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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 4. The Whites’ Attitudes toward Negro Education
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Chapter 41. The Negro School 895
should not know about. It will make him dissatisfied where he has been
happy and accommodated. It will raise some Negroes above many whites
in culture. It will make many more Negroes ‘^uppity” ahd obnoxious. The
supremacy of individual whites is bound up with Negro ignorance. If the
Negro stays in the only “place” where he should be, then he does not need
any education. These opinions also make sense in the light of the white
caste’s undoubted interest in keeping education away from the Negroes.
The white people have among themselves all the power, and so their
convergent interests have molded Negro education in rural districts. The
low standard of Negro schools is the result. But even in the rural South
the observer sees the impact of the American Creed. Often it is revealed
only in a bad conscience. This is apparent everywhere. In most localities
there also seems to be a gradual improvement of Negro schools. In prac-
tically all places no obstacles are placed in the way of outside help if it
observes the proper Southern forms, and it will even be encouraged either
verbally or by “matching” it with local financial support. The scattering
around the entire region of the Rosenwald schoolhouses is a case in point.
Exertions by the Negroes to collect money among themselves for educa-
tional purposes are never discouraged but applauded by almost everybody.
This is not said by way of excusing the bald and illegal discrimination in
the rural school systems in the South, but only to stress the fact that the
white caste interests are practically never driven to their logical end.
In the urban South, whites of the employing class do not have the same
material interests in keeping the Negroes ignorant. They have rather to
gain if their Negro servants and laborers have at least some education. The
poorer classes of whites have scarcely any such gains to reap, however.
They are interested in keeping Negroes as much as possible out of competi-
tion on the labor market. The general interest of keeping the Negroes down
to preserve the caste order intact is present in the cities too. It is shared
by all classes, but, of course, felt most strongly by the poorer whites. City
populations are, however, more closely integrated in the life of the nation;
the regional traditions are somewhat weaker, the cultural level among
whites is higher, the American Creed is stronger. So we find that Southern
cities offer the Negroes a substantially better education. In the Border
states the integration in the national life and the strength of the Ameri-
can Creed are still stronger, and we find also that the educational facilities
available to Negroes are more nearly equal to those of the whites.
The primary rationalization of this gradual deviation in the South from
the policy representing the crude caste interest is usually phrased in the
popular theory .of the American Creed—^that education of the youths of
the poorer classes is beneficial not only to themselves but to society. Thomas
Nelson Page presented the liberal Southerners’ attitude toward the educa-
tion of the Negro masses many years ago:
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