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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 36. The Protest Motive and Negro Personality - 1. A Mental Reservation - 2. The Struggle Against Defeatism
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758 An American Dilemma
On a high intellectual level one way of preserving human dignity in the
face of outward humiliation is to follow the well-known formula of James
Weldon Johnson:
The pledge to myself which I have endeavored to keep through the greater part
of my life is:
I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to
blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and
injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend
and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell.^
2. The Struggle Against Defeatism
This attitude is not so uncommon as one would think, even among
Negroes of humble status. But with the individual Negro there is always
a tendency for the protest to become bent into defeatism. Negroes on all
class levels give vent to this spirit of defeatism in expressions such as
^^niggers ain^t for nothing,” ^^niggers ain^t got a thing,” ^^weVe the under-
dogs,” ^‘Negroes can’t win,” ^^there is just no hope for Negroes,” ^^why
bother?”
This cannot be said publicly, though. The protest motive does not allow
it. No Negro leader could ever preach it. No Negro newspaper could print
it. It must be denied eagerly and persistently. But privately it can be said,
and it is said.
Sometimes—and this also in all classes—the blame will be put on Negro
inferiority: ^‘niggers are no good,” ‘^niggers have no guts,” ‘‘Negroes lack
courage,” “Negroes are lazy,” “Negroes have no foresight and persistency,”
“Negroes can’t work for themselves,” “black is evil.” This agrees with
what most white people believe and want to believe. To Negroes it repre-
sents the old caste accommodation pattern. It kills ambition and makes low
standards of morals and accomplishments seem natural for Negroes.® It is
a convenient philosophy and may, in a sense, be necessary for a balanced
personality.
But Negro inferiority cannot be admitted publicly. It has been the result
of the rising Negro protest that there is, in nearly the entire Negro popula-
tion, a theoretical belief that Negroes are just as highly endowed with
inherent capabilities and propensities as are white people. An emphatic
assertion of equality of the Negro people’s potentialities is a central theme
in the propagation of Negro race consciousness and race pride. “The Negro
is behind the white man because he has not had the same chance, and not
from any inherent difference in his nature and desires,”^ has been a thesis
which for decades every Negro leader has found it necessary to assert. Not
only Negro leaders and educators but all whites who address Negroes in a
“ Sec Chapter 9, Section 2, and Chapter 30, Section x.
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