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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 - 3. The Struggle for Balance
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j6o An American Dilemma
tion to adjust Negro youth to this balanced state of realistic conception of
one’s self and the world and of accommodation under frotest.
The temptations are great, however, to lose this precious balance, either
by falling into the bitter complacency of the inferiority doctrine referred to
above or by overdoing the equality doctrine and trying to build up a
strained case that black is superior to white/ A third temptation is to exag-
gerate the accusation against the whites and so use the caste disabilities to
cover all personal failures. The growing isolation makes such a self-decep-
tion the more easy to accomplish and, indeed, difficult to avoid. The whites’
race prejudice and the general fact of belonging to a group that is discrim-
inated against provide a ready excuse for sub-standard performance and
for beliefs which are just as effective as the old inferiority doctrine and
personally less unflattering.
The effects, however, are even more thoroughly demoralizing. There is
not only complacency but more comforting self-pity. There is also at times
a cynical disregard for “the rules of the game” when dealing with white
people in such extraordinary circumstances where they cannot, or are not
inclined to, hit back and put the screws on.** This is an angle of the general
problem of the double standard to which we shall return.® It has a Negro
side—in so far as Negroes accept the easy escape, with or without acceptance
of the inferiority doctrine also—and is thus not caused only by white for-
bearance and paternalism.
The caste pressures thus make it exceedingly difficult for an American
Negro to preserve a true perspective of himself and his own group in rela-
tion to the larger white society. The increasing abstract knowledge of the
world outside—of its opportunities, its rewards, its different norms of
competition and cooperation—which results from the proceeding accultu-
ration at the same time as there is increasing group isolation, only increases
the tensions. When once off balance in one direction or the other, it is easy
to lose stability and to slide to and fro among various contradictory atti-
tudes. There is irritation and resentment involved in each of them, except
in the old naiVe and easy-going inferiority belief, which hardly exists any
more because of the Negro protest. Normal individuals do not like to find
irritation and resentment in themselves. It thus becomes opportune and,
indeed, highly practical to try not to think too much about it. For “what
is the use?”
* See Chapter 35, Sections 7 and 9j Chapter 38, Section 125 and Chapter 39, Section 2.
^
I once heard a white ofiicial of a philanthropic agency, who had discovered some
financial double-dealing of a Negro research worker, comment upon his decision just
to forget about it in somewhat the following words: “We must remember that these
people are held down in a subordinate class. When we lift up one of them and deal with
him as one of us, how can we assume that he should deal with us as a gentleman?”
**
See Section 5 of this chapter.
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