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1360 An American Dilemma
different areas and of different statuses and with different personal characteristics. This
source would provide exact information on such things as the use of the term “nigger”
and the refusal to let Negroes enter by the front door and sit in the presence of whites.
It is especially important to get precise information about interpersonal relations between
Negroes and whites since these probably form the most sensitive index of the condition
of and trends in the Negro problem as a whole. Only quantitative data could really
indicate how segregation and discrimination curtail the number and scope of personal
contacts over the color line, and how they change the character of those contacts which
remain. Only quantitative data—along with other information—could permit an
empirical analysis of the causation of those patterns.
Since no systematic quantitative study has been made, we shall be forced to give the
same sort of impressionistic survey which we have just criticized. We have the advantage,
however, of Charles S. Johnson’s summary of general patterns of segregation and dis-
crimination in thirteen communities {Patterns of Negro Segregation [1943] ;
this study
was carried out as part of our inquiry), as well as a diverse variety of local studies and
of published and unpublished statements. For the etiquette of race relations, there is the
study by Bertram Wilbur Doyle, TAe Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (1937).
^ Mississippi has “. . . a criminal statute punishing anyone for publishing, printing,
or circulating any literature in favor of or urging interracial marriage or social equality.”
(Charles S. Mangum, Jr., The Legal Status of the Negro [1940], p. 237.)
® Louis Wirth and Herbert Goldhamer, “The Hybrid and the Problem of Mis-
cegenation,” in Otto Klineberg (editor). Characteristics of the American NegrOy pre-
pared for this study; to be published, manuscript page 160.
The Supreme Court has never directly passed upon the constitutionality of the laws
against intermarriage. It is, however, commonly upheld on the ground that the pro-
scription is not discrimination but applies to both the Negro and the white partner.
(Compare Mangum, of, cit,y pp. 288 ff.)
^ The existing statistical knowledge about recent intermarriage is limited to three
areas. Wirth and Goldhamer have complied in detail statistics for Boston and for New
York State outside of New York City. {Of, cit,, manuscript pages 37-71.) Panunzio
has calculated summary figures for Los Angeles County. (Constantine Panunzio, “Inter-
marriage in Los Angeles, 1924-1933,” The American Journal of Sociology [March,
1942], p. 699.) Of all marriages involving Negroes in Boston in 1934-1938, 3.7 per
cent were with whites. For New York State exclusive of New York City, the correspond-
ing figure in I934"^936 was 1.7 per cent. For Los Angeles County in the period 1924-
1933, there were only four cases, although there were 51 cases of intermarriage with
Asiatics and Indians. California has had a law prohibiting Negro-white intermarriage
since 1850, but there were three cases of Negro males born outside the United States
and one case of a white female born outside the United States, who were allowed to
marry into the other group. If the number of intermarriages be considered, not as
relative to the total number of marriages involving Negroes but as relative to the total
number of marriages involving whites, the percentage drops to an insignificant fraction.
Thus even the relative numerical significance of intermarriage is much greater for
Negroes than for whites. The data show intermarriage higher in urban than in rural
areas, but this is only among marriages between Negro males and white females, and not
between white males and Negro females. The former type of intermarriage is much
more common, and the light female finds she can get a better man among her own
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