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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 - 4. Negroes in the War Crisis
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Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads 1007
expressed the same feeling when he said he was going to get his eyes
slanted so that the next time a white man shoved him around he could
fight back.® Their caste status being what it is in America, Negroes would,
indeed, not be ordinary human beings if such dissatisfaction and bitterness
were not their reaction to all the morale talk about democracy, the four
freedoms, the American way of life, all the violent denunciations of Nazi
race hatred and the lack of freedom under totalitarian rule. We should
also remember, however, that, even if Negroes are still mainly excluded
from work in the manufacturing industries and from employment offering
much future prospect, the war boom has created a lot of secondary employ-
ment for Negroes, too. There is more money in circulation and some
trickles down to the Negroes. With a little money in his pocket even the
poor Negro day laborer or domestic worker feels that he can afford to
stiffen himself. Many white housewives notice strange thoughts and
behavior on the part of their Negro servants these days.
The loyalty of the American Negro in war and peace is, however, prover-
bial. The only thing Negroes ask for is to be accepted as Americans. The
American Constitution is even dearer to them than to their white compa-
triots. They are more unreservedly anti-fascist. Few American Negroes
want the Axis powers to win the War. But this is not much of an issue to
Negroes, as they, about as much as white Americans, are convinced of the
invincibility of their country. Negroes have never doubted the strength and
resourcefulness of the whites. Even more, they know that America offers
more possibility of democracy, even for themselves, than do the Axis
nations. In one of the most thoughtful statements on the question of Negro
loyalties since the beginning of the war crisis, Ralph Bunche says:
There should be no illusions about the nature of this struggle. . . . The fight now
is not to save democracy, for that which does not exist cannot be saved. But the fight
is to maintain those conditions under which people may continue to strive for realiza-
tion of the democratic ideals. This is the inexorable logic of the nation’s position as
dictated by the world anti-democratic revolution and Hitler’s projected new world
order.^
But it is quite common that Negroes feel a satisfaction in the temporary
adversities and want the War to become as serious a matter as possible to
the white people in power. There have been reports that poor Negro share-
croppers in the South sometimes indulge in dreams of a Japanese army
marching through the South and killing off a number of “crackers.” They
do not want them to land in the North, though, and they certainly do not
want them to stay. But much more common is a glowing ill-concealed
satisfaction over the war adversities on various fronts. Practically every
issue of any Negro newspaper gives proof of this attitude. It must be
conceded that Negroes have also some good rational reasons for this feeling.
They l^ow, of course, that, as a Northern Negro social scientist explains;
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