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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 11. Criticism of Negro Business Chauvinism
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8o4 An American Dilemma
Aside from its capacity for maintaining itself, Negro business has heen
thought of as a means of improving the whole Negro people. As can be
expected, the advocates of interracial labor solidarity are critical of this
aspect of the ideology. Ralph Bunche develops the views of this school
in criticizing Negro business ideology:
It would seem clear . . . that this hope for the salvation of the Negro within the
existing ideological and physical framework, by the erection of a black business
structure within the walls of white capitalism, is doomed to futility. In the first
place, it would affect beneficially only a relative handful of Negroes, and these would
mainly be those who have sufficient capital to become entrepreneurs. The advocates
of Negro business have little to say about the welfare of Negro workers engaged in
such business, except to suggest that they do not suffer from a discriminatory policy
of employment. No one argues, however, that their wages and hours would be better,
their working conditions improved, or their work less hard. What evidence there is
points in quite the opposite direction. The apologists for the self-sufficiency ideology
are in pursuit of a policy of pure expediency and opportunism through exploitation
of the segregation incident to the racial dualism of America. They refuse to believe
that it is impossible to wring much wealth out of the already poverty-stricken Negro
ghettoes of the nation. Moreover, It should be clear that Negro enterprise exists only
on the sufferance of that dominant white business world which completely controls
credit, basic industry and the state. “Big” Negro business is an economic will-o^-the-
wisp. Negro business strikes Its appeal for support on a racial note, viz: the race can
progress only through economic unity. But the small, individually-owned Negro
businesses have little chance to meet successfully the price competition of the large-
capital, more efficient and often nation-wide white business. The very poverty of the
Negro consumer dictates that he must buy where buying is cheapest; and he can ill
afford to invest in racial good-will while he has far too little for food. In this sense,
Negro business looms as a parasitical growth on the Negro society, in that it exploits
the “race problem.” It demands for itself special privilege and parades under the
chauvinistic protection of “race loyalty,” thus further exploiting an already down-
trodden group. It represents the welfare only of the pitifully small Negro middle-
class group, though demanding support for its ideology from the race conscious
Negro masses. Negro business may offer a measure of relief from racial and economic
disadvantage to a handful of the more able or the more fortunate members of the
race. But it is much more certain that the vast majority of Negroes in America will
continue to till the soil and to toil in the industries of white America.^"^
This is sound reasoning. But when all this is said—when it is granted
that there is no prospect that Negro business will ever develop to great
importance and that, in any case, even if the business class is benefited, no
great gains are assured to the mass of the Negro people—^there are, never-
theless, some credit items which should not be ignored. The chief advantage
is the tiny Negro business and professional class itself ^
which lives by provid-
ing goods and services to Negroes. It is this class which has the education
and leisure necessary to articulate the Negro protest and to take up success-
ful collective bargaining with white society.
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