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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 36. The Protest Motive and Negro Personality - 7. The “Function” of Racial Solidarity
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Chapter 36. Protest Motive and Negro Personality 767
nism from the lower classes which arises out of the latters’ poverty and
dependence and which rightly should partly be directed against the caste
system and the whites.^® As the Negro protest becomes more articulate also
among lower class Negroes, there is likely to be, however, a partial redi-
rection of their antagonism in this latter direction and a mitigation of the
class protest against the Negro upper class. Ufper class Negroes find it
necessary to instigate a protest against caste on the part of the Negro masses
as a means of averting lower class opposition against themselves and to steer
it instead against the white caste. For them the preaching of race solidarity
is an instrument to assert Negro leadership.^® It is also desirable in order
to strengthen their economic monopolies behind the segregation wall.
The protest motive allows, on the other side of the bargain, the lower
class Negroes to take vicarious satisfaction in the attainments of the upper
class Negroes. It gives basis to the symbolic significance of upper class status
which we mentioned earlier.® As we have repeatedly pointed out, the com-
mon Negroes need the Negro upper class as liaison agents to the whites.
In this way, both upper class and lower class Negroes are likely to swing
between^ on the one side, desire for intense isolation and resentment against
other Negro social classes and^ on the other side^ race solidarity based on
the caste protest against white society. For few individuals in any one of the
various classes is the state of his feelings toward the rest of the Negro com-
munity a stable one. For all Negroes, the Negro protest fills a ^Tunction”
of allowing a higher degree of caste solidarity.
See Chapter 34, Sections 5 and 8.
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