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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 - 7. A Position of “Indifferent Equilibrium”
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Chapter 17. A Practical Problem 393
will have better chances of staying. It is upon this theory that the Urban
League works when trying to sell Negro labor to employers and unions,
although with insufficient resources and community support.®
Our hypothesis gains plausibility when we look at the history of the
Negro in Northern industry. The one period when—mainly due to acute
labor shortage—he gained entrance to new fields of employment in the
North was during the First World War. During the ’twenties he fortified
his position in these new fields. During the Great Depression, of course,
he could not make any further gains. But the more remarkable thing is
that he kept as well as he did the new positions he had won. Another
observation which also supports our hypothesis is the great inconsistency in
the pattern of Negro employment in the North. In most industries and
most plants Negroes are not hired. But in some they are, mostly for no
other particular reason than that they once got entrance because of labor
shortage or because the employer wanted to keep out unionism. Charles
S. Johnson summarizes a survey of the industrial status of Negroes in Los
Angeles, California, in 1926, as follows:
. . . 456 plants of widely varying character were reached. . , . The most frequently
encountered policy was one based upon the belief that “Negro and white workers
will not mix.” They did “mix,” however, in over 50 of the plants studied. In certain
plants where Mexicans were regarded as white, Negroes were not allowed to “mix”
with themj where Mexicans were classed as colored, Negroes not only worked with
them but were given positions over them. In certain plants Mexicans and whites
worked together; in some others white workers accepted Negroes and objected to
Mexicans; still in others white workers accepted Mexicans and objected to Japanese.
White women worked with Mexican and Italian women, but refused to work with
Negroes. Mexicans and Negroes worked under a white foreman; Italians and Mexi-
cans under a Negro foreman. . . . Because white elevator men and attendants in a
department store disturbed the morale of the organization by constant chattering and
flirtations with the salesgirls, Negro men were brought into their places and morale
was restored, in spite of the fears that the races would not “mix.”®
Except for the presence of the Mexicans in Los Angeles, much the same
picture of inconsistency can be reproduced from any big Northern city.
Another element of instability—and consequently of changeability—^in
the situation is the visible interrelation between the attitudes of the em-
floyers and those of the white workers. These attitudes seem to be inter-
dependent in such a manner that either one of the two parties is potentially
able to influence the other one for the better or for the worse. Employers
who do not like Negroes almost regularly give as one of their main reasons
for their exclusion policy that their white labor would object.® There are
reasons to believe that they often over-estimate the difficulties of making
white employees accept Negroes as fellow workers. As the employers them-
* Sec Chapter 39, Section 10.
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