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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 28. The Basis of Social Inequality - 9. Social Segregation and Discrimination in the North
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6o2 An American Dilemma
not intended as part of policy. Personal contacts become, as a matter of
course, more or less restricted to Negro neighborhoods. As the Negro
sections grew during the northward migration, it became more and more
possible for Negroes to have their entire social life in Negro neighbor-
hoods, and white people became conditioned to look upon this as a natural
and desirable situation.
In this process white Southerners who also moved northward have
played a crucial role. To make a manager of a hotel, a restaurant, or a
theater interested in trying to keep Negroes out of his establishment, it is
not necessary that more than a tiny minority of customers object, particu-
larly if they make a scene. Time and again I have, in my interviews with
managers of various public places in the North, been told this same story:
that they, themselves, had no prejudices but that some of their customers
would resent seeing Negroes around. The fact that most Negroes are poor
and residentially isolated and, hence, do not patronize white places often,
and the further fact that upper class Negroes, who could afford to, abstain
voluntarily from visiting places where they are afraid oi being embar-
rassed, solidifies the situation. I have also noticed that Negroes often have
an entirely exaggerated notion of the difficulties they would meet. They
are conditioned to suspect discrimination even when there is no danger of
it. So they abstain from going to places where they actually could go
without any trouble. When once this pattern is set by themselves the
result might later be discrimination when some Negro tries to break it.
The migrating Negroes have probably been even more influential in
spreading Southern patterns in the North than the Southern whites. The
low cultural level and poverty of the average Southern Negro stand out
even more when he comes North where general standards are higher. If
he comes without any other education, he is at least thoroughly trained in
the entire ceremonial system of scraping his foot, tipping his hat, and
using self-abasing vocabulary and dialect, and generally being subservient
and unobtrusive in the company of whites. A Negro recently from the
South is characterized as much by his manners and bearing as by his racial
traits. He might get some ideas of a new freedom of behavior in the North
and actually try his best to behave as a full manj and he might, indeed,
easily succeed in becoming aggressive and offensive. But fundamentally it
takes a radical reeducation to get him out of his Southern demeanor or the
reaction to it. For a long time after migrating he will invoke discrimination
by his own behavior. The submissive behavior of lower class Southern
Negroes is usually not appealing at all to the white Northerner, who has
not been brought up to have a patronizing attitude and who does not need
it for his own self-elevation. The white Northerner also dislikes the
slovenliness and ignorance of the Southern Negro. Thus the Negro often
seems only strange, funny or repulsive to the white Northerner.
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