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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 42. The Negro Press - 1. An Organ for the Negro Protest
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Chapter 42. The Negro Press 91 i
world. The ’press dejines the Negro group to the Negroes themselves^ The
individual Negro is invited to share in the sufferings, grievances, and
pretensions of the millions of Negroes far outside the narrow local com-
munity. This creates a feeling of strength and solidarity. The press, more
than any other institution, has created the Negro group as a social and
psychological reality to the individual Negro.
For this reason the Negro press is far more than a mere expression of
the Negro protest. By expressing the protest, the press also magnifies it,
acting like a huge sounding board. The press is also the chief agency of
group control. It tells the individual how he should think and feel as an
American Negro and creates a tremendous power of suggestion by imply-
ing that all other Negroes think and feel in this manner. It keeps the Negro
spokesman in line. Every public figure knows he will be reported, and he
has to weigh his words carefully. Both the leaders and the masses are
kept under racial discipline by the press. This promotes unanimity without
the aid of central direction.
The Negro press is thus strongly opinionated. This points to a difference
between the Negro press and the foreign-language press supported by the
various immigrant groups in America.® Both types of "minority press”
serve the interest of their groups to read more news about themselves
than the "majority press” cares to give them. Many individuals in the
immigrant groups are also not familiar with the English language, and a
foreign-language paper is to them a practical news agency. Many more
feel a certain pride in a non-American origin and culture. But this attach-
ment is usually experienced as a sentimental quality of distinction, besides
that of being, or becoming, an American. Immigrants are usually bent on
assimilation and, as good prospects are held out to them,*" they feel little
desire to protest.®
Negroes, on the contrary, have no language of their own, and their
culture is American. But, however much culturally assimilated they are,
they are not accepted as full-fledged Americans. They protest, not because
they feel themselves different, but because they want to be similar and are
forcibly held to be different.^ The news in the Negro papers is selected and
* For a sociological analysis of the immigrant press, see Robert £. Park, The Immigrant
Press and Its Control (1922).
“See Chapter 3, Section i.
“This is true in all ordinary immigrant groups which do not feel very disadvantaged,
and who are consequently not in opposition to their treatment in America. Exceptions are the
papers of very disadvantaged groups or of extremely radical sub-groups.
®To the white American their pretensions are preposterous. “The impatient, all but
militant and anti-social attitude of an influential section of the Negro press is to be
condemned in this connection. These editors show an unfortunate lack of appreciation of
the traits of the people they aspire to lead. Their language implies that the Negro is only an
Anglo-Saxon who is so unfortunate as to have a black skin. Such a race philosophy only
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