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Chapter 30. Effects of Social Inequality 653
in his building,® In slavery days the house servant learned the culture of
his white master and—from a position on the top of the Negro class struc-
ture—^transmitted it to the other slaves. Servants no longer have the high-
est socio-economic status among Negroes, but it can be safely said that
Negroes know the white world very well, in its private, though not in its
public, aspects.^®
The white employer, on the other hand, does not know the Negro’s
world just because he has Negro servants. The white employer ordinarily
is interested mainly in getting his servant to work, and his attitude toward
the servant is, therefore, usually impersonal. We have already commented
upon the fact that this relationship has in the main lost in intimacy and
personal friendliness. Even if the white mistress takes an interest in her
servant’s well-being, she seldom gets first-hand acquaintance with the
Negro’s living conditions, and Negroes show an extreme suspicion of
inquisitive whites, who, even though friendly, have a superior and some-
times insulting attitude.^^ In the South, there are also the barriers of
etiquette: when the content of friendliness and mutual feeling of belonging
is carved out from the system of etiquette, it becomes, to the Negroes, a
cause for generalized resentment against the whites, and, to the whites, a
formalization of their power over the Negroes. In both directions the
etiquette works toward estranging the two groups. Even if, by some rare
chance, a white employer should really come to know intimately his or
her Negro servant, he would not thereby come to know the whole wide
range of Negro life. What often happens in the employer-servant rela-
tionship is that—depending on the degree of friendliness or appreciation
of the white employer and the degree of confidence felt by the Negro
servant—the white man or woman makes an exception of his or her servant
to the stereotyped conception of the ^^Negro in general.” Similarly, the
Negro servant might under happy conditions come to regard his or her
employer as an exception to the general run of mean and exploitative
white people. Too, the lower and dependent position of the Negro servant
enhances the white person’s belief that ^‘the Negro is all right in his place.”
The contacts between white and Negro workers were formerly of the
same type. In the trades and handicrafts, the pattern in the South was, and
is, that the white worker had a Negro helper. In factories the Negro
workers are usually segregated or, in any case, held to certain jobs.^^ As
we have pointed out, the mixed trade unions are a new adventure with an
uncertain future. It is commonly reported that white workers, if they
become accustomed to working with Negro workers, tend to become less
prejudiced, and consequently that the Negro workers become less suspi-
* All service workers have, in one degree or another, this intimate type of contact with
those they serve.
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