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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Note: Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.

Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 36. The Protest Motive and Negro Personality - 2. The Struggle Against Defeatism - 3. The Struggle for Balance

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Chapter 36. Protest Motive and Negro Personality 7^$
spirit other than the oppressive one find it always of greatest importance to
combat what has come to be known as the Negro “inferiority complex.”
As we have shown, science has supported the Negro position of equal
average endowment, and even prejudiced whites, with any sense of respon-
sibility, no longer fublicly state that Negroes are inherently inferior.®
To admit Negro inferiority is thus treason to the race. But the lives of
Negroes are filled with disappointments. Equality in endowment is not
visibly demonstrated in accomplishment, except rarely. Even Negroes who
are articulately race conscious have their moments of tiredness when they
slip back into the inferiority doctrine, in the same way as religious persons
have their moments of doubt about the existence of a divine providence.
The inferiority doctrine remains, therefore, as an ever present undercurrent
in Negro consciousness which must constantly be suppressed. It creeps up
in conversation, and it flavors the jokes, particularly when Negroes are
among themselves. It provides the terms of abuse and insult in intra-Negro
quarrels. It plays an important role in the relations between the classes in
the Negro community. It is no longer—and this is a result of the Negro
protest—an attitude of carefree complacency, but a complacency tainted
with much bitterness.
3. The Struggle for Balance
The standard explanation of Negro failures, and the only one publicly
accepted, is to place the responsibility upon the caste system and the whites
who uphold it: “the whites are mean to Negroes,” “white people won’t
give the Negro a chance,” “the whites are keeping Negroes down,” “the
American caste system degrades Negroes to half-men,” “all odds are
against us,” “Negroes meet unfairness everywhere.” As the Negro protest
is rising and is becoming popularized, the view becomes more and more
widespread that white oppression and the caste deprivations are to be
blamed and not Negro inferiority.
In a way, this theory is an attempt at a rational explanation of the low
status of Negroes. It preserves self-respect and does not necessarily damage
ambition. Many Negroes who strive hard to keep up and improve their
status actually succeed in holding to this theory without mental conflict.
They place themselves and their group in a true perspective. They measure
their failures and accomplishments in realistic terms; of their own abilities,
of the caste deprivations, and of the factor of pure chance (which is always
of major importance in the individual case but is balanced out for the
group). Such persons thus keep a balanced personality, but in a way that is
more pretentious and less demoralizing, because less complacent, than the
old caste accommodation. It may be said to be the goal of all Negro educa-
• See Chapter 6.

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