Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 4. The Jim Crow Laws - 5. Beliefs Supporting Social Inequality
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
582 An American Dilemma
He has, in his demands upon white Americans, the fundamental law of
the land on his side. He has even the better conscience of his white com-
patriots themselves. He knows it; and the white American knows it, too.
5. Beliefs Supporting Social Inequality
In attempting to understand the motivation of segregation and dis-
crimination, one basic fact to be taken into account is, of course, that many
Negroes, particularly in the South, are poor, uneducated, and deficient in
health, morals, and manners; and thus not very agreeable as social com-
panions. In the South the importance of this factor is enhanced by the
great proportion of Negroes in the total population. It is enhanced also
by the democratic structure of public institutions in America.^® William
Archer, who, among the English observers of the Negro problem in
America, probably better than anyone else was able to withstand the
influence of race prejudice, declares himself for separation in railroad trav-
eling for this reason:
It is the crowding, the swamping, the submerging of the white race by the black,
that the South cannot reasonably be expected to endure.^®
This point is, however, much more complicated. For one thing, there is
a great class of Southern whites who are also poor, uneducated, coarse and
dirty. They are traditionally given various epithets, all with the connota-
tion of social Inferiority: ^‘crackers,” ‘^hill-billies,” “clay-eaters,” “red-
necks,” “peckerwoods,” “wool hats,” “trash,” “low-downers,” “no ’counts.”
White farm laborers, sharecroppers, the permanently unemployed, and a
great proportion of textile workers and other unskilled laborers are con-
sidered to be in this submerged group of lower class whites. Their presence
in the South does not help the Negroes, however. It Is, rather, the very
thing which raises the need for a sky-high color bar. This class of whites
knows that upper class whites are disposed to regard them as “just as bad
as niggers,” and they know, too, that they have always been despised by the
Negroes, who have called them “poor white trash,” “mean whites,” or
“po’ buckra.” It is in their interest, on the one hand, to stress the funda-
mental equality among all white people, which was the explicit assumption
of the slavery doctrine, and, on the other hand, the gulf between whites
and Negroes. The rising Negroes became an assault on the status of these
poor whites.
The very existence of whites in economic and cultural conditions compar-
able to those of the masses of Negroes thus becomes a force holding
Negroes down. Most middle and upper class whites also get, as we shall
find, a satisfaction out of the subserviency and humbleness of the lower
class Negroes. As Embree points out: “The attitudes of the aristocrat and
of the poor white, starting from opposite motives, often result in the same
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
