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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 43. Institutions - 1. The Negro Community as a Pathological Form of an American Community
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928 An American Dilemma
wished. Ideally, Americanization was to take place immediately, or, rather,
in the five years required to achieve citizenship. But it was realistically
recognized that in some cases it might require two or three generations.
Negroes have been living here for over three hundred years, and practi-
cally all of the ancestors of present-day Negroes came to this country more
than a hundred years ago. It is probable that, on the average, Negroes have
been Americans longer than any immigrant group except the British. They
should be well assimilated by now. Negroes, however, together with the
Orientals and, to some extent, Indians and Mexicans, have not been
allowed to assimilate as have European immigrants. There is intense
resistance on the part of the white majority group to biological amalgama-
tion j
and the lower caste status of Negroes is rationalized to prevent
miscegenation.*^ Negroes have been segregated, and they have developed,
or there have been provided for them, separate institutions in many
spheres of life, as, for instance, in religion and education. Segregation and
discrimination have also in other ways hampered assimilation. Particularly
they have steered acculturation so that the Negroes have acquired the
norms of lower class people in America.
Negro institutions are, nevertheless, similar to those of the white man.
They show little similarity to African institutions. In his cultural traits,
the Negro is akin to other Americans. Some peculiarities arc even to be
characterized as ^^exaggerations” of American traits. Horace Mann Bond
has characterized the American Negro as a ‘‘quintessential American.” ^
Even the “exaggeration” or intensification of general American traits in
American Negro culture is explainable by specific caste pressures. In his
allegiances the Negro is characteristically an American. He believes in the
American Creed and in other ideals held by most Americans, such as getting
ahead in the world, individualism, the importance of education and wealth.
He imitates the dominant culture as he sees it and in so far as he can adopt
it under his conditions of life. For the most part he is not proud of
those things in which he differs from the white American.
True, there has developed recently a glorification of things African,
especially in music and art, and there was a back-to-Africa movement after
the First World War.*^ But this is a reaction to discrimination from white
people, on the one hand, and a result of encouragement from white
people, on the other hand. Thus, even the positive movement away
from American culture has its source in that culture. Negro race pride
and race prejudice serve to fortify the Negro against white superiority.
In fractically all its divergencesy American Negro culture is not something
independent of general American culture. It is a distorted development,
or a pathological condition, of the general American culture. The instability
of the Negro family, the inadequacy of educational facilities for Negroes,
• See Chapters 3 and 28.
®Sce Chapter 35, Sections 7 and 9, and Chapter 38, Section 12.
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