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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories 791
terms and unite against them.* This motive is sometimes visible, for exam-
ple, in the fight about the poll tax or the labor unions in the South.
Nevertheless, this hypothesis and, indeed, the very idea that one factor
or another is ^^basic” or ^^primary” to the caste system, is erroneous. In the
cumulative causation of interrelated social factors none of them is so unim-
portant that it should be neglected. Each factor can be made the object of
induced change, and this will move the whole system—^including the
economic factors, whether they are the ones originally changed or not
in one direction or the other.** From a practical point of view, this reveals
the fallacy of criticizing activities to improve Negro status because they do
not attack the ^^basic” cause.
The further hypothesis that there exists a ^^natural” identity of interests
between Negro and white workers is about as meaningful or meaningless
a statement as the one that all mankind wants peace. It depends. The term
‘^interest” when applied to a group of people is crude and ambiguous unless
it is ascertained how the bonds of psychological identification are fixed.
When it is said that all Negro and white workers have a ^‘common interest,”
the assumption must be that they actually care about each other^s welfare,
that they all feel as a grouf.
In economic discussion of group interests it seems often to be forgotten that such a
conception has its ground in a purely psychological assumption of an actual experi-
ence of collectivistic feelings, which in reality may be absent or present in various
degrees of intensity. When, for instance, it is argued that a special group of workers
in the labor market, distinguished and visible on account of sex, age, color, culture,
or what not, has common interests with other workers against the employers and not
with the employers against the other workers, and that the other idea is an illusion,
the truth of the statement is entirely dependent on the subjective factor: whether
there is, in fact, a sentiment of solidarity in the ‘entire labor group or not. The term
“interest” is thus subjectively determined in two dimensions: first, of course, as
to individual utility, as economic analysis has always assumed, and, second, as to the
degree of factual emotional solidarity ties. Particularly in the weighing of remote
contra immediate interests is this second factor of importance.^^
If white and black workers do not feel united as a group, there is, of course,
no “common interest.” “Labor solidarity” is not a thing by itself j
it exists,
or does not exist, only in the feelings of the workers for each other.
If white workers feel a group unity among themselves, from which they
exclude Negroes, they are likely to try to push Negroes out of employ-
ment. If in such a situation white employers—for whatever reasons—are
inclined to accept Negro workers, the interest solidarity actually ties the
Negro workers to the white employers instead of to the white workers.
* See Chapter 1 7, Section 4, and Appendix 6. Compare Arthur Raper, “Race and Class
Pressures,” unpublished manuscript prepared for this study (1940), fassim.
* See Chapter 3, Section 7, and Appendix 3.

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