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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 - 8. “The Advantages of the Disadvantages”
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794 An American Dilemma
workers should become widely and wholeheartedly accepted in the American
labor movement, be given fair chances for employment and advancement,
and have a voice in aflFairs of the unions, one of the consequences of this
tremendous break of the caste order would be the widening of the horizon
of Negro social and political thinking. The Negro intellectuals and labor
leaders, having the goal of aligning the Negroes to the labor movement,
usually have concentrated their thinking on the practical question of how
to get the Negroes into the unions. If this were once accomplished and an
identification reached with the white laboring masses, it would mean the
beginning of a liberation of the Negro soul. James Weldon Johnson wrote:
Organized labor holds the main gate of our industrial and economic corral ; and on
the day that it throws open that gate . . . there will be a crack in the wall of racial
discrimination that will be heard round the world.
Granted that attempts toward an understanding with the white working
class are of paramount importance, other sectors should not be forgotten.
The Negroes^ status in America is so frecarious that they simfly have to get
the suffort of all possible allies in the white camf. In addition to the labor
unionists, Negroes must seek the support of the civil liberties group in the
North, the Southern liberals and interracialists in the South, and even the
Southern aristocratic conservatives where they are prepared to give a help-
ing hand. Furthermore, the vicious circle keeping Negroes down is so
ferfected by such interlocking caste controls that the Negroes must attemft
to move the whole system by attacking as many foints as possible.
Negro strategy would build on an illusion if it set all its hope on a blitz-
krieg directed toward a ‘^basic” factor. In the nature of things it must work
on the broadest possible front. There is a place for both the radical and the
conservative Negro leaders, for social workers and labor organizers, for
organizations that can speak to the employers and those that can approach
the workers, and for organizations that can lead the Negroes in politics.
The practical conclusions from this eclectic principle will be drawn in the
following chapter.
8. ‘^The Advantages of the Disadvantages”
Repeatedly we have pointed out the fundamental dilemma of the Negro
upper classes. On the one hand, upper class Negroes are the ones who feel
most intensely the humiliations of segregation and discrimination. They are
also in a position where they, more than the masses, can see the limits set
by the caste system to their personal ambitions. They need to appeal to
racial solidarity against caste if only to avert the aggression against them-
selves from the lower classes and to direct it upon the whites. On the other
hand, segregation and discrimination create an economic shelter for them.
In the main, they enjoy their economic and social status thanks to the petty
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