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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 30. Effects of Social Inequality - 4. The Factor of Ignorance
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658 An American Dilemma
It is easy for men to discount and misunderstand the suffering or harm done
others. Once accustomed to poverty, to the sight of toil and degradation, it easily
seems normal and natural; once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin, a
different stature or a different habit of action and speech, and all consciousness of
inflicting ill disappears.^®
Under the old master-servant relationship, the white man’s ^^under-
standing” of the Negro was not great, but with the disappearance of this
relationship even this small amount of sympathetic knowledge declined.
What remains is a technique of how to work Negroes and how to keep
them ^^in their place,” which is not a difficult task for a majority group
which can dispose of all the social power instruments—economic, legal,
political, and physical—and has made up its mind to use them for this
purpose.^^ But insight into the thoughts and feelings of Negroes, their
social organization and modes of living, their frustrations and ambitions is
vanishing. Some white Southerners are aware of this fact. Baker reported
that they were already so thirty years ago:
1 don’t know how many Southern people have told me in different ways of how
extremely difficult it is to get at the real feeling of a Negro, to make him tell what
goes on in his clubs and churches or in his innumerable societies.^®
The present author has often met the same revealing curiosity on the part
of white Southerners. In spite of human curiosity, however. Southerners
do not really seek to know the Negro or to have intimate contacts with
him, and consequently their feelings toward Negroes remain hard.
On their side, Negroes in the South instantaneously become reserved
and secretive when they are in company with ‘^their own whites.” I have
also witnessed how submissiveness, laughter, and fluent talking—which
are sometimes displayed by Negroes in accordance with the rural tradition
of interracial formality—most of the time, in reality, are nothing but a
mask behind which they conceal their true selves.^® Robert R. Moton,
when writing a book on JVAa/ the Negro Thinks for white people, con-
firms the growing seclusiveness of his group. The Negro ‘^seldom tells all
the truth about such matters,” he points out, and adds: ‘‘a great deal of it
may not find its way into this volume.” Baker drew the conclusion, after
observing the Negro’s deliberate secretiveness, that this was a major source
of deteriorating race relations..
The Negro has long been defensively secretive. Slavery made him that. In the
past, the instinct was passive and defensive ; but with growing education and intel-
ligent leadership it is rapidly becoming conscious, self-directive and offensive. And
right there, it seems to me, lies the great cause of the increased strain in the South
The Northerner also is ignorant about the Negro, but his ignorance is
less systematic and, therefore, often less deep. As he is ordinarily less
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