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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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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.

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Chapter 44. Non-institutional Aspects 965
ture on the subject: “It seems doubtful, however, that this emphasis on
superstition is in proportion to its importance in the life of the Negro
today.”® As among white people, superstition among Negroes is a survival
of an earlier period, and as such it is disappearing as Negroes assimilate
modern American culture traits. Upper class Negroes are about as free from
superstition and magical practices as upper class whites are, and Negro
youth of the lower classes adhere to them only loosely. It is only in the
rural areas of the South that these beliefs and practices have a powerful
hold on Negroes. It is there that the “voodoo” doctors are still to be
found, who use incantations and charms, but often add advice in love
or economic cases, and pills in sickness cases in imitation of real doctors.
Quack doctors find Negroes easy prey, even in Northern cities."
To the Northern white man, although seldom to the Southern white
man, the speech of the Negro seems unusual. In fact, the “Negro dialect”
is an important cause of the Northern whites’ unconscious assumption that
Negroes are of a different biological type from themselves. The present
writer found many Northern whites who were amazed when they learned
that Negroes could and did speak perfect English. It is not realized that
the so-called “Negro dialect” is simply a variation of the ordinary Southern
accent which so many Northerners like so well. It is this accent in lower
class slang form, with a very small number of uniquely Negro cultural
additions. There is absolutely no biological basis for itj Negroes are as
capable of pronouncing English words perfectly as whites are.
Northern whites are also unaware of the reasons why they practically
never hear a Negro speaking perfect English: First, at least three-fifths
of Negroes living in the North are Southern-born,® and Negroes tend to
retain the accent of their childhood, just as others do. Second, even most
Northern-born Negroes were brought up m households and communities
where they heard nothing but the “Negro dialect” spoken. School was the
only place to learn good English, and many Negroes did not, or could not,
take adequate advantage of it. Third, Negroes seem to be proud of their
dialect, and frequently speak it even when they know how to speak perfect
English. Some upper class Negroes do this to retain prestige and a follow-
ing among lower class Negroes. In the South a few educated Negroes do
“ A recent case of quackery in New York City is reported in the New York Herald Tri~
butte of March 13, 1942 (p. 10). A West Indian Negro . . complained that he went to
Byron [the quack] last October for treatment for recurrent headaches. The treatment con-
sisted of copious draughts of herbs and bites on the neck, and was neither particularly
effective nor worth the $59 charge, according to the complainant. . . , Byron also is known
as Saibu Sudens. When using that name he wears a fez, on the grounds that he is part
Egyptian, and at other times dons a skullcap in token of his claim that the other part is
Jewish.” Byron gave his age as 99 years.
For a discussion of superstition and occultism among Negroes in Harlem, see Claude
McKay, Harlem (1940), pp. 82-855 105-110.

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