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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 32. The Negro Class Structure - 2. Caste Determines Class
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694 An American Dilemma
The lower caste monopolies are strongest in some of the professions and
in the service occupations near the professions (funeral work, beauty work,
retail trade, and so on)^ some monopolistic leeway is also afforded small-
scale Negro banking, insurance and real estate. For the rest of the occupa-
tions, the caste barriers block the way for Negroes.® It is thus understand-
able that, next to the small size of the middle and upper class, the Negro
class system has its most characteristic feature in the fact that, on the whole,
capitalist business and wealth mean so relatively little, and that general
education and professional training mean so relatively much, as criteria
for attaining upper class status.^* This is evidently not due to a lower
valuation of wealth among Negroes than among whites. Rather independ-
ent of the respectability of the source, wealth is as sure—and perhaps
even a little more sure—to give upper class status among American
Negroes as it does among whites. But there is so little of it in the Negro
community. And education is such a high value to this group, which has
to struggle for it, that it is understandable why education is more impor-
tant, relatively, for Negro status than for white status. Among the conse-
quences of the relative prestige of education among Negroes is that prac-
tically all Negro college teachers are upper class, and that most of the
national Negro leaders are academic men. In both these respects, the
American Negro world is strikingly different from the American white
world.
One of the consequences of the small range of wealth and occupation in
the Negro community, and of the importance of education, is that there is
probably less social distance between bottom and top among Negroes than
there is among whites. It is not uncommon for a Negro boy—especially in
the North—to rise from the lowest to the highest social status in one gener-
ation. While a white boy could rise the same absolute social distance in the
white caste during his lifetime—^that is, he could attain the same increase
in education, wealth, and manners—^this distance would not appear so great
because he would still be far from the top. This fact has tended to keep the
various Negro classes in better contact with each other, except for the
declining mulatto aristocracies, than is the case with the white classes.
Other factors—such as caste pressure, the northward migration, and the
tionj he smiled and remarked that perhaps segregation should not be bullied so without
qualifications: “How would you all feel if you awakened tomorrow morning and found
yourself in the wild sea of white competition?” He cashed in a big laugh, somewhat nervous
and bashful, but relieving.
®See Chapters 13 and 14.
® Two other characteristics that are rather unique make for upper class status in the Negro
world: caste leadership and achievement in the white world. Marcus Garvey, Oscar
DePriest, and Father Divine, on the one hand, and Joe Louis, Paul Robeson, and
Rochester, on the other hand, have high status and would have had it even if they were
neither rich nor educated.
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