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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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Chapter 44. Non-institutional Aspects 959
Next to aggressiveness, probably the most striking trait of Negroes
noticed by whites is emotionality and spontaneous good humor. This is
given both a high and a low evaluation. On the one hand, the ability to
enjoy life is recognized as desirable, and the Negro’s music, dancing, litera-
ture and art are appreciated by the whites. But on the other hand, lack of
self-control and the tendency to act on impulse are deprecated. Negroes
have acquired the art of enjoying life more than have whites.^ Because
they have no direct background in puritanism, they have taken sex more as
it comes, without all the encumbrances and inhibitions. The relative eco-
nomic independence of the Negro woman allows her to mate more in the
spirit of equality and mutual enjoyment, and less out of a sense of duty
or to get economic advantages. Because they have so little money to spend
on entertainment and because the white masters in slavery times did not
bother to regiment the small amount of free time of the Negroes, the
Negroes have learned to enjoy small and inexpensive things and to get
as much pleasure as they can out of their free time. The habit of spending
a good deal of leisure time out-of-doors, due in part to the over-crowdedness
of the Negro home, has contributed to the social pleasantness of Negro life,
since being outside involves meeting friends and having no worries about
destroying furniture.*^ Negroes also try much harder than do whites to get
as much pleasure out of their work as they can.
There is something of the ^^devil-may-care” attitude in the pleasure-
seeking of Negroes. They know that all the striving they may do cannot
carry them very high anyway, and they feel the harshness of life—^the
caste pressures are piled on top of the ordinary woes of the average white
man. “So you might as well make the most of it”j “what the hell difference
does it make.” In this spirit, life becomes cheap and crime not so reprehen-
sible. Thus both the lack of a strong cultural tradition and the caste-fostered
trait of cynical bitterness combine to make the Negro less inhibited in a way
which may be dangerous to his fellows. They also make him more indolent,
less punctual, less careful, and generally less efficient as a functioning
member of society.
Because of the false racial belief that Negroes had innate emotional
talents to compensate for their low intellectual capacities, whites have
seldom hindered the development of the Negro in the artistic fields. In
strode to the front even if there were seats in the rear.” (Charles S. Johnson, “New Frontage
on American Life,” in Alain Locke [editor]. The New Negro [1925], p. 287.)
* Negroes do not hesitate to tell how they enjoy life in spite of caste. Claude McKay, for
example, says:
“The prison is vast, there is plenty of space and a little time to sing and dance and laugh
and love. There is a little time to dream of the jungle, revel in rare scents and riotous
colors, croon a plantation melody, and be a real original Negro in spite of all the crackers.
Many a white wretch, baffled and lost in his civilized jungles, is envious of the toiling, easy-
living Negro.” {A Long Way from Home [i937]> pp. 145-146.)
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