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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 8. “The Advantages of the Disadvantages”
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796 An American Dilemma
doctors and nurses tor Negroes. This, by the way, is a demand which is
the more reasonable as Negro doctors and nurses are excluded practically
everywhere from white hospitals, even where there are Negro wards. But
the Negro protest has here accepted the segregation policy. “I was heart and
soul ... in [the] fight against segregation and yet I knew that for a hun-
dred years in this America of ours it was going to be at least partially in
vain,” comments Du Bois with reference to a particular incident during his
work with the N.A.A.C.P. and continues:
. . . what Negroes need is hospital treatment now; and what Negro physicians need
is hospital practice; and to meet their present need, poor hospitals are better than none;
segregated hospitals are better than those where the Negro patients are neglected or
relegated to the cellar. ... I am certain that for many generations American Negroes
in the United States have got to accept separate medical institutions. They may dis-
like it; they may and ought to protest against it; nevertheless it will remain for a long
time their only path to health, to education, to economic survival.
#
Ordinarily this policy is not expressed so bluntly, at least not publicly,
but it is the guiding theory for most practical Negro policy on the local
scene. It runs through the whole gamut of Negro professions and businesses.
It was definitely part of Booker T. Washington’s strategy:
Let us in future spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot
live in, and more time in making that part of the city that we live in beautiful and
attractive.^*
In judging this opportunistic policy it should be held in mind that, in the
main, the economic and social interests of the articulate Negro upper class
groups run parallel to obvious interests of the whole Negro people, as there
is usually little prospect that segregation and discrimination will be stamped
out in the near future. Excluded from, or separated and discriminated
against, in all sorts of public and private institutions and facilities, Negroes
need more and improved schools, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, Y.M.C.A.’s,
funeral homes, taxi companies and all sorts of Negro professional and
business activities.
The N.A.A.C.P. is by necessity caught in the same ideological com-
promise.® In principle the Association fights all segregation. As a long-range
solution it demands that all color bars be torn down. Often its practical
task, however, will be to defend the Negroes’ interests that a reasonable
equality is observed within the existing system of segregation:
The NAACP from the beginning faced this bogey. It was not, never had been,
and never could be an organization that took an absolute stand against race segregation
of any sort under all circumstances. This would be a stupid stand in the face of clear
and uncontrovertible facts. When the NAACP was formed, the great mass of Negro
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