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 - X. The Negro Community - 43. Institutions - 4. The Negro School and Negro Education - 5. Voluntary Associations
<< 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.
952 An American Dilemma
Negroes is hardly questioned any longer. The complete educational ladder
is available to practically all Northern Negroes and to most of the Southern
Negroes who live in large Southern cities. At least the rudiments of an
education are available even to the rural Southern Negroes. There is
considerable educational opportunity at the college level, even in the
South. The general trend toward improved education is helping the Negro,
even if he does not share in the new opportunities as much as do whites.
5. Voluntary Associations
As many foreign observers have pointed out,^’^ America has an unusual
proliferation of social clubs, recreational organizations, lodges, fraternities
and sororities, civic improvement societies, self-improvement societies,
occupational associations, and other organizations which may be grouped
under the rubric of ^Voluntary associations.” While this is true of
Americans generally, Negroes seem to have an even larger relative
number of associations. In Chicago in 1937, when the total Negro
population of the city was less than 275,000, there were over 4,000
formal associations, the membership of which was wholly or largely
Negro.^^ In Natchez, Mississippi, where the total Negro population
was about 7,500, there were more than 200 Negro associations discov-
ered in one week in 1935.^’^ This characteristic of the Negro commu-
nity becomes even more striking when it is realized that generally upper
and middle class people belong to more associations than do lower class
people.^® Thus, despite the fact that they are predominantly lower class,
Negroes are more inclined to join associations than are whites; in this
respect again, Negroes are ‘‘exaggerated” Americans. Only a small number
of the Negro associations had as their primary purpose to protest against
caste or to improve the Negro community in some way;^^ these protest and
improvement associations were considered in Chapter 39. Here we shall
give brief consideration to the many associations which have a “sociable”
or “expressive” function. With rare exceptions, these associations have only
Negroes as members, and their large number is in some measure a product
of the prohibitions against having Negro menribers in white associations.
Max Weber has sought to explain the numerous social clubs in America
as a means of helping people to business, political and social success.**® This
is only partly true for American Negroes. It is undoubtedly the reason why
upper and middle class Negroes belong to more voluntary associations than
do lower class Negroes.^® But it does not serve to explain why Negroes have
relatively more associations than do whites, or why lower class Negroes are
members of as many associations as they are. Membership in their own
segregated associations does not help Negroes to success in the larger Amer-
ican society. The situation must be seen as a pathological one: Negroes are
active in associations because they are not allowed to be active in much of
the other organised life of American society. As Robert R. Moton pointed
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
