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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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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.

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Chapter 31. Caste and Class 669
absolutely rigid. Had the caste line been drawn differently—for example,
on the criterion of predominance of white or Negro ancestry or of cultural
assimilation—it would not have been possible to hold the caste line so rigid.
The general definition of caste which we have adopted permits us to
infer a concrete definition for our particular problem. When we say th^t
Negroes form a lower caste in America, we mean that they are subject to
certain disabilities solely because they are ^^Negroes” in the rigid American
definition and not because they are poor and ill-educated. It is true, of
course, that their caste position keeps them poor and ill-educated on the
average, and that there is a complex circle of causation, but in any concrete
instance at any given time there is little difficulty in deciding whether a cer-
tain disability or discrimination is due to a Negroes poverty or lack of
education, on the one hand, or his caste position, on the other hand. In this
concrete sense, practically the entire factual content of the preceding parts
of this book may be considered to define caste in the case of the American
Negro.
We conceive of the social differentiation between Negroes and whites
as based on tradition and, more specifically, on the traditions of slavery
society. We have attempted to trace this cultural heritage in various spheres
of life. The caste system is upheld by its own inertia and by the superior
casters interests in upholding it. The beliefs and sentiments among the
whites centering around the idea of the Negroes^ inferiority have been
analyzed and their ^Tunctional” role as rationalizations of the superior
caste’s interests has been stressed. The racial beliefs and the popular
theory of “no social equality” were found to have a kernel of magical logic,
signified by the notion of “blood.” We have been brought to view the caste
order as fundamentally a system of disabilities forced by the whites upon
the Negroes,® and our discussion of the Negro problem up to this point
has, therefore, been mainly a study of the whites’ attitudes and behavior.
And even when we proceed to inquire about the internal social structure of
the Negro caste, about Negro ideologies, Negro leadership and defense
organizations, the Negro community and Its institutions, Negro culture and
accomplishments, and Negro social pathology, we shall continue to meet
the same determinants. Little of this can be explained in terms of Negro
characteristics. The Negro problem is primarily a white man’s
problem.***
In this part we shall find that the class order within the Negro caste is
chiejly a junction of the historical caste order of America.
* The voluntary withdrawal and the self-imposed segreg^ation were shown to be a
secondary reaction to a primary white pressure.
**
See Introduction, Section

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