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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 10. Quantitative Studies of Race Attitudes - 3. “Personal” and “Political” Opinions
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XI40 An American Dilemma
on the one hand, when he faces the problem as a citizen taking a stand on the population
issue if this is brought to the political forefront and, on the other hand, when he faces
his own family limitation problem.® Exactly this same thing is true in the Negro
problem. Many white people would be prepared to stand for and practice changed
relations to Negroes if they were made the common rule in society, while they are not
prepared to practice them as exceptions to the rule. Some of the apparent confusion and
contradiction in nearly every individual’s attitude to the Negro problem becomes
explainable by applying this
distinction.***
Part of the actual differences between personal and political attitudes is rational.
The very aim of a person’s political opinion is to ask for and, eventually, to cause such
institutional changes in society that the circumstances under which he lives and forms
his personal opinions are modified, and, consequently, to change his personal behavior
and attitudes also. A positive stand on the political population question—say a demand
that the average nonstcrile marriage produce four children—may be the center of a
complex of political opinions demanding legal and economic changes in the family
institution. There is no contradiction between a four-child norm in one’s political
opinion and, say, a two-child norm in one’s personal opinion and actual family limitation
behavior.
Similarly in the Negro problem. In numerous conversations with white Americans
in the North and in the South, the observer is informed by the man he talks to that he
himself would be prepared to act in such and such a way diflferent from his ordinary
behavior if society, the local community, or “public opinion” would not react in such
and such a way; and, second, that he would favor this and this social change implying
such and such alterations of the caste relations in society, although he is not prepared
to live up to those alterations as an individual unless the social changes are first carried
out. It should be noticed that political opinions are thus regularly of a conditional
character and that they usually refer to a more distant future. There are few white
* Sec Gunnar Myrdal, Pofulation: A Problem for Democracy (1940), Chapter 5,
“People’s Opinions,” particularly pp. 106 ff. and 115 ff.
*’The distinction between public and private attitudes also comes out with regard to
what one will or will not admit with respect to the Negro. Baker tells a story which illus-
trates this aspect of the distinction. It is from “. . . the discussions of the Alabama legislature
then in session. A compulsory education bill had been introduced; the problem was to pass
a law that would apply to white people, not to Negroes. In this connection I heard a signifi-
cant discussion in the state senate. I use the report of it, for accuracy, as given the next
morning in the Advertiser:
“ ^Senator Thomas said ... he would oppose any bills that would compel Negroes to
educate their children, for it had come to his knowledge that Negroes would give the
clothing off their backs to send their children to school, while too often the white man,
secure in his supremacy, would be indifferent to his duty.
‘At this point Senator Lusk arose excitedly to his feet and said
:
^ ‘
“Does the Senator from Barbour mean to say that the Negro race is more ambitious
and has more aspirations than the white race?”
“ ‘
“The question of the gentleman ... is an insult to the senate of Alabama,” replied
Senator Thomas deliberately. “It is an insult to the great Caucasian race, the father of all
the arts and sciences, to compare it to that black and kinky race which lived in a state of
black and ignorant savagery until the white race seized it and lifted it to its present pos;-
tipn.”’” (Ray Stj^nnard ?aker; fgUowinf the Color Line [1908], p. i^%,)
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