has been going
on and is still in progress. It is less certain, but probable, that Negro schools
have lately been improving faster than white schools in the South—^that is,
in the sense that the ’percentage increase in expenditures may have been
greater for Negro than for white schools.® But measured in absolute
amounts the difference is even larger than it used to be.^® If we consider
the whole Negro group, there is no doubt that the most important factor
working to raise the educational level is the continuous migration out of the
South to the Northern cities with their good schools.
In the South, the discrimination is still so tremendously great j
it is so
ingrained 5
and it is so profitable for the whites, that it is difficult to see
how any more rapid reform will be possible unless the federal govern-
ment enters the field and starts giving financial assistance to the Southern
school system. This will mean two things. First, there will be a regional
equalization in educational standards over the whole country, from which
the South, especially, cannot fail to gain. Such an equalization, as has often
been pointed out, is well justified in view of the high birth rate in the
South and the migration, which forces the South, as well as other low
income, high fertility, “out-migration” areas, to make heavy investments
in the education of diildren who afterwards spend the productive period
“See Chapter 14, Section 4.
® See Chapter 29, Section 5.
“
For the nation os a whole there is, undoubtedly, .an equalization in educational oppor-
tunities, as the proportion of Negroes living in the North is increasing.
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