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 - VII. Social Inequality - 30. Effects of Social Inequality - 5. Present Dynamics
<< 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.
66o An American Dilemma
5. Present Dynamics
Negroes adjust and have to adjust to this situation. They become condi-
tioned to patterns of behavior which not only permit but call for discrim-
inatory observance on the part of the whites. The people who live in the
system of existing relations have to give it a meaning. The Negroes have
the escape, however, that they can consider the system unjust and irra-
tional and can explain it in terms of white people’s prejudices, material
interest, moral wrongness and social power. They can avoid contacts and
in the unavoidable ones have a mental reservation to their servility. It
becomes to them a sign of education and class to do so and thereby preserve
their intellectual integrity. Many Negroes succeed in doing this, and their
number is growing. But the unfortunate whites have to believe in the
system of segregation and discrimination and to justify it to themselves.
It cannot be made intelligible and defensible except by false assumptions,
in which the whites force themselves to believe.
So the social order perpetuates itself and with it the sentiments and
beliefs by which it must be expressed. The lower caste may with some
exertion release themselves intellectually. The higher caste, on the con-
trary, is enslaved in its prejudices by its short-range interests. Without
their prejudices, W’hite people would have to choose between either giving
up the caste system and taking the resultant social, political, and economic
losses, or becoming thoroughly cynical and losing their self-respect. The
whites feel the Negroes’ resentment and suspect new attitudes. Formerly,
the whites got some support for their false prejudices from the Negroes.
This is becoming less and less true. Now they can hardly claim to ^^know
their Negroes” and are forced to admit their ignorance. The social separa-
tion they asked for is becoming a reality. Thus the tragedy is not only on
the Negro side.
But the system is changing, though slowly. Modern knowledge and
modern industrial conditions make it cumbersome. The South is becoming
‘^normalized” and integrated into the national culture. Like every other
“normal” province, it is beginning to dislike being provincial. The world
publicity around the Dayton trial, for instance, did much to censor funda-
mentalism in Southern religion. A great part of the region’s peculiarities
in its racial relations is becoming, even to the Southerner, associated with
backwardness. The Southerner is beginning to take on an apologetic tone
when he speaks of his attitude toward the Negro. To insist upon the full
racial etiquette is beginning to be regarded as affectation.
The South has long eagerly seized upon every act of prejudice practiced
against the Negro in the North and, indeed, all other social ills of the
other region. The visitor finds even the average run of white Southerners
intensely aware of the bad slum conditions in Northern metropolises and
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
