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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Social Stratification - 32. The Negro Class Structure - 4. The Classes in the Negro Community
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702 An American Dilemma
and wealth of a person in the middle or upper class, and during the depres-
sion of the ’thirties, the majority of the Negro population became either
actual or potential relief clients. For the rural districts, Charles S. Johnson
emphasizes rightly that a distinction should be made between the ^^folk
Negro” and the rest of the lower class. The “folk Negro” has a low degree
of assimilation to modern American standards but has, nevertheless, some
measure of family organization and internal group cohesion.®® In the upper
levels of the lower class, there are many persons who have definite am-
bitions to better their own, or at least their children’s, status. These people
will take care not to let their insurance lapse 5
they will have more perma-
nent affiliation with churches and lodges 3
they will try to keep their children
in school. It is again a matter of definition as to how large a portion of the
Negro lower class should be included in this sub-group.
At the other end of the social status scale is the small Negro uffer class.
In rural districts the ownership and successful management of a sizable
farm may be said to give a person upper class status. All over the country
the training for a profession or the carrying on of a substantial business,
particularly in the field of banking or insurance, but also in contracting, real
estate, and personal service, is the regular basis for an upper class position.
In smaller communities even today, and previously also in big cities, every
steady employment where some training or skill was required, and the
income was substantially above the average among Negroes, conferred
upper class status. Employment by public agencies, particularly federal
agencies like the United States postal service, has always carried high social
esteem in the Negro community, and if coupled with some home ownership
and some education, usually put the person in the upper class. Generally, in
the absence of wealth, higher education is becoming practically an essential
to an upper class position.®®
Often family background is stressed in this class. The family is organized
upon the paternalistic principle, legal marriage is an accepted form, and
illegitimacy and desertion are not condoned. Children are shielded as far as
possible both from influences of the lower class Negroes and from humiliat-
ing experiences of the caste system. They are ordinarily given a higher
education and assisted to acquire professional training. As Negroes are
commonly believed to be loud, ignorant, dirty, boisterous, and lax in sexual
and all other morals, good manners and respectability become nearly an
obsession in the Negro upper class. If the community offers a choice, they
will tend to belong to Episcopal, Congregational, or Presbyterian churches,
or, in any case, to those churches where there is less “shouting” and where
the preacher also has some education and refinement. In Southern cities the
Negro upper class will oken adhere more closely to strict puritanical
standards of conduct than the white upper or middle class.®*^ In the larger
m the upper class shows allegiance
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