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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 - I. The Approach - 2. Encountering the Negro Problem - 2. To the Negroes Themselves - 3. Explaining the Problem Away
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30 An American Dilemma
The late James Weldon Johnson sums up this situation of the Negro
people in the following way:
And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each
and every coloured man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on
all things, not from the view-point of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being,
but from the view-point of a coloured man. It is wonderful to me that the race has
progressed so broadly as it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must
run through the narrow neck of this one funnel.’*
3. Explaining the Problem Away
To the white Americans the possibilities of keeping the Negro problem
out of their minds are, naturally, greater and, in addition, they have
certainly good selfish reasons for keeping it below the level of conscious-
ness. To be sure, it was a not unusual experience of the writer to be told
confidently sometimes by the learned, but most often by the laity, that
there is “no Negro problem” in America and that, if there ever was one,
it is solved and settled for all time and to the full satisfaction of both
parties. Everything is quiet on the racial front. We think the Negroes are
all right in their place j
and they on their part do not want things changed.
In fact, they are the happiest lot on earth. Just look at them: how they laugh
and enjoy themselves j
how they sing and praise the Lord.
This attitude was met most frequently and expressed most emphatically
in the Deep South. It was often maliciously added that there was surely
a Negro problem in the North, but only because the Yankees have not yet
learned to know the Negro and how to keep him in his proper place. The
situation, if true, would certainly deserve to be called paradoxical: The
Negroes should be least of a problem to the whites In the regions where
they are most numerous. They should show up among the human and
national worries, though certainly not as a principal one, of a Minnesota
farmer who never sees Negroes, but be no problem at all to the Southern
planter who works them in scores and is always surrounded by them.
All this is not true, of course. A contrary statement, that the white South
is virtually obsessed by the Negro problem, that the South has allowed the
Negro problem to rule its politics and its business, fetter its intelligence and
human liberties, and hamper its progress in all directions, would be nearer
the truth.® A brilliant Northerner, Frank Tannenbaum,® has taken up this
thought and, presumably fully in earnest, suggested, as the only hope of
solving the Southern problem, that the Southerners get other worries to
keep their minds off the Negro: they should get labor troubles, try to get
immigrants and develop a complex at home against white “foreigners,” and
generally get some real issues into their petty politics. This might be carry-
ing an idea to an extreme for educational purposes, but certainly there is
a kernel of sense in it.
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