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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 31. Caste and Class - 4. Crossing the Caste Line
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686 An American Dilemma
participation in the life of the higher caste will mean that they will be hit
the harder if they are found out.
In view of the advantages to be had by passing, it is not difficult to
explain why Negroes pass, professionally or completely. It is more difficult,
however, to explain why Negroes do not pass over to the white race more
often than they actually do. On this point, as on all others concerning this
necessarily secretive matter, our actual knowledge is most inadequate. It
is probable that race pride and a missionary spirit of wanting to remain in
the lower caste in order to fight its cause or otherwise work for its elevation
might be a prominent motive for certain individuals. But for the great
majority of passable Negroes such an explanation is not plausible and is
seldom advanced. A young and gifted college graduate among my Negro
friends, who had ^^passed” in college but later accepted a teaching position
as a Negro in his home city, gave, upon my questioning, the following
reasons why he preferred not to pass: (i) When passing as a white (with
some Indian blood), he could never overcome a slight feeling of strain and
nervousness when in company j
he would have to make forced explana-
tions concerning his family; and he always felt suspicion around him
—
probably more suspicion, he remarked, than there actually was. (2) Be-
cause of his teaching position and his ‘^good looks” he is ^^tops” in the
Negro community; while if he were white in a similar job, he would be
one among many and far from the social ceiling. (3) Because his profession
was one in which there are few qualified Negro workers, he got his position
more easily as a Negro than he would have as a white man. He was aware
that he could advance further in the white world, but observed that even a
large advance as a white man would carry much less esteem than a corre-
spondingly smaller advance as a Negro. (4) Social life was so much more
pleasant in the higher ranks of the Negro community than in the corre-
sponding ranks of the white community: a Negro had so many more
intimate associates; there were so many more social affairs and family
entertainments going on in the Negro community—due probably, he
observed, to the Negro’s reaction against segregation in public places.
I am inclined to believe that this young man’s account of his reasons
for preferring to be an upper class Negro, protected by the professional
monopolies enjoyed by this class and surrounded by the social pleasantness
of Negro society, rather than to be an isolated middle class white person
with a minimum of initial contacts, was not only an honest statement on
his own part, but is also fairly representative of many other passable young
Negroes’ motivation to stay Negro. Particularly important is his observa-
tion that light-skinned Negroes have great advantages in the Negro com-
munity and that a disproportionate number of them are in the upper strata
or have hopes of getting there.*
• See Chapter 32.
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