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 - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 7. The Pragmatic “Truth” of the Labor Solidarity Doctrine
<< 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.
Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories 793
significant. In the theory of labor solidarity the identification would include
the whole Negro people. The aim of this theory is to unify the whole
Negro people, not with the white upper class, but with the white working
class. And the underlying ideology stems from Marxist proletarian radi-
calism instead of from American middle class conservatism.
The theory of labor solidarity has been taken up as a last ^^solution” of
the Negro problem, and as such is escapist in nature; its escape character
becomes painfully obvious to every member of the school as soon as he
leaves abstract reasoning and goes down to the labor market, because there
he meets caste and has to talk race and even racial solidarity. The theory is,
however, increasingly becoming ^^realistic” and even pragmatically ^^true^^
as a Negro strategy, in the same sense that Booker T. Washington’s theory
was realistic and true in his time. With the power over employment oppor-
tunities increasingly held by the labor unions, the Negroes simply have to
try to get into them in order not to be left out of employment. The Negro
leaders have to try to educate the Negro masses to be less suspicious of
unions. And they have to plead labor solidarity to white workers as the
most important element of the American Creed.
It is also visible how not only the N.A.A.C.P., but also such conservative
agencies for Negro collective action as the Negro church and the Urban
League, in recent years have been becoming friendly to unions—^provided
they let the Negroes in. In practically the whole Negro world the observer
finds that the C.I.O. is looked upon as a great Negro hope because it has
followed a more equalitarian policy than the A.F. of L. Practically all artic-
ulate voices among Negroes are coming out in favor of unionism—^with
this one condition that they do not discriminate against Negroes.
This new policy preserves much more of the Negro protest but attempts
to merge it with a class protest as far as possible. This attempt requires
much accommodation and even humiliation. Many unions are as closed to
Negro workers as the ^^quality folks” were to the Negro upper classes.
Ralph Bunche faces this situation with a square realism which can well
match what the old master politician, Booker T. Washington, must often
have thought about the upper class Southerners he had to deal with,
although he carefully avoided saying it in so many words:
Negotiations with the poor whites on a national level is admittedly not easy,
but the Negro has long exploited his humility, his ability to “take low,” to bow and
scrape, in his relations with the white employer and the white philanthropist. If he
must, he can employ these artifices to much better advantage for himself in nudging
into the good graces of organized labor. This is no time for picayunishness and dis-
plays of petty pride.^®
If the dream should ever come true and if—^under the influence of a
growing labor solidarity and considerable government pressure—the Negro
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
