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1354 An American Dilemma
He does not mean that the gains theory is held consciously and unqualifiedly by the
majority of Southern whites who receive these gains from Negro subordination.
Race Orthodoxy in the South (1914), p. 48.
The popular theory usually does not reach the level of articles and books any more
;
even the recent scientific literature on the Negro problem is likely to avoid this central
notion. Thomas P. Bailey, a Mississippi professor writing just before the First World
War, gives perhaps the clearest pronouncement in print of the prevalent view:
“Some representatives of the humanitarian group feel it difficult to understand why an
illiterate and even vicious white man should object to dining with a highly cultured
negro gentleman. To them the attitude of the ‘low’ white man seems essentially illogical
and absurd; but it is not so to the men who know the ‘low-grade’ white man from the
inside. The whole picture changes when one knows ‘what it is about.’ Social attitudes
at bottom are concerned with marriage
^
and all it stands for. Now, race conscience may
prevent the enlightened humanitarian from encouraging in any way the interbreeding of
the two races. Race-pride will deter the average man who is willing to acknowledge
the excellence of certain individual negroes. But ma’^ it not require race enmity to fre-
vent the amalgamation of the ‘lower’ grades of the higher race with the higher grades
of the lower race?” (Of, cit,y pp. 11-12; second and third italics ours.)
Thomas N. Page, The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem (1904), p. 292. See
also Chapter 3, Section 3, and Chapter 4. Under the influence of modern research this
doctrine is in process of disappearing from the literature but it lives on in the convic-
tion of white people. It has even today the gist exemplified by the quotation in the text.
Again the prevalent sentiment is best exemplified by a citation of old literature. The
rhetorical intensity of the following paragraphs from Henry W. Grady gives something
of the emotional tone of even present-day popular views:
“But the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and
the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the
white race is the superior race. This is the declaration of no new truth; it has abided
forever in the marrow of our bones and shall run forever with the blood that feeds
Anglo-Saxon hearts.” (Of, cit,^ p. 104.)
“Standing in the presence of this multitude, sobered with the responsibility of the
message 1 deliver to the young men of the South, 1 declare that the truth above all others
to be worn unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, sold for
no price, compromised in no necessity, but cherished and defended as the convenant of
your prosperity, and the pledge of peace to your children, is, that the white race must
dominate forever in the South, because it is the white race, and superior to that race
with which its supremacy is threatened.” (lbid,y pp. 107-108.)
Sec Chapter 3, Section 2. James Weldon Johnson observes that in the South “. . .
a white gentleman may not cat with a colored person without the danger of serious loss
of social prestige; yet he may sleep with a colored person without incurring the risk
of any appreciable damage to his reputation,” and concludes, “Social equality signifies
a series of far-flung barriers against amalgamation of the two races; except so far as it
may come about by white men with colored women.” (Along This Way^ pp. 3 12-3 13.)
®®“The intelligent Negro may understand what social equality truly means, but
to the ignorant and brutal young Negro, it signifies but one thing: the opportunity
to enjoy, equally with white men, the privilege of cohabiting with white women. This
the whites of the South understand; and if it were understood abroad, it would serve
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