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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 7. Critical Evaluation of the “No Social Equality” Theory
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590 An American Dilemma
Negro blood into the white race. It cannot succeed, of course, as the child
would be considered a Negro. But the white woman would be absolutely
degraded—^which the white man in the parallel situation is not. She must
be protected and this type of amalgamation prevented by all available
means. This is, of course, only an extreme case of the morality of ^^double
standards” between the sexes. It Is slowly withering away, and white men
are gradually also coming to be censured for relations with women of the
other group. Still, there is in popular sentiment an abysmal difference
between the two types of sexual relations.
The statement frequently made by whites in the South that there is an
instinctive and ineradicable sexual repulsion between the two groups is
doubtful, in view of the present genetic composition of the Negro people.
Besides, if it were true, the insistence upon the whole equipage of measures
for racial separation for preventing ^intermarriage” would be unnecessary,
even to the white Southerner.® Even the more general allegation that
there is an inherent repulsion to personal intimacies and physical contact
between the two groups is unfounded. The friendly behavior of Negro
and white children untrained in prejudice and also the acceptability of
physical contact with favorite servants are cases in point. There are no
reasons brought forward to make it likely that there are sex differentials
in this respect, so that white men should react differently from white
women. This brings us to a consideration of the extent to which the anti-
amalgamation doctrine is merely a rationalization of purely social demands,
particularly those concerning social status.
We have already observed that the relative license of white men to have
illicit intercourse with Negro women does not extend to formal marriage.
The relevant difference between these two types of relations is that the
latter, but not the former, does give social status to the Negro woman and
does take status away from the white man. For a white woman both legal
marriage and illicit relations with Negroes cause her to lose caste. These
status concerns are obvious and they are serious enough both in the North
and in the South to prevent intermarriage. But as they are functions of the
caste apparatus which, in this popular theory, is itself explained as a means
of preventing intermarriage, the whole theory becomes largely a logical
circle.
The circular character of this reasoning is enhanced when we realize that
the great majority of non-liberal white Southerners utilize the dread of
•Race prejudice has, therefore, a “function” to perform in lieu of the absence of sex
repulsion.
“It is just because primary race feeling is not deeply based in human instinct, whereas
the wating instinct is so based, that a secondary racial feeling, race>pride, comes in from
a more developed reflective consciousness to minimize the natural instinct for amalga-
mation . . .” (Thomas P. Bailey, Race Orthodoxy in the South [1914], p. 43.)
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