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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 - 6. Upper Class Reactions - 7. The “Function” of Racial Solidarity
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766 An American Dilemma
he has made into a “race philosophy” by showing in one way or another
that he actually .considers himself as a great exception while common
Negroes are classed as inferior.
This last view is more consistently displayed by many upper class
Negroes in the South who studiously build up their careers by pleasing
white people and acquiring their patronage. In private they are often as
overbearing to common Negroes as they are weak and unasse^ive to the
whites. But they, too, usually cannot stand absolute loneliness, and they,
too, usually need the Negro masses as a basis for their economy. As trusted
“white men’s niggers” they also need Negro followers to earn the patron-
age of their white “angels.” For these reasons they, too, will have to keep
their superiority feelings somewhat camouflaged.
Between this last type, the “white man’s nigger,” and the next to the
last, the Negro boaster, fall most of the balanced and well-adjusted upper
class Negroes. The types are not rigidly demarcated: most individuals
move, to a certain extent, from one type to another according to the situa-
tion and to their own mood at the moment.
7. The “Function of Racial Solidarity”
All upper class Negroes, except the first type, who tries to escape “the
race,” have their status defined in relation to the Negro masses, and prac-
tically all depend upon the lower classes of Negroes for their economy and
their social position. The Negro masses are the only people they can influ-
enie, and to many upper class Negroes this is important not only in itself
but also as a basis for influence with white people.
Upper class Negroes, further, share some of the disabilities of Negroes
in general since many of the caste controls do not spare them. They un-
doubtedly feel the humiliation of caste more strongly, even if they suffer
less from specific deprivations. Their formula for being accepted as
“belonging” to the Negro caste is the appeal to “race.” In order to gain
their purpose, this appeal has to be invested with a certain amount of
protest. It becomes an appeal to race solidarity.
The feeling of racial solidarity and the work for Negro betterment fill
many of them with an altruistic urge. They experience the joy and consola-
tion of identification with a wider goal than that of self-elevation. Many
thus succeed in building up a balanced personality in striving unselfishly
for the Negro group. But there should be no reason for surprise that in this
narrow shut-in world, to which they are doomed, much envy and personal
strife enters into all collaboration with their fellow Negroes. There is much
mutual suspicion of one another’s motives and reliability.
The Negro lower classes are, of course, likely to view the superior status
and opportunities of upper class Negroes and their pretensions with envy.
It is quite natural that the Negro upper class gets the brunt of the antago-
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