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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 44. Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community - 1. “Peculiarities” of Negro Culture and Personality
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958 An American Dilemma
traditional racial stereotypes and partly because many whites do not attrib-
ute to Negroes the natural human reactions to insult and deprivation.
Except for the sullen criminal youths found mainly in Northern cities,®
Negroes seem to be no more aggressive than whites. In view of the fact
that they are so frequently discriminated against and insulted, Negroes are
remarkably passive and polite toward whites. Negroes have never, since
the Civil War, organized to revolt against white domination. They are
generally courteous to whites who do not insult them, and even to whites
who do. It probably can be generalized that when noncriminal Negroes are
called ‘‘bumptious,” especially in the South, they are merely trying to get
their rights as citizens and thus are attempting to rise out of their lower
caste status. Another reason why whites, especially Northern -whites, find
Negroes aggressive or unpleasant is because they have unwittingly insulted
them*^ or because they do not understand the Negro’s suspicion and fear
of whites arising out of the uncertainty of life and property in the South.
In the North, too, Negroes may do unpleasant things out of ignorance or
appear “bumptious” because they are glad to be free of Southern restric-
tions.^’
• See Chapter 36, Section 5.
^ We have noted several times in this book that Negroes are sensitive to insult and that
whites, especially Northern whites, insult them unwittingly. When, in November, 1942,
Irving Berlin wrote a patriotic song, he used the word “darky” in it and precipitated a storm
of protest. He quickly changed the word to Negro and said he had not meant to insult anyone.
The following excerpt from a letter to the editor of Ti?ne magazine is interesting both as an
example of unwitting insult and for the list of names by which Negroes like to be described,
“First it was your constant use of the abortive term Negress \ your farfetched designation
of fickaninnies in a Chicago department store. . . , Now it is your use of “darky-driven”
trucks ! . . . Damn ! ! What is wrong with Timers policy toward the American Negro in the
last year and a half? It’s getting so I can’t read an article about the race without being
insulted! . . .
“Some terms (adjectives) that might be used in describing Negroes:
“bronzed (conventional but well liked) coal black (trite)
mighty black smooth yellow (don’t use ‘high yaller’)
jade black golden tinted
blue black mellow (current ’38-’4o)
huskies smooth (in place of ‘shiny’)
Zigaboo (coined by Negroes) golden brown
Senegambian chocolate brown (trite)
coifee-colored (used by Time) (you add to the list)
Dofits
“Nigger darky
Negress octoroon
pickaninny quadroon, etc.”
(A letter to the editor. Time [August 25, 1941], p. 8.)
•
“If the Negroes in Harlem show at times less courtesy toward white visitors than is
required by the canons of good taste, this is bad, but understandable. It was remarked
shortly after the first migration that the newcomers on boarding street cars invariablv
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