- Project Runeberg -  An American Dilemma : the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy /
1370

(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
  Project Runeberg | Catalog | Recent Changes | Donate | Comments? |   
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.

Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Footnotes - Chapter 30

scanned image

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Below is the raw OCR text from the above scanned image. Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan. Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!

This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.

1370 An American Dilemma
individual and the case concerned; there is little free immediate functioning of social
sanctions independent of race distinctions.” {Ibid,^ pp. 14-15.)
^ Ibid.
y
p. no.
® See the series on present Negro youth problems prepared for the American Youth
Commission: Ira DeA. Reid, In a Minor Key (1940) ; Allison Davis and John Dollard,
Children of Bondage (1940); W. Lloyd Warner, Buford H. Junker, and Walter A.
Adams, Color and Human Nature (1941); E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the
Crossways (1940) ;
Charles S. Johnson, Growing Uf in the Black Belt (1941) ;
Ira D.
Walker, Vincent J. Davis, Donald W. Wyatt, and J. Howell Atwood, Thus Be Their
Destiny (1941); and Robert L. Sutherland, Colory
ClasSy and Personality (1942).
These studies have confirmed and given definiteness to the observation of Booker T.
Washington:
“The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that
are little known to those not situated as he is. When a white boy undertakes a task, it is
taken for granted that he will succeed. On the other hand, people arc usually surprised
if the Negro boy does not fail. In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presump-
tion against him.” (Uf from Slavery [1929; first edition, 1900], p. 36.)
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1927; first
edition, 1912), pp. 79-80.
“Beyond that there is a type of Negro already referred to, whom the majority of
whites never see and consequently do not know. They own their own homes, so the
white landlord does not see them; they carry insurance with a Negro insurance com-
pany, so no white collector comes to the door; their groceryman is a coloured man; they
travel by auto rather than by street car or train; as a rule they live in the segregated
residence districts; their physician, lawyer, dentist, and often their banker Is a Negro.
As a result of all this, there is a constantly diminishing contact between the correspond-
ing classes of the two races, which for the whites as a whole is fast approaching the
zero point.” (Moton, of. cit.y pp. 17-18.)
Ray Stannard Baker observed long ago:
“ Here is a strange thing. I don’t know how many Southern men have prefaced their
talks with me with words something like this:

‘You can’t expect to know the Negro after a short visit. You must live down here
like we do. Now, 1 know the Negroes like a book. I was brought up with them. I know
what they’ll do and what they won’t do. I have had Negroes in my house all my life.’
“But curiously enough 1 found that these men rarely knew anything about the better
class of Negroes—^those who were in business, or in independent occupations, those who
owned their own homes. They did come into contact with the servant Negro, the field
hand, the common laborer, who make up, of course, the great mass of the race. On the
other hand, the best class of Negroes did not know the higher class of white people, and
based their suspicion and hatred upon the acts of the poorer sort of whites with whom
they naturally came into contact. The best elements of the two races are as far apart *
as though they lived in different continents; and that is one of the chief causes of the
growing danger of the Southern situation.” (Following the Color Line [1908], p. 44.)
Edgar G. Murphy may again be used to express the views of the enlightened and
responsible Southerner:
“Of the destructive factors in negro life the white community hears to the utter-
most, hears through the press and police courts; of the constructive factors of negro

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Project Runeberg, Sat Dec 9 01:31:31 2023 (aronsson) (download) << Previous Next >>
https://runeberg.org/adilemma/1432.html

Valid HTML 4.0! All our files are DRM-free