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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 29. Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination - 2. Segregation and Discrimination in Interpersonal Relations
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6i2 An American Dilemma
Another aspect of the form of conversation between Negroes and whites
is the rule that a Negro must never contradict the white man nor mention
a delicate subject directly. That Is, a good part of the Negroes conversation
must be circumlocutory rather than direct. This is much less common now
than formerly, but it has not disappeared. The tone of the conversation
also was formerly fixed and still remains so to a certain extent; the Negro
was to use deferential tones and words the white man was to use
condescending tones and words. If the white man became angry or violent
in his speech, the Negro could not reciprocate.
The apparent purpose of this etiquette of conversation is the same as that
of all the etiquette of race relations. It is to provide a continual demonstra-
tion that the Negro is inferior to the white man and ‘‘recognizes” his
inferiority. This serves not only to flatter the ego of the white man, but
also to keep the Negro from real participation in the white man’s social
life. Conversation with other people is the principal way to participate in
the lives of those people, to understand each other completely. In the
North, the caste etiquette of conversation does not exist. That is, whites do
not expect it. When Southern Negroes act it out they usually embarrass
the average Northerner more than they please him. Where Negroes and
whites meet socially on the same class level in the North (which they do
relatively seldom because of residential and institutional segregation) they
actually may come to understand one another. Southern whites have a myth
that they “know” their Negroes. This is largely incorrect, and in their
franker moments white Southerners will admit that they feel that Negroes
are hiding something from them. They cannot know Negroes as they know
other human beings because in all their contacts Negroes must, or feel they
must, pose in a framework of etiquette. “What the white southern people
see who ‘know their Negroes’ is the role that they have forced the Negro
to accept, his caste role.”^^ The racial etiquette is a most potent device for
bringing persons together physically and having them cooperate for
economic ends, while at the same time separating them completely on a
social and personal level.
Closely allied to the forms of speech are the forms of bodily action when
whites and Negroes appear before one another. For a Negro to sit down in
the same room with a white person is not taboo, but it may be done usually
get her to say “mister” in designating a colored person. She finally broke down in tears and
said, “Oh, please give me some relief for my niggers,” but she refused to “mister” anybody.
Robert R. Moton, the late principal of Tuskegee, cites the case of “a distinguished Epis-
copal clergyman, a friend of mine and by everyone recognized as a friend of the race,
[who] used to say that he always felt like laughing whenever he heard the principal
of Hampton Institute, where he was a frequent visitor, refer to a coloured man as ‘Mr.* To
him, he said, it sounded just like saying ‘Mr. Mule’: it seemed no less ridiculous.” (^What
the Negro Thinks [1929], p. 195.)
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