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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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Chapter 31. Caste and Class 687
Llght-skinned and ^^good featured” Negro women are preferred as
marriage partners by Negro men, while their chances on the white mar-
riage market as lonely women without a know^i or presentable family
must be slight. This explains why Negro women pass even less frequently
than do Negro men.^® Established personal relations, from family bonds
to less intimate but still not meaningless relations, will to a degree always
tie a Negro to his own caste, and will tend to do so more and more the
older and better established he becomes. Quite often marriage will put a
stop to all dreams of passing, since it is less likely that the mate is also
capable of passing. The unfamiliarity with life conditions and expected
patterns of behavior on the other side of the gulf also acts as a deterrent.
As Wirth points out, this particular factor is likely to decline in importance
as educational and cultural opportunities for Negroes wlden.^® Negroes
believe that social life is generally more pleasant among Negroes than
among whites: . . white people don’t begin to have the good times that
Negroes do. They’re stiff and cold. They aren’t sociable. They don’t
laugh.”®® Even if such pronouncements are often only compensating
rationalizations, they have probably enough background in personal con-
viction to be of* real importance in motivation. Finally, there is the impor-
tant factor of inertia: complete passing is a major step that requires careful
planning and decisive action, and it is not surprising that many Negroes
who could take this step do not.
To the whites, passing is an insult and a social and racial danger. Most
whites have heard about passing, but, for natural reasons, do not know any
specific cases. Most Negroes, particularly in the upper strata, on the con-
trary, know of many other Negroes, sometimes half a hundred or more,
who pass as whites. As they usually do mot expose them, this shows a
significant difference between the two castes in attitude toward passing.
Many Negroes obviously take a sort of vicarious satisfaction out of the
deception of the whites. It is a big joke to them. Some show envy. This is
particularly apparent among darker Negroes who cannot think of passing.
Negroes realize, of course, that as a mass they cannot find an escape from
the lower caste by passing. Further, they are increasingly brought to the
compensatory feeling of race pride:
The Negro community is built around the idea of adjustment to being a Negro,
and it rejects escape into the white world. Community opinion builds up a picture
of whites as a different kind of being, with whom one associates but does not become
intimate. Without much conscious instruction, the child is taught that his first loyalties
are to the Negro group. He may criticize Negroes and even dislike them, but he is
a Negro and must not even wish to be otherwise. This doctrine is reinforced by
stories of the meanness and cruelty of white people. To wish to be white is a
sacrifice of pride. It is equivalent to a statement that Negroes are inferior, and,
consequently, that the youth himself is inferior.^^
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