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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 6. The Popular Theory of “No Social Equality” - 7. Critical Evaluation of the “No Social Equality” Theory
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Chapter 28. The Basis of Social Inequality 589
analysis, if segregation is to be successfully maintained, it must not be confused with
discrimination and must finally be approved by the colored people themselves as
beneficial to race relations.®^
Virginius Dabney, to quote another prominent Southern liberal, actually
goes so far as to assert that ‘‘there is . • . a growing conviction on the part
of a substantial body of Southerners that the Jim Crow laws should be
abolished,”®® and argues that even if and in so far as the two population
groups in the South should be kept apart, “the accommodations provided
for Negroes should be identical with those provided for whites.”®®
It should be noted that neither Woofter nor Dabney takes up for discus-
sion any segregation measure higher up on the white man’s rank order
than those imposed by the Jim Crow legislation. There they take their
stand on the time-honored formula “separate, but equal,” and insist only
that separation should be rationally motivated, and that the constitutional
precept of equality should be enforced.
7. Critical Evaluation of the “No Social Equality” Theory
The sincerity of the average white person’s psychological identification
with the “white race” and his aversion to amalgamation should not be
doubted j
neither should his attitude that the upholding of the caste sys-
tem, implied in the various segregation and discrimination measures, is
necessary to prevent amalgamation. But the manner in which he constantly
interchanges the concepts “amalgamation” and “intermarriage”—in the
meaning of a white woman’s marriage to, or sex relations with, a Negro
man—is bewildering. Amalgamation both in the South and in the North
is, and has always been, mainly a result, not of marriage, but of illicit
sexual relations. And these illicit sex relations have in the main been con-
fined to white men and colored women. It is further well known that
Negro women who have status and security are less likely to succumb to
sexual advances from white men.^® Deprivations inflicted upon Negroes in
the South must therefore be a factor tending to increase amalgamation
rather than to reduce it. Together these facts make the whole anti-amal-
gamation theory seem inconsistent.
But here we have to recall the very particular definition of the Negro
and white “races” in America.® Since all mixed bloods are classified as
Negroes, sex relations between white men and colored women affect only
the Negro race and not the white race. From the white point of view it is
not “amalgamation” in the crucial sense. From the same point of view the
race of the father does not matter for the racial classification of a Negro
child. The child is a Negro anyhow. Sex relations between Negro men
and white women, on the other hand, would be like an attemft to pour
* See Chapter 5, Section 1.
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