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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 - 4. Negroes in the War Crisis
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ioo6 An American Dilemma
freely— and sometimes provocatively—the danger of a low morale among
Negroes.
In this War there was a “colored” nation on the other side—Japan. And
that nation started out by beating the white Anglo-Saxons on their own
ground. The smoldering revolt in India against British rule had significance
for the American Negroes, and so had other “color” incidents in the world
conflict: the wavering sympathies of several native populations in the
Dutch and British possessions in the Pacific, the mistrust against Great
Britain among the Arab peoples, the first abandonment of Ethiopia, and
the ambiguity of the plans for the colonial chessboard of Africa. Even
unsophisticated Negroes began to see vaguely a color scheme in world
events, although their thoughts are usually not yet organized in a definite
pattern.^ In a “letter to the editor” by a Negro, which crept into a liberal
white paper in the Upper South, the concluding sentences read:
The Negro races on earth are very suspicious of the white man’s good intentions.
This is very likely to be the last war that the white man will be able to lead humanity
to wage for plausible platitudes."*
And this low-toned threat from a single Southern Negro became occasion-
ally more shrill in the North: all colored people should be united in their
interests against the whites, and the aim should not be “national unity” but
a real color war which would definitely end white Imperialism and exploi-
tation.
But this was exceptional. World politics and the color Issue are, in the
final analysis, of secondary importance to American Negroes, except as
avenues for the expression of dissatisfaction. The American Negro is thor-
oughly Americanized j
his complaint is merely that he is not accepted.
What really matters to him is his treatment at home, in his own country.
A Negro journalist, explaining the feeling of the Negro to the white public,
has this to say:
Because he must fight discrimination to fight for his country and to earn a living,
the Negro to-day is angry, resentful, and utterly apathetic about the war. “Fight for
what?” he is asking. “This war doesn’t mean a thing to me. If we win I lose, so
what?
Reading the Negro press and hearing all the reports from observers who
have been out among common Negroes in the South and the North con-
vince me that there is much sullen skepticism, and even cynicism, and vague,
tired, angry dissatisfaction among American Negroes today. The general
bitterness is reflected in the stories that are circulating in the Negro
communities: A young Negro, about to be inducted into the Army, said,
“Just carve on my tombstone, ^Here lies a black man killed fighting a
yellow man for the protection of a white man.’” Another Negro boy
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