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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 10. Quantitative Studies of Race Attitudes - 4. The Practical Study of Race Prejudice
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1142 An American Dilemma
of three types, which we have described as that of the white Southerner, that of the
white Northerner, that of the Negro. In holding this theory, we do not claim that other
theories are incorrect or that no other classification of race prejudice is useful. It is
merely that we happen to find this theory and this classification most useful, and we
have organized our book around them. Our description and classification are, of course,
based on impression and need to be verified and modified by further research. Further,
we do not claim that all white Southerners have the kind of prejudice which we
characterize as being typical of prejudiced white Southerners, or that no Northerners
have this kind of prejudice. It is merely that we find the race prejudice characteristic
of most prejudiced Southern whites different, on the average, from that characteristic
of most prejudiced Northern whites. Similarly, we believe that the prejudice of most
Negroes is to be analyzed in difi’erent terms.
The prejudice of the white Southerner has a complex basis. The Southerner holds
that all Negroes are inferior to all whites, and he has a great variety of racial and social
beliefs to support this valuation. The character of his prejudice is revealed in his “rank
order of discriminations”:* It is surely significant that the white Southerner is much
less willing to permit intermarriage or to grant “social equality” than he is to allow
equality in the political, judicial and economic spheres.^ The violence of the Southern-
er’s reaction to equality in each of the spheres rises with the degree of its relation to the
sexual and the personal, which suggests that his prejudice is based upon fundamental
Attitudes toward sex and personality. An attempt to reduce race prejudice of this sort
requires a profound strategy. Attitude measurement devices could not only get at the
specific character of the race attitudes but could also help to test various experimental
devices used in attempting to modify these attitudes.
The race prejudice of the typical Northerner seems to be of a much simpler charac-
ter. It is based mainly on ignorance, both simple and opportune, and is much less bound
up with fundamental conceptions of society and self. The Northerner seldom gets a
chance to see the Negro’s good points, and he does not understand the social back-
ground of the Negro’s bad points. The Southerner’s prejudice also has much of
ignorance in it, but the Southerner’s ignorance is more opportune because it is tied to
fundamental motives. The Northerner has little of the Southerner’s rank order of
discriminations: he favors equality in justice and politics, and he finds the etiquette of
race relations obnoxious. The Northerner is against intermarriage and equality in the
economic sphere. But even here his motives seem to be largely different from those of
the Southerner: he avoids intermarriage mainly for reasons of social status and personal
antipathy, not because he believes that intermarriage will disrupt society he is against
• See Chapter 3, Section 4.
**
See Chapters 2S and 29.
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