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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 17. The Mechanics of Economic Discrimination as a Practical Problem - 4. The Regular Industrial Labor Market in the North - 5. The Problem of Vocational Training
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390 An American Dilemma
of effort on the part of both employers and white workers. Most white
people never think of the fact that there is a definite policy to keep the
Negro out. The ‘^white shop” is part of the tradition and just seems
“natural.” The issue is not faced. The color bar, although as real as it can
be, is almost invisible.
For these reasons it frequently occurs that Negroes are denied entrance
to entire industries without anybody feeling much of a bad conscience about
it. On the contrary, it may even happen that employers and union leaders
exclude the Negro just because they have a conscience. It is an established
custom in the South to take Negroes in and let them work under a system
of more or less complete segregation j
confining them to special jobs and
special departments j
denying them promotion j
giving them separate eating
rooms, toilets and water fountains. But such a system of consistent segre-
gation and discrimination is not considered to be right in the North, even
though some parts of it may be accepted. In plants where there is a system
of fixed rules governing dismissals, rehirings, and promotions based on
age, competence, and experience, one would have to face the problem of
either excluding the Negro from some of these advantages—thereby
breaking the consistency in the system—or of letting some Negroes work
themselves up to the position of foremen over white workers. Although
several compromises and modifications arc possible and are in actual use
in most Northern plants, none is satisfactory to the Northern conscience.
Even the use of the same toilets or eating places by both races may bring
trouble, particularly if there are a few Southerners in the labor force.
Again, the employer solves his problem by excluding the Negro alto-
gether.
5. The Problem of Vocational Training
The very fact that an exclusionist policy is established will, furthermore,
result in a lack of properly trained Negro workers. This mechanism starts
at the bottom of the system of training Negro youths. In the North, where
the vocational branches of the public school system are freely open without
discrimination, the teachers and the vocational guidance agencies connected
with the schools often advise Negro youths not to take courses in those
fields where they will later encounter difficulties in getting apprenticeship
and employment. This problem is of rapidly increasing significance since
formal vocational training is more and more becoming a prerequisite for
entering skilled occupations.
The advisors are, like the Negro youths themselves, placed in a difficult
dilemma. It must seem unrealistic and even dangerous to the future of
young Negroes to encourage them to take vocational training in fields
where they will be barred later. On the other hand, to avoid such training
means to accept and fortify the exclusionist system, since then no Negroes
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