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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 2. Encountering the Negro Problem - 5. The Etiquette of Discussion
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Chapter 2. Encountering the Negro Problem 39
Negroes the function of anti-white jokes is partly to pose the whites in a
ridiculous light, which to them is a compensation. Partly it is a mechanism
of psychological adjustment j
they ^^laugh off” their misfortunes, their
faults, their inferiority.
In this situation the minds of people are, however, likely to show signs
of deep-seated ambivalence. White Southerners like and love individual
Negroes and sometimes Negroes in general j
they apparently also hate them.
I have often witnessed how the feeling tone can pass from the one emo-
tional pole to the other abruptly as a result of a remark changing the
imagined type of interrelation toward which the person leacts.
What applies to the emotional level may also be found on the intel-
lectual level. Thus a Southerner, while extolling the virtues of the ^^good
old Negroes” he used to know and deploring the vices of the young who
go to school and are recalcitrant, may suddenly turn an intellectual somer-
sault and bemoan the ignorance and backwardness of the older group and
become enthusiastic about the intelligence and progressiveness of the young,
I have come to know how fundamental and common this ambivalence of
Southern white people is toward the relative value of the different Negro
generations and how strategically important it is for policy, educational
policy particularly.
Sometimes mental contradictions are elaborated into theories and find
their way into learned treatises and documents of state policy. An example
is the theory that Negroes have ^4ower costs of living,” which defends
—
in the writers’ minds— lower salaries for Negroes against the equaJitarian
principles of the Constitution. The all-embracing Jim Crow doctrine ^^cqual
but separate” belongs to the same category of systematized intellectual and
moral inconsistency. A partial blinding of a person’s knowledge of reality
is sofnetimes necessary. There are plenty of people in the South who will
tell you, honestly and sincerely, that Negroes have equal educational
opportunities with whites. I think they believe it—for a moment, in a way,
and with a part of their minds. Their conviction rests on two contradictory
principles between which they shift.
This mental training of the Southerner, which makes him shift between
principles according to momentary change or stimulus, spreads from the
Negro problem to other issues. The Negro problem is unique only in
intensity. But in most of the other issues, the Negro problem is, directly or
indirectly, involved. One meets it in the attitude toward trade unionism,
factory legislation, social security programs, educational policies, and
virtually all other public issues,
I once went to see the director of the Department of Labor in a Southern capital.
The discussion started by his asking me if trade unions were strong in Sweden, to
which I answered, “Yes.” Without any initiative from my side, he then told me
how the trade union movement in this region had the great sympathy of the state
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