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 - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 12. “Back to Africa” - 13. Miscellaneous Ideologies
<< 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 38. Negro Popular Theories 807
finally be realized. This cannot occur, however, until Africa is not a chess-
board divided among European powers but is ruled in the interests of
humanity and its own native population and with the goal that its various
peoples will be independent as soon as possible, and until capital is invested
in health and education and in the development of its natural resources.
Lord Hailey, an Englishman, has already done some of the necessary
spade work^® of scientific inquiry for such practical work 5
a committee
under his chairmanship is now preparing further plans. The problem is also
being discussed in America. A committee of prominent white and Negro
Americans under the chairmanship of Anson Phelps Stokes—^The Commit-
tee on Africa, the War, and Peace Aims—has recently (1942) published
a report. The Atlantic Charter and Africa from an American Standpoints
containing constructive proposals for a new African policy.
There are several factors which make it more probable, perhaps, that
something positive will materialize out of the vague promises. One is that
America has not taken any part in the African skin game. Another one is
the fact that Russia and China are bound to play an important role in the
peace. If anything in line with the promises would be carried out, it would
be natural that American Negroes would take both a great interest in the
adventure and an active part in its staging. Many Negroes in America feel
an emotional attachment to Africa and its population. And because of their
color they would, with greater ease, gain the confidence of the African
Negroes. Until now there have been few such thoughts in the American
Negro world. But Du Bois, who has become the most catholic of all Negro
thinkers, with room for nearly every idea, remarks:
. . . my plan would not decline frankly to face the possibility of eventual emigra-
tion from America of some considerable part of the Negro population, in case they
could find a chance for free and favorable development unmolested and unthreatened,
and in case the race prejudice in America persisted to such an extent that it would
not permit the full development of the capacities and aspirations of the Negro race.^®
The post-war development might perhaps come to realize not only the
second but also the first of these two conditions.
13. Miscellaneous Ideologies
The white colonization schemes have practically never—even in the
period when large regions of this country were unexploited—considered
the possibility of settling the Negroes separately on the North American
continent. Neither has there been much of a drive ^mong Negroes to
attempt to establish segregated Negro regions. The advocates of a Negro
^Torty-Ninth State” have never found much of an audience. As we men-
tioned," the Communist phantasmagoria of a liberated, Negro-governed
Black Belt fell flat among the American Negroes.
* See Chapter 35, Section 8.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
