1055 (An American Dilemma : the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy)

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Appendix 2. Note on Facts and Valuations 1055
as it will disturb somewhat the smooth operation of the ‘‘natural laws.” This is, for
instance, the doctrine back of Adam Smith’s well-known dictum that trade barriers,
though, of course, irrational and cumbersome, will, in the broad overview, not amount
to much, as the smugglers will pierce them, acting here as the agents of the “natural
laws” with the same immutability as water seeking its level. The “invisible hand” will
inevitably guide human activity. On this central point, which apparently is much of the
political purpose of the whole theory of folkways and mores, Sumner simply expresses
a common American prejudice against legislation which we have discussed in Chapter
I, Section 5, and in other places.
The presence of this same static and fatalistic valuation in the hidden ethos of
contemporary social science is suggested by some of the terminology found throughout
the writings of many sociologists, such as “balance,” “harmony,” “equilibrium,” “adjust-
ment,” “maladjustment,” “organization,” “disorganization,” “accommodation,” “func-
tion,” “social process” and “cultural lag.” While they all—as the corresponding concepts
in economics, mentioned above—^have been used advantageously to describe empirically
observable situations, they carry within them the tendency to give a do-nothing {laissez-
faire) valuation of those situations. How the slip occurs is easily understandable: When
we speak of a social situation being in harmony, or having equilibrium, or its forces
organized, accommodated, or adjusted to each other, there is the almost inevitable impli-
cation that some sort of ideal has been attained, whether in terms of “individual happi-
ness” or the “common welfare.” Such a situation is, therefore, evaluated as “good”
and a movement in the direction is “desirable.” The negative terms—disharmony,
disequilibrium, maladjustment, disorganization—correspondingly describe an undesirable

There is practically no discussion in the literature on the value connotation in the terms
exemplified in the text. When raising the question with representative social scientists, I
have often met the following reaction: first, an acknowledgment that many authors in
speaking of adjustment, accommodation, disorganization, and so forth, imply valuations of
“good” or “bad” and that this is unscientific, but, second, that sometimes—even when a
valuation is implied—this is so general that it is self-evident. “Accommodation, for example,”
it is said, “is a process whereby people are able to cooperate and thereby maintain some
social order} accommodation grows out of a conflict of interest and is only established after
each party to the conflict has accepted a place in the social order and developed appropriate
or reciprocal attitudes} but there always remains a latent conflict. The only ‘goodness*
implied in accommodation is that thereby cooperation under social order is maintained.”
Against this argument there are several criticisms to be raised: (i) the value given to
cooperation and social order should be given explicitly rather than implicitly in the con-
notation of a term} (2) this valuation is certainly not under all conditions self-evident
from the viewpoint of every party involved (to one party a continued conflict can under
circumstances be preferable, if only for reaching another and more favorable status of
accommodation) } (3) this valuation is not, just because it is so general, precise enough to
serve a scientific purpose even if it were made explicit (the status to which conflicting
parties are actually brought to “accommodate” is not given a friori but is the outcome of a
social process, the actual result of which becomes condoned because /‘accommodation** in
general is condoned} this result could have been different not only because of a prolonged
conflict but also because of a different type of accommodation behavior by one person or the
other). In the Negro problem practically every situation, except where a race riot is on, can
be, and is often actually in the literature, described as an “accommodation,** and status quo
in every aspect can thus be, and is, implicitly justified because it preserves cooperation and
the social order.

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