676 (An American Dilemma : the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy)

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676 An American Dilemma
social class structure is dimly intellectualized by the general public—^in
spite of much observance in actual life of small and big status differences
—
this is not quite so true.*
The actual class stratification differs much between different communities.
This is particularly true between rural and urban communities, between
communities in the different historical regions of the country, and between
the white and Negro castes. Different class divisions for each of these would
be appropriate. If for convenience’s sake the same scale of division is being
used, this should not lead us to exaggerate the similarity between the dif-
ferent class structures.** What is regarded as the upper class in one com-
munity or caste, for example, would not be regarded as upper class in
another community or caste, even if community associations and caste marks
were changed,
3. The Caste Struggle
The Marxian concept of “class struggle’’—with its basic idea of a class
of proletarian workers who are kept together in a close bond of solidarity
of interests against a superior class of capitalist employers owning and con-
trolling the means of production, between which there is a middle class
bound to disappear as the grain is ground between two millstones—is in all
Western countries a superficial and erroneous notion. It minimizes the
distinctions that exist within each of the two main groups j
it exaggerates
the cleft between them, and, especially, the consciousness of it; and it
misrepresents the role and the development of the middle classes. It is
“too simple and sweeping to fit the facts of the class-system.”^^ In America
it is made still more inapplicable by the traversing systems of color caste.
The concept of “caste struggle,” on the other hand, is much more realistic.
Archer talked of a “state of war” between Negroes and whites in the
United States James Weldon Johnson spoke about “the tremendous
struggle which is going on between the races in the South.”^® The caste

An exception to this occurs at the very top of the social status scale in America, where
each big city, and some smaller ones, has its “400” and its social register and where, in
recent years, part of the nation has become aware of “Americans 60 families.”
“ Even where there is no caste division in a community, it sometimes requires doing
violence to facts to consider all members of that community on a single social status con-
tinuum. Social status, as we have seen, is made up of many components, which do not
correlate perfectly. One’s position on the income continuum, for example, may be higher
than his position on the family background continuum. To get a single social status con-
tinuum these components need to be weighted and combined. But sometimes even then the
members of a community who are found to have equivalent social status will be found
to follow different lines of social advancement. It may be found, for example, that a physi-
cian, an army captain and an artist have about the same social status. While none looks down
on any of the others, and all may be invited to the same party, their interests, associations,
and lines of advancement are so dissimilar that it is more convenient, for most purpos-s, to
consider the community as having several parallel social status continua.

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