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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 3. The Negro Vote in the South
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490 An American Dilemma
shows that the Negro votes to the extent that the repressions are relaxed.
In one sense it is true that the Negro is politically apathetic. Like many
a white man, he is uneducated and ignorant cf the significance of the vote.
Because, on the average, the Southern Negro is somewhat less urban, less
educated, and poorer than the average Southern white man, and because
these traits are universally a cause of low average voting participation, the
Negro should be expected to vote less than the white man in the South
if there were no special barriers to Negro voting.’*® Even this is not certain,
however, if the experience of the A.A.A. referenda be taken as a test, for
—if anything—Negroes participate more than whites in these, though
perhaps because they are more herded to the polls by the plantation owners.
Since Reconstruction days the vote is to many Negroes—as to the whites
—
a symbol of civic equality.
But it should not be denied that a large proportion of poor Southern
Negroes feel that ‘^politics is white folks^ business.” This attitude is even
spread by some “accommodating” Southern Negro leaders. Some of the
political apathy is peculiar to the Negroes because the means of disfran-
chising them have been extraordinary: a tradition of nonvoting is built up
that is difficult to break down even in the free elections in the North. Too,
there is a psychopathological form of apathy found in some Negroes:
they have been so frightened by some experiences when attempting to
vote that they swear never to try again.
Another charge levied against the political activity of the Negro is that
he is frequently the mere pawn of the political machine. This is true,
especially in the South, but it must be seen in the light of other facts. In
the first place, it is often a political machine that makes it possible for
Negroes to vote at all. If no organized white group backed the Negroes,
they would not be allowed to vote in most cases. Too, the machine gives
them something for their vote: not only do they often get dollars as
individual voters, but they get paved streets and schools as a group. The
Negro is accorded better treatment by the city administration, police, and
courts in those cities where the machine “votes” him than where he is not
permitted to vote at all. In the third place. Southern Negroes can vote
only in cities, for all practical purposes, and cities are the places where
political machines are most potent. Whites of similar economic status and
education are perhaps machine-dominated to the same extent in Southern
cities, although there are no statistics to prove this.®® Finally, it should be
remembered that there are places—even Southern cities—^where Negroes
have voted in significant numbers without machine backing and control:
Negroes defied the Klan in 1939 to vote in Miami, and an all-Negro
political movement developed in the same year in Greenville, South
Carolina.
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