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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 2. Social Trends - 3. The Decay of the Caste Theory
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1002 An American Dilemma
Negroes were already working. But, with few exceptions, they did not open
up new industries for Negro employment during the ^thirties, neither did
they pave the way for Negroes to rise by promotion from the level of
unskilled workers to that of the semi-skilled and skilled. Negro business
did not flourish either, and the small gains made in a few professions were
quantitatively insignificant. There is no question but that the development
in the economic sphere was grave. But as discrimination was slowly decreas-
ing in all other spheres, as there were good prospects that national politics
would remain liberal and progressive, as Negro defense organizations and
the Negro advisors in the federal administration were hammering on the
inequalities, and as the new unions were pledged to nondiscrimination,
there seemed to be good prospects that even the threatening trends respect-
ing the Negro’s economic status could have been turned, if the country had
got out of the long stagnation in a normal way and had entered a new era
of continued industrialization. Some of the economic policies of the New
Deal were poorly thought out and badly integrated j
in some respects they
were damaging to the Negro. But administrators and experts were eager
to learn from their mistakes and could be expected to accomplish better
economic planning and direction when they were relieved of the pressure
of emergency and improvisation.
3. The Decay of the Caste Theory
The problem of what would have occurred if there had been no war is
now purely academic. The Second World War is bound to change all
trends. But before we analyze the implications of the War for the Negro
problem, we need to take a still broader perspective and ask: what has hap-
pened to white opinions on the Negro problem in the span of three gener-
ations since Emancipation?
In the South three generations ago white people had for their defense
a consistent and respectable theory, endorsed by the church and by all
sciences, printed in learned books and periodicals, and expounded by the
South’s great statesmen in the Capitol at Washington. The Negro’s subor-
dinate status was a principle integrated into a whole philosophy of society
and of human life. The Negro was a completely different species of man-
kind: undeveloped, “child like,” amoral, and much less endowed with
intellectual capacities than the white man; he was meant by the Creator to
be a servant forever; if kept in his “place” he was useful or at least toler-
able, and there he was also happy; “social equality” was unthinkable as It
implied intermarriage which would destroy the white race and Anglo-
Saxon civilization. Much of this theory—which acquired an elaborate
structure to satisfy the specific needs to justify discrimination in various
spheres of life—remained through Reconstruction, and it was again hailed
in the Restoration of white supremacy. Indeed, much of it remained until
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