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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 24. Inequality of Justice - 1. Democracy and Justice
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Chapter 24. Inequality of Justice 525
of justice is allowed the structure of the legal machinery is damaged, and
may and does permit exceptions in cases which do not involve Negroes,”
observes Charles Johnson.^ In the South there have been frequent occa-
sions when the legal rights of poor white persons have been disregarded,
and even when general lawlessness prevailed. When the frequency of law-
breaking thus increases, it becomes necessary to apply stronger penalties
than is necessary in an equitable system of justice. In all spheres of public
life it will, of course, be found that legislation is relatively ineffective, and
so the sociologists will be inclined to formulate a general societal law of
^^the futility of trying to suppress folkways by stateways.” Lawlessness has
then received the badge of scientific normalcy.
The Negroes, on their side, are hurt in their trust that the law is impar-
tial, that the court and the police are their protection, and, indeed, that they
belong to an orderly society which has set up this machinery for common
security and welfare. They will not feel confidence in, and loyalty toward,
a legal order which is entirely out of their control and which they sense to
be inequitable and merely part of the system of caste suppression. Solidarity
then develops easily in the Negro group, a solidarity against the law and
the police. The arrested Negro often acquires the prestige of a victim, a
martyr, or a hero, even when he is simply a criminal. It becomes part of
race pride in the protective Negro community not to give up a fellow
Negro who is hunted by the police. Negroes who collaborate with the police
become looked upon as stool pigeons.
No one visiting Negro communities in the South can avoid observing the
prevalence of these views. The situation is dynamic for several reasons.
One is the growing urbanization and the increasing segregation of the Negro
people. The old-time paternalistic and personal relationship between
individuals of the two groups is on the decrease. Another factor is the
improvement of Negro education which is continually making Negroes
more aware of their anomalous status in the American legal order. A third
factor, the importance of which is increasing in pace with the literacy of
the Negro people, is the persistent hammering of the Negro press which,
to a large extent, is devoted to giving publicity to the injustices and injuries
suffered by Negroes. A fourth factor is unemployment, especially of young
Negroes, with resulting insecurity and dissatisfaction.
Because of these changes, as Du Bois tells us, . . the Negro is coming
more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards,
but as sources of humiliation and oppression.”® He expresses a common
attitude among Southern Negroes when he continues: ^^The laws are made
by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people
with courtesy or consideration: . . . the accused law-breaker is tried, not by
his neers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent
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