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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 x^spects 963
dentally, has been borrowed by white youths in America who consider
themselves experts on jazz music (also of Negro origin) and by pseudo-
sophisticated lower class youths of certain European countries.
There are some special reasons why Negro clothing may look bizarre to
white people: first, pieces of cast-off clothing may not go well together even
though each piece looked all right when it was worn with its original
counterpart. Second, that clothing which looks well on most white people
may look foolish or odd on Negroes, because of the different skin color and
features. Third, those who try to fit their clothing to their skin color and
features may select things that are strange and exotic to conservative whites.
Sometimes the adjustment of clothing to physical traits is successful: white
clothing on dark skin often achieves a beautiful effect. Another interesting
adjustment is the Negro woman’s use of red lipstick on the eyelids to make
her eyes appear larger, whereas white women use blue, brown, or black
eye shadow to achieve the same effect.
Upper class Negroes, in their attempt to avoid the unfavorable traits
commonly associated with Negroes, are conservative in their dress and
public behavior. They avoid everything that is loud, gaudy and cheap. But
they also are driven by a desire for status and so engage in conspicuous
consumption of another type. They imitate the staid, old-fashioned patterns
of those upper class white people who have not become emancipated. Their
clothes are most ^^respectable” and most expensive j
their homes—though
small—are furnished in ^^good taste”; their social gatherings are costly and
ceremonial. They even go to extremes of conspicuous consumption in their
desire to gain status, as many other channels of gaining status arc closed
to them.^ They try to copy the ^^highest” standards of white people and
yet get absolutely no recognition for xioing so.
The struggle for status manifests itself frequently in speech and this,
too, may become ostentatious. With education valued so highly, and with
so little of it available to them, Negroes often try to exhibit an education
which they do not have. In speech this takes the form of the misuse of
big words. The trait is manifested not only in the pompous oratory of
many Negroes but also in their everyday conversations. On other occasions
the big words are used properly, but they are out of place in simple con-
versation. The correct but misplaced use of big words also originates in an
attempt to gain status, and is probably a survival of nineteenth century
florid oratory.
The eating of chicken, ’possum, watermelon, corn pone, pork chops is
part of the stereotype of the Negro, at least in the North. These things
are, of course, either common or delicate foods in the South for both
whites and Negroes, and there is no special reason why their consumption
should be regarded as a “Negro trait.” As a matter of fact, the foods
generally consumed by Negroes are far from bizarre: they can seldom
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