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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 - 5. The War and the Whites
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ICX)8 An American Dilemma
. . . the graver the outside danger to the safety of this country, the more abundant
the gains will be likely to be [for the Negroes], But until such time as this country
is actually in grave danger most of the attention given to the problem of [Negro]
morale will be that of conjuring up the right type of propaganda to allay their dis-
content.®
A white commentator complained some months ago that the Negro press
is something of a fifth column. He received the unanimous and angry
answer in all Negro papers that this is exactly contrary to the truth.
Negroes are standing only for the democratic principles, to defend which
America is waging war. They are dissatisfied because these principles are
ignored in America itself. They are just the opposite of war dodgers and
traitors: they pray to have the right to fight and die for their country and
to work in the war industries, but they are excluded. They can, with new
reason, point to the inconsistency between American ideals and practices, as
does one of their wisest editors, Elmer A. Carter: . . this strange and
curious picture, this spectacle of America at war to preserve the ideal of
government by free men, yet clinging to the social vestiges of the slave
system.”® This ideological attack is so clear-cut and simple and so obviously
to the point that it appeals even to the least educated Negro. The cause
of the American Negro has supreme logical strength. And the Negro is
better prepared than ever before in his history to fight for it.
5. The War and the Whites
This simple logic is, of course, apparent to white Americans, too. And
the whites were on the way, even before the War, to lose their caste theory
and their complacency in the face of obvious abuses of the American Creed.
They are also stirred up by the War and the great cause of human liberties
at stake. In the North the question can be publicly approached in only one
spirit, that of the American Creed. A newspaper editorial reads like this:
If the United Nations win this war the principle of the world-wide legal equality
of races will have to be recognized. Since this is largely a war of ideas, and since
racial equality before the law has become one of the central Ideas on the demo-
cratic side, we can almost say that this principle, in itself, may be the deciding factor.
The Chinese, the East Indians, the numerous African peoples and many other groups
are on our side, or would be so if they were completely convinced that we mean what
we say by equality just as unreservedly as the Nazis mean what they say by inequality.
But we Americans cannot very well talk convincingly in these terms unless we prove
our sincerity in our own country. Our largest recognizable racial minority is the
Negro.^®
The titular leader of the Republican party, Wendell Willkie, speaking
in July, 1942, at the annual conference of the N.A.A.C.P. in Los Angeles,
California, had this to say:
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