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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 32. The Negro Class Structure - 1. The Negro Class Order in the American Caste System
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^90 An American Dilemma
class of free Negroes, which at the time of Emancipation had grown to
one-half million individuals, strengthened this trend toward a social
stratification of the Negro population in America. All sorts of restrictive
laws were enacted and also partly enforced to keep the free Negroes down.
But in spite of this, their condition of life and social status was different
from that of the masses of slaves.^
After Emancipation this development continued’ The measures to keep
the Negroes disfranchised and deprived of full civil rights and the whole
structure of social and economic discrimination are to be viewed as attempts
to enforce the caste principle against the constitutional prescripts and
against the tendency of some Negroes to rise out of complete dependence.
The Constitution—and the partial hold of the American Creed even on
the Southern whites’ own minds—^prevented effective caste legislation. All
laws, even in the South, had to be written upon the pretense of equality.
Education for Negroes was kept backward, but it was given in some
measure and gradually improved. Some Negroes became landowners,
often under the protection of individual white patronage. And, most
important of all, social segregation itself—which has always been main-
tained as the last absolute barrier—afforded protection for a rising number
of Negro professionals and businessmen. Negroes had to be ministered to,
their educational institutions had to be manned, their corpses had to be
washed and buried, and, as white people did not wish to take on these
tasks and as Negroes gradually found out their own needs and chances, a
Negro middle and upper class developed to perform these functions, and
thus drew its vitality from the very fact of American caste. The dividing
line between the two castes did not crack, however. Thus, this dual system
of social class developed, one class system on each side of the caste line.
Robert E. Park has schematized this development as follows:
Originally race relations in the South could be rather accurately represented by a
horizontal line, with all the white folk above, and all the Negro folk below. But at
present these relations are assuming new forms, and in consequence changing in
character and meaning. With the development of industrial and professional classes
within the Negro race, the distinction between the races tends to assume the form
of a vertical line. On one side of this line tJie Negro is represented in most of the
occupational and professional classes; on the other side of the line the white man is
similarly represented. The situation was this:
All white
All colored
It is now this:
Whitt Colored
Professional occupation : Professional occupation
Business occupation : Business occupation
Labor : Labor
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