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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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Chapter 43. Institutions 929
the emotionalism in the Negro church, the insufficiency and unwholesome-
ness of Negro recreational activity, the plethora of Negro sociable organiza-
tions, the narrowness of interests of the average Negro, the provincialism
of his political speculation, the high Negro crime rate, the cultivation of the
arts to the neglect of other fields, superstition, personality difficulties, and
other characteristic traits are mainly forms of social pathology which, for
the most part, are created by the caste pressures.
This can be said positively: we assume that it is to the advantage of
American Negroes as individuals and as a grouf to become assimilated into
American culturey
to acquire the traits held in esteem by the dominant white
Americans, This will be the value premise here. We do not imply that
white American culture is “higher” than other cultures in an absolute sense.
The notion popularized by anthropologists that all cultures may be good
under the different conditions to which they are adaptations, and that no
derogatory association should a priori be attached to primitive cultures, is
a wholesome antidote to arrogant and erroneous ideas closely bound up
with white people’s false racial beliefs and their justification of caste. But
it does not gainsay our assumption that here^ in America
y
American culture
is “highest” in the pragmatic sense that adherence to it is practical for any
individual or group which is not strong enough to change it.
Also not to be taken in a doctrinal sense is the observation that peculiari-
ties in the Negro community may be characterized as social pathology. As
a reaction to adverse and degrading living conditions, the Negroes’ culture
is taking on some characteristics which are not given a high evaluation in the
larger American culture. Occasionally the Negro culture traits are appre-
ciated by the whites. The Negro spirituals—called by James Weldon
Johnson, though with some exaggeration-, “America’s only folk music”
—
are a case in point.®
From the practical point of view, the problem of the historical origin of
the divergences of American Negro culture becomes irrelevant. The con-
• Similar exceptions can be noticed in every lower class culture. There has been, for
instance, in most industrial countries in recent decades, a “proletarian” branch of literature,
which draws its themes and its inspiration from life in the lower classes. This literature is
often, characteristically enough, appreciated more by members of the higher classes than by
the proletarians themselves. Generally pastoral romanticism, which has been a part of urban
civilization since the time of the ancient Greeks, has idealized lower class life. The tendency
is tainted with sentimentality, and this is frequently displayed by people who show a particular
interest in Negro culture. Among the radically inclined, this romanticism serves to express
their sympathy for the underdog j among conservatives it serves as a rationalization for
continuing the inequalities. To Negroes it serves as an expression of their protest and their
“race pride.” As usual it appeals much more to upper and middle class Negroes than to
lower class Negroes. The sentimentality involved in idealizing lower class traits has, of
course, nothing to do with scientific observation. The residuum of truth in the tendency is,
however, that even if generally the result of adverse living conditions are bad, exceptionally
they may be good—“good” and “bad” defined according to our value premise of placing
the general American culture “higher.”
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