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646 An American Dilemma
gulf between themselves and their white neighbors.”^® Those contacts
with whites which are unavoidable are becoming increasingly formal and
impersonal. This means much for the development of Negro personality
and cultural traits. In the present context it means that white men in all
classes usmlly have few occasions ever to meet a Negro above the servant
classes}^ Certain minor exceptions will be discussed presently.
Parallel to this tendency is the habit of Southern whites to ostracize
those white persons who work with Negroes in the field of education or
who in other ways devote themselves to Negro welfare. This pattern was
built up after the Civil War in animosity against the educational mission-
aries from the North. The attitudes are now changing in some respects.
One of the chief accomplishments of the Interracial Commission is to have
given social respectability among whites to interracial work. But today
there are no white teachers of Negroes below the college level in the
South, and there is often a sphere of isolation around the white teachers
in a Negro college, particularly in the Deep South. The maximum of
tolerance given them is often to let them alone because ^^they are living
with the niggers.” More important is the related trend for Negro colleges
to be manned by an all-Negro staff, which again means a growing separa-
tion between the two groups on the middle and upper class level.
From the viewpoint of the popular theory of ^^no social equality” and
the goal of preventing ^intermarriage,” this development must seem
natural and, indeed, highly desirable. If any Negroes would be able to
tempt white women to marry them, it would be the educated and econom-
ically prosperous ones 5
it is against them that the bars are most necessary
in the Southern whites’ own theory of color caste.® Nevertheless, white
Southerners who have been interested in promoting improved interracial
relations have, for a long time, been complaining about the fact that the
‘Vaces meet only on the lower plane.” On this point there is fundamental
agreement between Negro and white spokesmen.^®
The Interracial Commission, various universities, and religious bodies
have attempted to counteract this tendency by arranging interracial meet-
ings for representatives of the ^^best people” of both groups, by teaching
white youth about Negro progress and by having college students of both
races meet together. Of even greater importance is the growing number
of liberal newspapers in the South which make a planned effort to give
fuller and more sympathetic publicity to the Negro community.** But there
is doubt in the present writer’s mind whether these laudable efforts out-
weigh the cumulative tendency in the segregation system itself, which
continuously drives toward greater spiritual isolation between the two
* See Chapter 28, Section 6.
’’See Chapter 42, Section 3.
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