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Chapter 30. Effects of Social Inequality 659
inhibited from looking upon the Negro as a normal human being, and as
his observation of the Negro is not blinded by the etiquette, he is usually
more cognizant of Negro attitudes and capacities and is more willing to
lend a sympathetic ear to the Negroes plight. But he is much more igno-
rant of the conditions which the Negro faces. If the Southerner’s whole
race philosophy and even his kindliest thoughts are insulting to the new
type of Negro emerging out of the cultural assimilation process, the
Northerner is likely to insult him out of sheer ignorance. The average
Northerner does not realize that to call a Negro woman a ^^Negress” is
taken as an insult, and he does not understand in what high esteem the
Negro holds the title ^^Mr.” He does not see the discrimination under
which the Negroes labor. Not knowing the patterns of violence and of
laxness of law in the South, the Northerner does not comprehend the full
reason for the Negroes’ pathological bitterness and fear.
On his side, the Negro is inclined to be suspicious of the Northerner’s
good intentions and to retain in the North the cynical attitude and secre-
tive manners that he has developed as a camouflage in the Southern race
warfare. As a servant the Negro goes into middle and upper class homes
even in the North and acquires a sort of knowledge about white people.
But this knowledge is distorted, since it covers only the private life of the
whites and not the public life. Seldom does a Negro know how white
people on his own level live and think. In part, the Negro’s ignorance is
an effect of exclusion from white society. In part, it is the result of the
Negro’s having different interests and worries. He is preoccupied with
Negro life and problems, and this makes him a little blind to the general
American ones.
Mutual ignorance and the paucity of common interests is a barrier to,
and a modifier of, social contact between even educated and liberal whites
and Negroes in the North, even in the extraordinary circles where segre-
gation and discrimination play no role. I have seen Negro and white social
scientists together as friends and colleagues. But I know that when their
minds meet it usually concerns some aspect of the Negro problem. The
Negro is ordinarily not present—and if he is present, he is a stranger
—
when the whites meet to discuss more general problems. If this is true
among liberal social scientists, it is still more true among prejudiced people
in all classes. The Negro is an alien in America, and in a sense this becomes
the more evident when he steps out of his old role of the servant who
lives entirely for the comfort of his white superiors. Ignorance and dispar-
ity of interests, arising out of segregation and discrimination on the part
of whites, increased by voluntary withdrawal and race pride on the part
of Negroes, becomes itself an important element increasing and perpetuat-
ing isolation between the groups.
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