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I NTRODUCTION xHx
valuations—which refer to various smaller groups of mankind or to partic-
ular occasions—are commonly referred to as “irrational” or “prejudiced,”
sometimes even by people who express and stress them. They are defended
in terms of tradition, expediency or utility.
Trying to defend their behavior to others, and primarily to themselves,
people will attempt to conceal the conflict between their different valua-
tions of what is desirable and undesirable, right or wrong, by keeping away
some valuations from awareness and by focusing attention on others. For
the same opportune purpose, feofle will twist and mutilate their heliejs
of how social reality actually is. In our study we encounter whole systems
of firmly entrenched popular beliefs concerning the Negro and his relations
to the larger society, which are bluntly false and which can only be under-
stood when we remember the opportunistic ad hoc purposes they serve.
These “popular theories,” because of the rationalizing function they serve,
are heavily loaded with emotions. But people also want to be rational.
Scientific truth-seeking and education are slowly rectifying the beliefs and
thereby also influencing the valuations. In a rationalistic civilization it is
not only that the beliefs are shaped by the valuations, but also that the
valuations depend upon the beliefs.®
’ Our task in this inquiry is to ascertain social reality as it is. We shall seek
to depict the actual life conditions of the American Negro people and their
manifold relations to the larger American society. We must describe, in as
much detail as our observations and space here allow, who the American
Negro is, and how he fares. Whenever possible, we shall present quantita-
tive indices of his existence and of the material conditions for his existence.
But this is not all and, from our point of view, not even the most important
part of social reality. We must go further and attempt to discover and
dissect the doctrines and ideologies, valuations and beliefs, embedded in the
minds of white and Negro Americans. We want to follow through W. I.
Thomas’s theme, namely, that when people define situations as real, they
are real.- We shall try to remember throughout our inquiry that material
facts in large measure are the product of what people think, feel and
believe. The actual conditions, as they are, indicate from this point of view
the great disparities between the whites’ and the Negroes’ aspirations and
realizations. The interrelations between the material facts and people’s
valuations of and beliefs about these facts are precisely what make the
Negro a social problem.
It is sometimes assumed to be the mark of “sound” research to dis-
regard the fact that people are moral beings and that they are struggling
for their conscience. In our view, this is a bias and a blindness, dangerous to
* The theory of human behavior and its motivation, which is sketched in the text and is
basic to our approach to the Neg^ro problem, is explained in Appendix i, Methodological
Note on Valuations and Beliefs.*’
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