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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 4. Racial Beliefs - 5. The Position of the Negro Writers
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96 An American Dilemma
find environmental explanations for differences in intelligence perfor-
mance, while the “American” scientists and, particularly. Southerners and
other Americans who for one reason or other felt tender toward the
Southern cause, for a long time labored under the bias of expecting to find
innate differences.
From one point of view it is, of course, merely an historical accident that
modern research has tended to confirm the Negroes’ view and not the
whites’. The Negro writers constantly have proceeded upon the assumption,
later formulated by Du Bois in Black Reconstruction: . . that the Negro
in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who
under given environment develops like other human beings. . . This
assumption is now, but was not a couple of decades ago, also the assumption
of white writers.^’* Negro writings from around the turn of the century,
therefore, sound so much more modern than white writings. It is mainly
this historical accident which explains why, for example, Du Bois’ study of
the Philadelphia Negro community,®^ published in the ’nineties, stands
out even today as a most valuable contribution, while white authors like
H. W. Odum and C. C. Brigham have been compelled—and have had
the scientific integrity and personal courage—to retreat from writings of
earlier decades even though they were published after Du Bois’ study.^*
The white authors have changed while the Negro authors can stand by
their guns. It is also apparent, when going through the literature on the
Negro, that the whole tone, the “degree of friendliness” in viewpoints and
conclusions, has been modified immensely in favor of the Negro since the
beginning of the ’twentles.^^ This trend is, of course, intimately related to
the general trend in social sciences, referred to above, and to the still
broader political and social development in the American nation.
The Negro intellectuals’ resistance to the white race dogma has been
widely popularized among the Negro people through the Negro press,
the Negro school and the Negro pulpit. As it corresponds closely to Negro
interests, it will now be found to emerge as a popular belief in all Negro
communities in America, except the backward ones. It may be assumed that
formerly the Negroes more often took over white beliefs as a matter of
accommodation.
The spread of the same conclusions from modern research has been
much slower among whites, which is also natural, as they do not coincide
with their interest in defending the caste order, and in any case, do not
have the same relevance to their own personal problems of adjustment.
One most important result Is, however, that it is now becoming difficult for
even ’pofular writers to express other views than the ones of racial equal-
itarianism and still retain intellectual respect. This inhibition works also
on the journalists, even in the South and even outside of the important
circle of Southern white liberals. The final result of this change might, in
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