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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 10. Boosting Negro Business
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802 An American Dilemma
This placid acceptance of Negro inferiority is the refrain of the professional
Negro’s plaint, Negro doctors and lawyers, Negro businessmen, and even Negro
teachers claim to suffer from the lack of confidence in the ability of Negroes typical
of so many of the group. It is alleged that many Negroes go out of their way and even
suffer humiliations from whites, in order to avoid going to the Negro doctor or
hospital. A Negro lawyer will charge that the local Negro doctors, who themselves
lose much of their potential Negro clientele to white doctors, will yet engage only
white lawyers when they require legal service; and vice versa. Negro students at Negro
private schools under white control, have, occasionally, when polled, indicated a pref-
erence for white teachers, though this is a sentiment that is fast changing. Negro
businessmen allege that Negroes prefer to go downtown to white stores which do not
want their trade, and often suffer insults, rather than trade in a Negro store. And
even when, by circumstance, Negroes are compelled to turn to the Negro professional
man, they not infrequently do so without confidence. I was seated in the outer office
of a prominent Negro dentist in Richmond not long ago, when a Negro woman came
in with an infected tooth. She informed the dentist that the “white lady” she works
for had told her to come. After careful examination the dentist informed her that the
tooth would have to be extracted. She became firm on hearing this and promptly
informed him that he was quite wrong, as her “lady” had assured her that the tooth
would not need to come out. The dentist could not convince her of the correctness
of his trained judgment over that of her white “lady,” so she stalked out angrily.^®
Against this, Negro business and professional men have to appeal to their
prospective clientele by developing race pride. They promise the advance
of the whole race if Negroes only learn to stick together and to patronize
race business.
In more recent times two new ideological arguments have been added.
One is the program of a cooperative Negro economy set forth recently by
Du Bois:^*
We believe that the labor force and intelligence of twelve million people is more
than sufficient to supply their own wants and make their advancement secure. There-
fore, we believe that, if carefully and intelligently planned, a co-operative Negro
industrial system in America can be established in the midst of and in conjunction
with the surrounding national industrial organization and in intelligent accord with
that reconstruction of the economic basis of the nation which must sooner or later
be accomplished.®®
Du Bois’ blueprint of . a racial attempt to use the power of the Negro
as a consumer not only for his economic uplift but in addition to that, for
his economic education,”®* has remained in the realm of beautiful dreams
and is likely to stay there. Americans in general have been weak in their
cooperative endeavors, and there is little chance that the Negroes could
take a lead in this field. The development of chain businesses in America
has actually substituted for one of the chief accomplishments of consumers’
cooperation in other countries to rationalize retail trade and lower con-
sumers’ costs, and at the same time, has made the prospect for consumers’
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