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 - 4. Negro Sensitiveness
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
762 An American Dilemma
“we never mind them; they don’t care.” One of the waiters instantly spoke up: “No,
don’t mind me; Pm only a block of wood.”®
The constant insulting in the South has developed the trait of sensitive-
ness in some Negroes to an unusually high degree. There is much cause for
sensitiveness in the North also, but sometimes certain actions of Northern
whites are taken as insults by Negroes when no insult is intended. This is
understandable, of course, in view of the mutual ignorance of the two races
in the North, but it nevertheless makes for mental unhealthiness on the
part of some Negroes.
In the lower classes the protest motive is weaker and the equality doctrine
not practical. The desire to maintain personal dignity and the social pres-
sure to keep up respectability are not so strong. It is possible to take a more
cynical, and even exploitative, attitude toward white people’s pretenses of
superiority. Frazier tells us how lower class parents in Washington “cau-
tion their children to avoid conflicts, to ignore insults, and to adopt tech-
niques for ^getting by.’ These techniques include ‘acting like a monkey,’
‘jibbering,’ flattery, and plain lying.”® One Negro youth expressed himself
thus:
I’m always being told I can’t do something because I’m a “nigger.” I don’t feel
badly about it all. I know being a “nigger” there are things I can’t do, places I can’t
go, but I feel that where some tell me something I can’t do, somebody will tell me
1 can do something 1 want to do. So I don’t mind trying and if you know how to
flatter and “jive” white people, you can get farther than they expect “niggers” to
go. I usually make a big joke of it and act the part of a clown. I generally get just
what I’m after. After all, I think that’s all white people want anyway. They just
want “niggers,” to recognize them as superior, and I’m the man to play their game.
1 don’t care what he says or does as long as he kicks in. One thing sure, he wouldn’t
call me “nigger” down on Delaware Avenue. Then, too, 1 usually remember even
if he lets you do things, he really doesn’t want you to, and you’re still a “nigger” to
him. I don’t feel badly about being told I can’t do something because if he lets me
hang around long enough. I’ll get something out of him.^
Another Negro boy who gave about the same account confessed however:
“I hate myself, every time I say ‘boss’ or ‘coat-tail’ a peckerwood.”®
Frazier brings this attitude into relation with the fact that so many of
the lower class families were born in the South, and Davis and Dollard,
studying Southern Negro youth, inform us that “the role of entertainer
and clown is a familiar one to lower-class people.”® Without doubt it is less
common in the Northern cities, and it is becoming less common every-
where. The pattern that is becoming generally approved is an attempt at
voluntary withdrawal. This pattern has become perfected in the upper
classes i
it is spreading into the lower classes.® In the unavoidable contacts
* See Chapter ao, Section a.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
