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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 34. Accommodating Leadership - 6. Several Qualifications
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730 An American Dilemma
part, feeling the contempt and resentment of the ^‘uppity^^ Negroes, often
turn into thorough sycophants toward the whites and into ‘‘stuck-up” petty
tyrants toward the Negro community.®
For reasons already touched upon, this arrangement is not the kind of
leadership control of the Negroes which is most effective from the point
of view of white interests. In the cases of this type I have observed, it
has been apparent that the influential whites are motivated not only by
their pride in adhering to traditional paternalistic patterns of the Old
South, by their fear of ambitious capable Negroes, and by their personal
liking for their favored “darkies,” but also that they actually enjoy
putting the Negro community in this situation. The humiliation of the
“uppity” Negroes is, in other words, intentional.*^
Such situations are becoming rare. I have observed, however, that an-
other custom is still widespread everywhere in the South: to use servants,
ex-servants, and other lower class Negroes as reporters and stool pigeons
in the Negro community. Even if those spotters are usually not used in
attempts to influence the Negroes positively, their spy activity and their
being known “to be in with” white people give them a sort of power
among their own people. Often they are utilized by the whites to “let it
be known” in an informal way what the whites want and expect. This is
a remnant of the old direct caste control. It is declining as employment
relations are becoming more impersonal and as race solidarity in the Negro
group is increasing.
More important reasons for an imperfect correlation in the South between
leadership and upper class position are, however, certain facts within the
Negro community itself. Many upper class Negroes do not care for the
leadership role. It is true that they have superior status only in relation
to the masses of other Negroes, and that they often depend economically
on lower class Negroes as clients and customers. But they also may have
a desire to isolate themselves from the Negro lower classes.** Many also
do not have the easy manners, the engaging and spirited personality, and
the ability to speak the language of “the people” necessary to approach
and influence the Negro masses. Some have made themselves so personally
unpopular with Negroes or whites that they cannot act as leaders.® Many
are so filled by the protest motive that they feel a personal humiliation
when this has to be put under cover in taking the role of accommodating
Negro leaders. They retreat rather into the role of sullen, but personally
watchful, individualists, nourishing hatred against the whites above them,
* This is an example of the element of sadism generally so visible in the white Southern-
ers* paternalism. It is also reflected in the standard stories told and retold about Negro
stupidity and immorality, always with an intense display of pleasure which the outsider
does not feel.
Chapter Section 41
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