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Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Author’s Preface
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both the subject and the object of a cultural experiment in the field of social
science.
As he, in this problem—to which he previously had given hardly a
thought—was nearly stripped of all the familiar and conventional moorings
of viewpoints and valuations, he had to construct for himself a system of
coordinates. He found this in the American ideals of equality and liberty.
Being a stranger to the problem, he has had perhaps a greater awareness
of the extent to which human valuations everywhere enter into our scientific
discussion of the Negro problem. In two appendices on valuations, beliefs,
and facts he has attempted to clear the methodological ground for a
scientific approach which keeps the valuations explicit and hinders them
from going underground in the form of biases distorting the facts. And he
has followed the rule all through the book of inserting the terms “the
American Creed” and “value premise” and of specifying those value
premises and printing them in italics. The reader will be less irritated by
their repetition if he understands that these terms are placed as signs of
warning to the reader and to the writer alike: the search for scientific
knowledge and the drawing of practical conclusions are dependent upon
valuations as well as upon facts.
When, in this way, the data on the American Negro problem are
marshaled under the high ideals of the American Creed, the fact must be faced
that the result is rather dark. Indeed, as will be pointed out in the first
chapter, the Negro problem in America represents a moral lag in the
development of the nation and a study of it must record nearly everything
which is bad and wrong in America. The reading of this book must be
somewhat of an ordeal to the good citizen. I do not know if it can be
offered as a consolation that the writing of the book, for much the same
reason, has been an ordeal to the author who loves and admires America
next to his own country—and does it even more sincerely after having had
to become an expert on American imperfections. To a scholar a work is
always something of a fate. His personal controls are diminutive; he is
in the hands of the facts, of his professional standards, and of the
fundamental approach chosen.
If this book gives a more complete record than is up to now available
of American shortcomings in this field, I hope, however, that it also
accounts more completely for the mutability in relations, the hope for
great improvement in the near future and, particularly, the dominant role
of ideals in the social dynamics of America. When looking back over the
long manuscript, one main conclusion—which should be stressed here since
it cannot be reiterated through the whole book—is this: that not since
Reconstruction has there been more reason to anticipate fundamental
changes in American race relations, changes which will involve a
development toward the American ideals.
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