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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 - 2. Caste Determines Class
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Chapter 32. The Negro Class Structure 693
materialized in a great number of political, judicial, and social disabilities
imposed upon Negroes somewhat independent of their class, and in the
rigid rule that the Negro is not allowed to pass legitimately from the one
side to the other.
The diagonal and curved character of the caste line and this fact that
whites can look down on Negroes of the same income, educational, or
other level, form one of what Dollard calls the major ^^gains” of the caste
order to the whites.® The difference between the South and the North and,
in a degree, between rural and urban communities is, from this point of
view, that the caste line tends to be somewhat more vertical in the latter
than in the former regions and localities. The caste status of the Negro in
the North and in cities generally has fewer rigid restrictions of free compe-
tition. In this direction the class system has been continually moving in
the South and—except for the transitional extraordinary pressure of recent
mass immigration—also in the North.
We have seen that Southern whites, especially in the lower brackets,
often refuse to recognize class differences in the Negro community and
insist upon distinguishing only between “bad niggers,” “good niggers,”
and “uppity niggers,” and that they, until recently, have succeeded in
retaining a legal and political system which corresponds most closely to
this view. But this uncompromising attitude is disappearing under the
pressure of the facts of Negro social differentiation. Thus the actual import
of caste is gradually changing as the Negro class structure develops
—
except in the fundamental restriction that no Negro is allowed to ascend
into the white caste.
2. Caste Determines Class
While the Negro class structure has developed contrary to the caste
principle and actually implies a considerable modification of caste relations,
fundamentally this class structure is a function of the caste order. We have
repeatedly had to refer to this important fact that, while the caste order
has held the Negro worker down, it has at the same time created petty
monopolies for a tiny Negro middle and upper class. Negroes understand
this, although they seldom discuss it openly.®
. a white Philadelphian with $1,500 a year can call himself poor and live simply.
A Negro with $1,500 a year ranks with the richest of his race and must usually spend more
in proportion than his white neighbor in rent, dress and entertainment.” (W. E. B. Du Bois,
The Philadelfhia Negro [1899], P- *78.)
* The author once attended a meeting in Detroit where one of the national Negro leaders
gave a speech. The church where the meeting was held was filled with professionals and
business people of the local Negro upper class with a sprinkling of humbler people. After
the address, there was some discussion, and the eternal question of Negro strategy was
brought up. The speaker in answering began to give the standard arguments for a
pautious approach, Iq the micJdl? of hi? answer he seemed to sense the futility of the ques*
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