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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 4. Racial Beliefs - 4. Reflections in Science - 5. The Position of the Negro Writers
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Chapter 4. Racial Beliefs 93
Creed, the principles of which arc themselves, actually, piecemeal becoming
substantiated by research and elaborated into scientific theory. American
social scientists might—in a natural effort to defend their objectivity
—
dislike this characterization, but to the outsider it is a simple and obvious
fact that the social sciences in America at present have definitely a spirit
in many respects reminiscent of eighteenth century Enlightenment. The
ordinary man’s ideas have not, however, kept up to those of the scientist.
Hardly anywhere else or in any other issue is there—in spite of intensive
and laudable efforts ‘to popularize the new results of research—such a wide
gap between scientific thought and popular belief. At least potentially these
ideas have, however, a much greater importance in America than could be
assumed upon casual observation and for the reason that the ordinary
American has a most honored place in his heart for equalitarianism.
This trend in social sciences to discount earlier notions of great differences
in ‘‘nature” between the advantaged and the disadvantaged groups (rich-
poor, men-women, whites-Negroes) runs parallel to another equally con-
spicuous trend in American political ideology since the First World War:
an increased interest and belief in social reforms. The latter trend broke
through in the course of the Great Depression following the crisis of 1929 j
and it materialized in the New Deal, whose principles, even if not methods,
are now widely accepted. We have already stressed the strategic importance
for political liberalism and radicalism of the modern social science point
of view on the basic problem of nurture versus nature. The scientific trend
in non-democratic countries during the same period—and specifically the
sway of racialism over German universities and research centers under the
Nazi regime—^provides a contrast which vividly illustrates our thesis.
As always, we can, of course, assume that basically both the scientific
trend and the political development in a civilization are functions of a
larger synchronized development of social ideology. A suspicion is, then,
natural that fundamentally the scientific trend in America is a rational-
ization of changed political valuations. This trend has, however, had its
course during a remarkable improvement of observation and measurement
techniques and has been determined by real efforts to criticize research
methods and the manner in which scientific inferences are made from
research data. It has, to a large extent, been running against expectation
and, we may assume, wishes. This is the general reason why, in spite of
the natural suspicion, we can feel confident that the scientific trend is, on
the whole, a definite approach toward objective truth.
5. The Position of the Negro Writers
As creators of original scientific theories and as independent research
workers in the field of social science, as in other fields, the Negroes came
late and are even now rather exceptional. This is a consequence of the
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