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526

(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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526 An American Dilemma
Negroes than let one guilty one escape.” To the present observer the
situation looks far from peaceful and quiet, as white people in the South
have tried to convince him. It has rather the appearance of a fateful race
between, on the one hand, the above-mentioned tendencies which increase
Negro mistrust, unrest, and asociality, and, on the other, the equally
apparent tendency for the white group increasingly to be prepared to give
the Negro personal security and equality before the law.
The literature is replete with statements that point to the Negro’s rest-
lessness and the need of giving him legal justice.** The representatives of
the tradition of lawlessness do not write books even if they still, in many
places, dominate practice.*^ We shall have to try to understand them in their
historical setting from their actual behavior.
Having accepted the American Creed as our value premise in this study,
we must also accept a corollary of this Creed for the purposes of this part,
namely, that Negroes are entitled to justice equally with all other feofle.
This principle has constitutional sanction and is held supreme in the
legislation of all states in the Union. In this part we do not discuss inequali-
ties in law or the results of the inequitable administration of the laws: all
these material inequalities in legal status of the American Negro are dealt
with in other parts of our inquiry. The subject of the discussion here is
only the actual handling of justice, the manner in which inequalities in
the enforcement of the laws against whites and Negroes are entering into
the judicial procedures, and also such lacks in personal security of Negroes
concomitant with those inequalities.
2. Relative Equality in the North
There are deficiencies in the working of the machinery of the law in the
North too. American justice is everywhere expensive and depends too much
upon the skill of the attorney. The poor man has difiiculty in securing his
rights. Judges and police officers are not free from prejudices against people
of lower economic and cultural levels. Experienced white and Negro
lawyers have told the author that in criminal cases where only Negroes are
involved there is sometimes a disposition on the part of the prosecutors,
judges and juries to treat offenses with relative lightness. In matters
involving offenses by Negroes against whites, Negroes will often find the
presumptions of the courts against them, and there is a tendency to sentence
them to a higher penalty than if they had committed the same offense
against Negroes. Instances have been related to me in which Negro witnesses
have been made the butt of jests and horseplay. I have, however, received
* One reason for this is that these persons are usually awaic that their practice is incon-
sistent with their best ideals. Another reason is that such a disproportionately large part of
the intellectusds of the region are liberals, (See Chapter 21, Section $•)

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