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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 3. The Thinking on the Negro Problem - 4. Courting the “Best People Among the Whites”
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786 An American Dilemma
3. The Thinking on the Negro Problem
Negro thinking in social and political terms is thus exclusively a think-
ing about the Negro problem. The formation of popular theories among
Negroes concerning the Negro problem also does not result in articulate,
systematized and stable opinions. Particularly in the lower classes, and
in the Southern rural districts, the ideological structure of Negro think-
ing—even in its own narrow, caste-restricted realm—is loose, chaotic
and rambling. This is understandable since the major determinants in the
Negro problem are outside the Negroes’ control and usually outside their
vision.
Some main elements, and particularly the doctrine of Negro equality,
have, however, been fixed by the Negro protest, as far as public expres-
sions go, even if it is a hard struggle for the individual Negro to keep
up this badge of Negro solidarity.* But for the other elements, the popular
Negro theories on their own problem have not only been developed and
formulated by the small fraction of articulate upper class professionals and
intellectuals but they have been reaching down to the Negro masses
only slowly. In this process they have become blurred and simplified:
. . . there is little evidence that these articulated conceptions have filtered down into
the inert Negro mass, whose intellectual muscles are lax. It is this “elite” group
which alone indulges in vivacious theorizing on the “problem.”®
The popular theories on Negro strategy all try to solve the fundamental
problem of how to make a compromise between accommodation and pro-
test. Any workable policy has also to engender support from white groups.
One axis, convenient for our purpose of reaching a useful typology of
Negro ideologies, concerns what social class or group among the whites
is chosen as a prospectme ally.
4. Courting the “Best People among the Whites”
The traditional alignment in the South, following a pattern inherited
from slavery and white paternalism, is for the Negroes to seek support
from the white upper class.
Both the lower class Negroes and the upper class Negro leaders feel that
the “quality folks,” the “bwt people among the whites” are the friends of
the Negroes. They are held to be “too big” for prejudice. They are
secure and out of competition. The lower class whites, on the other hand,
have been considered as the Negroes’ natural enemies. There is, as we
have seen, a portion of truth in this view.®
The Negroes have therefore looked to those whites who have secure
*See Chapter 36, Section 2.
*See Chapter 17, Section 6, and Chapter iS, Section
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