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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 34. Accommodating Leadership - 2. The Interest of Southern Whites and Negroes with Respect to Negro Leadership
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Chapter 34. Accommodating Leadership 721
stances, in any community where the Negro forms a substantial portion of
the total population, are the attitudes and behavior of the Negroes a matter
of no concern to the whites. Negroes may be robbed of suffrage and subdued
by partiality in justice, by strict segregation rules, by economic dependence,
and by other caste sanctions 3
but it makes a great deal of difference to the
whites how the Negroes—within the narrow margin of their freedom
—
feel, think and act.
The whites have a material interest in keeping the Negroes in a mood of
wanting to be faithful and fairly efficient workers. They have an interest
in seeing to it that the Negroes preserve as decent standards of home-
making, education, health, and law observance as possible, so that at least
contagious diseases and crime will not react back upon the whites too much.
In this particular respect, whites formerly under-estimated the community
of interest which follows from being neighbors, but they are increasingly
becoming aware of it.
Further, as we have seen, the whites in the South have a strong interest
that Negroes be willing, and not only forced, to observe the complicated
system of racial etiquette. Southern whites also see a danger in that Negroes
are becoming influenced by certain social ideas prevalent in the wider
society. They want to keep them away from ^^red agitators” and ^^outside
meddlers.” In most Southern communities the ruling classes of whites want
to keep Negroes from joining labor unions. Some are quite frank in want-
ing to keep Negroes from reading the Constitution or studying social
subjects. Besides these and other interests of a clearly selfish type, many
whites feel an altruistic interest in influencing Negroes to gain improved
standards of knowledge, morals and conduct.
As the contacts between the two groups are becoming increasingly
restricted and formalized, whites are more and more compelled to attempt
to influence the Negro masses indirectly. For this they need liaison agents
in the persons of Negro “leaders.” This need was considerably smaller in
earlier times when numerous personal and, in a sense, friendly master-
servant relations were in existence. These personal relations of old times
are now almost gone." This means that the whites have seen their possibil-
ities of controlling the Negro masses directly—that is, by acting themselves
as “Negro leaders”—much diminished. The whites have increasingly to
resort to leaders in the Negro group. They have, therefore, an interest in
helping those leaders obtain as much prestige and influence in the Negro
community as possible—as long as they cooperate with the whites faith-
fully.
On the other side of the caste gulf, the Negroes need persons to establish
contact with the influential people in the white group. They need Negro
leaders who can talk to, and get things from, the whites. The Negroes in
* See Chapter 30, Section 2.
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