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Appendix io. Studies of Race Attitudes
economic equality largely out of ignorance of the Negro’s capacities.*’ These hypotheses
need to be tested by attitude questionnaires. If we are correct in judging the North-
erner’s prejudice to be based so largely on ignorance, and if a distinction is made
between questions of belief and questions of valuation,^ the attitude measuring process
can itself serve as an experiment. If two similar groups of Northerners are presented
with the same set of valuation questions, and one group is also given relevant factual
information, there should be a noticeable difference in their performance,*^
The Negro’s prejudice toward whites or toward other Negroes seems to be a secondary
reaction. Because he has taken over American culture, the average Negro has also taken
over something of the white American’s attitude toward the Negro.** There is nothing
of the “rank order” in the Negro’s prejudice but something of ignorance. There is also
much in it of considerations of personal social status. It may also be that some of the
hostility felt toward the whites is deflected from them to the Negro group.
The Negro’s negative attitude toward the white man may better be described as
hatred or fear rather than prejudice. It is the hatred or fear toward those who humiliate
him and deprive him of many of the good things of life. If the deprivation or humil-
iation were to cease, the hatred and fear also would cease. I’his is even true of the
anti-Semitism found among Negroes: It happens that Jews are the leading retail
merchants in many Negro neighborhoods and are the leading employers of Negro
servants in Northern cities. The natural dislike of the dominant person by the subor-
dinate person in an unequal economic bargain thus seems to be the cause of any striking
anti-Semitism that appears in certain Negro groups. Negroes practically never feel that
whites are inferior, and they do not connect racial equality with sexual and personality
fears. Negro prejudice toward whites is based partly on ignorance, but it is much more
a matter of fear and hatred of the oppressor. This secondary character of the Negro’s
race prejudice could be tested by wisely administered questionnaires.
" Probably both the Northern employer and the Southern employer are ignorant of the
Negro’s economic potentialities. But where the Northern employer would like to know of
them, the Southerner employer would not.
See Section 2 of this Appendix.
* Our distinction between the Southerner’s and the Northerner’s prejudices implies that
two similar groups of Southerners would not manifest such a difference in performance due
merely to the administration of simple, direct, factual information.
**
Du Bois describes the prej udice of Negroes toward other Negroes
‘‘Negroes, particularly the better class Negroes, are brought up like other Americans
despite the various separations and segregations. They share, therefore, average American
culture and current American prejudices. It is almost impossible for a Negro boy trained in
a white Northern high school and a white college to come out with any high idea of his
own people or any abiding faith in what they can do: or for a Negro trained in the segre-
gated schools of the South wholly to escape the deadening environment of insult and caste,
even if he happens to have the good teachers and teaching facilities, which poverty almost
invariably denies him. He may rationalize his own individual status as exceptional. He . . .
cannot ordinarily believe that the mass of Negro people have possibilities equal to the
whites.” (W. E, B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn [1940], p. 191.)
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