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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 3. The Decay of the Caste Theory
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Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads 1003
a couple of decades ago. But now it is almost destroyed for upper class and
educated people. Its maintenance among lower class and uneducated people
meets increasing difficulties. The gradual destruction of the ’popular theory
behind race prejudice is the most important of all social trends in the field
of interracial relations.
It is significant that today even the white man who defends discrimina-
tion frequently describes his motive as “prejudice” and says that it is
“irrational.” The popular beliefs rationalizing caste in America arc no
longer intellectually respectable. They can no longer, therefore, be found
in current books, newspapers or public speeches. They live a surreptitious
life in thoughts and private remarks. There we have had to hunt them
when studying the matter in this inquiry. When they were thus drawn out
into the open they looked shabby and ashamed of themselves. Everybody
who has acquired a higher education knows that they are wrong. Most
white people with a little education also have a hunch that they are wrong.
There is today a queer feeling of credo quia absurdum hovering over the
whole complex of popular beliefs sustaining racial discrimination. This
makes the prejudiced white man nearly as pathetic as his Negro victim.
The white man is thus in the process of losing confidence in the theory
which gave reason and meaning to his way of life. And since he has not
changed his life much, he is in a dilemma. This change is probably irrevers-
ible and cumulative. It is backed by the American Creed. The trend of
psychology, education, anthropology, and social science is toward environ-
mentalism in the explanation of group diflFerences, which means that the
racial beliefs which defended caste are being torn away. It also means, by
implication, that the white majority group in power is accused of being the
cause of the Negro’s deficiencies and unhappiness. Authority and respecta-
bility are no longer supporting the popular beliefs. The beliefs are no
longer nourished from above. Instead they are increasingly fought. There
is a considerable time-lag between what is thought in the higher and in
the lower social classes. But as time passes the lower social strata also will
change their beliefs. These ideas are spread by the advance of education.
All of this is important. People want to be rational, and they want to feel
that they are good and righteous. They want to have the society they live
in, and their behavior in this society, explained and justified to their con-
science. And now their theory is being torn to pieces j
its expression is
becoming recognized as a mark of ignorance.
On the other side of the caste gulf the development leads to increased
bitterness. To the Negro the white man’s trouble with his conscience cannot
but seem to be insincerity or something worse. The Negro protest is rising,
spurred by the improvement in education. The Negro group is being per-
meated by the democratic and equalitarian values of the American culture.
Since at the same time there has been increasing separation between the two
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