Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 32. The Negro Class Structure - 3. Color and Class
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chapter 32. The Negro Class Structure 699
belief in the desirability of light skin and ^^good” features. It has often
been remarked that this tendency is not entirely unique among Negroes.
It will appear in every disadvantaged group, for instance, among Jews in
America. But Negro features are so distinct that only in the Negro problem
does this factor become of great social importance.
Their color valuation is only one instance, among many, of the much
more general tendency for the Negro people, to the degree that they are
becoming acculturated, to take over the valuations of the superior white
caste.® In other spheres this process can, on the whole, be regarded as a
wholesome and advantageous adjustment of the Negroes to American life.
In this particular respect, however, a conflict emerges which is unsolvable,
as the average Negro cannot effectively change his color and other physical
features. If the dark Negro accepts the white man^s valuation of skin color,
he must stamp himself as inferior. If the light Negro accepts this valuation,
he places himself above the darker Negroes but below the whites, and he
reduces his loyalty to his caste. The conflict produces a personality problem
for practically every single Negro. And few Negroes accomplish an entirely
successful adjustment.
There is a considerable literature on the personality problem of the light-
skinned Negro.“^ He has been characterized as a ^^marginal man”—^‘one
whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two, not merely
different but antagonistic cultures”^®—^and he has been assumed to show
restlessness, instability, and all sorts of deviations from a harmonious and
well-balanced personality type.“^ This literature, which is largely of a
speculative character,^® probably reflects—like the great amount of fiction
devoted to the mulatto—more the imaginative expectations of white people
as they think of themselves with their white skin, if placed under the caste
yoke, than the actual life situation of mulattoes in the Negro caste. It is
forgotten that the Negro upper strata enjoy considerable protection behind
the wall of segregation and that a light skin in all social strata of the Negro
community has definite advantages, two factors which must tend to make
mulattoes rather more satisfied to be Negroes than are the darker Negroes.**
It should not be denied, of course, that there are fair-skinned Negroes in
America who develop the personality traits traditionally ascribed to them.^
•See Chapter 44, Section i.
**
Another problem for dark-skinned Negroes who reach the upper class arises out of the
fact that they are newly arrived and so have a tenseness which the light-skinned who, for
the most part, are long established in the upper class, do not have.
The studies for the American Youth Commission (see footnote 9 of Chapter 30)
corroborate the author^s impression that the personality problems of the dark-skinned Negro
are often greater than are those of the light-skinned Negro. This is especially true among
the educated groups.
* I have met two violently anti-Negro mulattoes who identified themselves with the whites.
One was a passer. The other was just a littlo bit too dark to pass safely. The latter proudly
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
