Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 3. Facets of the Negro Problem - 4. The “Rank Order of Discriminations”
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
66 An American Dilemma
their opposition to discrimination on these lower levels. It is principally on
these lower levels of the ‘white man’s rank order of discriminations that
the race struggle goes on. The struggle will widen to embrace all the
thousand problems of education, politics, economic standards, and so forth,
and the frontier will shift from day to day according to varying events.
Even a superficial view of discrimination in America will reveal to the
observer: first, that there are great differences, not only between larger
regions, but between neighboring communities; and, second, that even in
the same community, changed occur from one time to another. There is
also, contrary to the rule that all Negroes arc to be treated alike, a certain
amount of discretion depending upon the class and social status of the
Negro in question. A white person, especially if he has high status in the
community, is, furthermore, supposed to be free, within limits, to overstep
the rules. The rules are primarily to govern the Negro’s behavior.
Some of these differences and changes can be explained. But the need
for their interpretation is perhaps less than has sometimes been assumed.
The variations in discrimination between local communities or from one
time to another are often not of primary consequence. All of these thousand
and one precepts, etiquettes, taboos, and disabilities inflicted upon the Negro
have a common purpose: to express the subordinate status of the Negrc
people and the exalted position of the whites. They have their meaning and
chief function as symbols. As symbols they are, however, interchangeable
to an extent: one can serve in place of another without causing material
difference in the essential social relations in the community.
The differences in patterns of discrimination between the larger regions
of the country and the temporal changes of patterns within one region,
which reveal a definite trend, have, on the contrary, more material import.
These differences and changes imply, in fact, a considerable margin of
variation within the very notion of American caste, which is not true of
all the other minor differences between the changes in localities within a
single region—hence the reason for a clear distinction. For exemplification
it may suffice here to refer only to the differentials in space. As one moves
from the Deep South through the Upper South and the Border states to
the North, the manifestations of discrimination decrease in extent and
intensity; at the same time the rules become more uncertain and capricious.
The “color line” becomes a broad ribbon of arbitrariness. The old New
England states stand, on the whole, as the antipode to the Deep South.
This generalization requires important qualifications, and the relations are
in process of change.
The decreasing discrimination as we go from South to North in the
\3v\Wed Stales \s Ye\ated to a SasK ^re^vidvce. \tv tine
North the Negroes have fair justice and ate not distrancVused*, tVie^ are
not Jim-Crowed in public means of conveyance; educational institutions
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
