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 - 41. The Negro School - 6. Negro Attitudes
<< 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 41. The Negro School 901
the stand. Even the ones who do, stress at the same time the necessity of
raising educational opportunities and of improving the schools.
Concerning the content of teaching in other respects, Negroes are also
divided. On the one hand, they are inclined to feel that the Northern
system, where a standardized teaching is given students independent of
whether they are whites or Negroes, is the only right thing. On the other
hand, they feel that the students get to know too little about Negro prob-
lems. They thus want an adjustment of teaching toward the status of
Negroes, usually not in order to make the Negroes weak and otherwise
fit into the white man’s wishful picture about ^^good niggers” but, on the
contrary, to make Negroes better prepared to fight for their rights. They
feel that education should not only be accepted passively but should be
used as a tool of concerted action to gain the equal status they are seeking.
For this reason many, if not most, Negro leaders desire that Negro students
should get special training in Negro problems.
Du Bois, who originally was the most uncompromising advocate of the
idea that no difference at all should be made in teaching Negro and white
students, later came out with the opinion that the Negro student should
not only be taught general history and social subjects as they were taught
to white students, but also Negro history and Negro problems and, indeed,
a special race strategy for meeting their individual and collective problems
in America. Negro youth should even be taught to have pride in Africa.®^
This opinion, except perhaps for the last point, is now commonly shared
by most Negro intellectuals. The institution of “Negro History Week” has
emanated from such attitudes.® Negro colleges and high schools are devot-
ing an increasing interest to Negro problems. White interracialists condone
these things.^® Other whites do not care but feel, as we have said, that it is
the Negroes’ right to discuss their own problems if they want to.
There is a further controversy as to whether Negro education ought to
be segregated or not. In the North the official opinion among whites is that
segregation is not compatible with equality, but, as we have seen, much
segregation is actually in effect as a consequence of residential segregation
and of gerrymandering districts and granting permits to transfer. In the
South direct segregation in schools is a necessary means of keeping up the
tremendous financial discrimination against Negro schools. In recent years
not even Southern liberals—with some rare exceptions—have stated that
they favored mixed education. Segregation is usually not motivated by
financial reasons but as a precaution against social equality.®®
Negroes are divided on the issues of segregated schools. In so far as
segregation means discrimination and is a badge of Negro inferiority, they
are against It,®^ although many Southern Negroes would not take an open
stand that would anger Southern whites. Some Negroes, however, prefer
‘See Chapter 35, Section 9.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
