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Appendix 8. Research in a Negro Community 1131
the application of a too hard and fast conceptual frame of class structure will do violence
to the facts. When only a single community can be studied, it should not be assumed
to be typical nor should the question of its uniqueness or typicality be ignored. Rather,
the investigator must attempt to place it in the Southern scene, or in the American
scene, or even in the whole Western civilization scene, by comparing it with the average
and range in many significant respects. This he will be enabled to do by his general
knowledge and—more important—^by the great volume of census and other existing
bodies of statistical data. In the same way he should make use of the often great volume
of historical, descriptive, and statistical material, so that he can place the community
in time and see its dynamics, A community is in constant flux, and a cross-sectional
picture involves a distortion.
Caste and class are never the only bases for cleavage in a community. A community is
a complex thing. Social life occurs in the form of human experience and is not neatly
boxed according to the criterion in which the social scientist studies it. No two persons
are alike, and the range of variation in many respects is great. Except for a few things
like sexual differentiation, human beings do not divide themselves into “natural”
classes. Not only must the social scientist abstract from social reality, note variation in
his abstractions, and classify within the variations before he can begin to draw conclu-
sions, but he must also make a decision as to what abstractions, variations and classifica-
tions are significant. All these actions of the scientist are ultimately arbitrary. When we
choose “caste” and “class” as tools to organize our observations and conclusions about
American communities, we must be on our guard lest we put blinders on our observations.
While we do believe the concepts of caste and class arc important tools for the study
of American communities, there are other ordering concepts which are significant and
which must be related to caste or class to make even their role clear. Such traits as age,
sex, “personality,” “race philosophy,” rural or urban background, and perhaps others,
arc important to the study of any Negro community. For the purposes of illustration,
we may indicate briefly how “age” is an important concept for the study of such a
community. The continuous advancement of education and related factors of change
make the younger Negroes diff’erent from the older ones. Age differentials arc a basis
of solidarity and create tension within the class structure. As time passes, the young
become the old and move the entire class structure. Taking a cross-sectional view, the
constellation of caste, class and age may give a configuration like the one which Hor-
tense Powdermaker compresses in the following statement:
The White aristocrats are the least, and the Poor Whites are the most, hostile toward
the other race. Among the Negroes the upper class is the most, and the lower class the
least, antagonistic toward the Whites. Again, the older generation of Whites are the ones
in whom most affect is aroused by the inter-racial situation, while the younger generation
is inclined to view the problem more casually. The reverse is true for the Negroes: the
older generation shows the tolerance and calmness traditionally associated with age, while
the young people arc the ones who feel most intensely on racial issues.*
Such a situation is, of course, fraught with impending changes for the fundamental
class and caste relations. Taking a long-range view, the Negro class structure of today
is only the passing arrangement of a society in transition.
^ After Freedom (1939), p. 334.
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