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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 6. The Popular Theory of “No Social Equality”
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588 An American Dilemma
in hotels, restaurants, and theaters, and .other public places where people
meet socially j (5) segregation in public conveyances; (6) discrimination
in public services; and, finally, inequality in (7) politics, (8) justice and^
(9) breadwinning and relief/
The degree of liberalism on racial matters in the white South can be
designated mainly by the point on this rank order where a man stops
because he believes further segregation and discrimination are not necessary
to prevent ^intermarriage.” We have seen that white liberals in the South
of the present day, as a matter of principle, rather unanimously stand up
against inequality in breadwinning, relief, justice and politics. These fields
of discrimination form the chief battleground and considerable changes in
them are, as we have seen, on the way. When we ascend to the higher
ranks which concern social relations in the narrow sense, we find the
Southern liberals less prepared to split off from the majority opinion of
the region. Hardly anybody in the South is prepared to go the whole
way and argue that even the ban on intermarriage should be lifted. Prac-
tically all agree, not only upon the high desirability of preventing ‘inter-
marriage,” but also that a certain amount of separation between the two
groups is expedient and necessary to prevent it. Even the one who has his
philosophical doubts on the point must, if he is reasonable, abstain from
ever voicing them. The social pressure is so strong that it would be foolish
not to conform. Conformity is a political necessity for having any hope of
influence; it is, in addition, a personal necessity for not meeting social
ostracism.
T. J. Woofter, Jr., who again may be quoted as a representative of
Southern liberalism, observes that . . unless those forms of separation
which are meant to safeguard the purity of the races are present, the
majority of the white people flatly refuse to cooperate with Negroes” and
finds no alternative to “constant discontent and friction or amalgama-
tion . . . ,
except the systematic minimization of social contacts.” But
when Woofter has made this concession in principle to the segregation
system of the South, he comes out with demands which, in practice, would
change it entirely. He insists that all other forms of segregation than
“those . . . which are meant to safeguard the purity of the races” be
abolished, and that the administration of the system be just and considerate
and, indeed, founded upon the consent of the ruled.®^^
... all that most Negroes see in separation is that it is a means to degrade, an oppor-
tunity to exploit them. So long as it presents this aspect to them, it will be galling
and insulting, and they will oppose it. Stated positively, this means that, in the final
“As we pointed out in Chapter 3, Section 4, it so happens that Negroes have an interest
in being released from segregation and discrimination in a rank order just the opposite of
the whites’ expressed rank order of having them retained. This is a principal fact in all
attempts to change and reform race relations.
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