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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 31. Caste and Class - 4. Crossing the Caste Line
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684 An American Dilemma
can Negroes passing over permanently to the white caste every year,® a
much greater number would be able to pass if they wanted to depart from
the Negro communitj^ and were prepared to take the personal costs and
the risks involved.
Passing requires anonymity and is, therefore, restricted to the larger cities
where everyone does not know everyone else. A Negro from a small com-
munity can pass only if he leaves that community. Only a small portion of
all passing is intentional and complete. There is a considerable amount of
inadvertent and nonvoluntary passing. This must be particularly true in the
some unmistakable Negro features, found soon that it was not necessary to go through all
the ordinary inconveniences with the hotel manager to get up to my hotel room. He just
walked straight in, kept his hat on his head and behaved as a normal white person of the
educated class. Nobody bothered him. My explanation is that the ordinary white Southerner,
if he sees a man walking into a hotel and carrying himself with assurance and ease, actually
does not see his color. He, literally, ‘‘does not believe his eyes.” Behind the Southern whites*
not seeing a Negro in my friend, might also—unconsciously—^be the realization of all the
trouble it would mean for them to effectuate the caste rules, if they recognized facts, and
the great risk they incurred if they were mistaken.
My general conclusion is that the white Southerner, being accustomed to seeing all Negroes
in a subservient caste role and living in a society where the inconvenience and risk involved
in telling a person that he is a Negro are so considerable, will have greater difficulties ip
recognizing a Negro who steps out of his caste role. This hypothesis could be tested by
properly controlled experiments.
I had once another experience which throws light on the same problem from the sex
angle. The N.A.A.C.P. had, in 1939, their annual convention in Richmond, Virginia. I
visited the meetings and took part in a boat excursion which ended the convention. On
board I approached a group of officers and crew (whites) who held themselves strictly apart,
looking on the Association members who had crowded their ship for the day with an
unmistakable mixture of superiority, dislike, embarrassment, interest and friendly humor.
My advance was first received coldly and deprecatingly—as I understood later, because they
assumed I was a Negro. But when they had become aware of my foreign accent, and I had
told them that I was a stranger who by chance had come on the boat, just for the excur-
sion, they were most friendly and entertained me for more than an hour by telling me every-
thing about the Negro and the Negro problem in America. During the course of our
conversation I remarked that there were apparently a lot of white people, too, on the boat.
At first they just laughed at my remark and insisted that all persons present were Negroes.
Some Negroes are so fair, they told me, that only Southerners, who know them by lifelong
intimate association can distinguish them from whites. I insisted and pointed to Mr. Walter
White, the secretary of the N.A.A.C.P. and some other “white** Negroes, and actually
succeeded in drawing an acknowledgment that he and some other men (who I knew were
all Negroes) were, indeed, white upon closer observation. One of my interlocutors went
to have a closer look at the persons I had pointed out, and came back and confirmed
authoritatively that they were indeed white. “There are some ‘nigger lovers* in the North
and we have a few down here, too,** he commented. When, however, I then pointed to a
lady (whom I knew to be white) and intimated that she might be white, the whole
company dismissed my idea as nothing less than absurd and, indeed, insulting. “No white
woman would be together with niggers,** Their theories of “white womanhood** obviously
blinded them in a literal sense.
• {>ce Chapter 5, Section 7,
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