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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 37. Compromise Leadership - 3. Impersonal Motives - 4. The Protest Motive
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Chapter 37. Compromise Leadership 771
who starts to act aggressively is not only losing his own power and often
his livelihood but might endanger the welfare of the whole Negro com-
munity.
In Southern Negro communities there is apparently much suspicion
against ^^radical,” “hot-headed” and “outspoken” Negroes. Negroes do not
want to be observed associating with such persons, because they might “get
in trouble.” A barricade will often be thrown up around them by a com-
mon consent that they are “queer.” The Negro community itself will thus
often, before there is any white interference, advise individual Negroes
who show signs of aggression that they had better trim their sails.
4. The Protest Motive
Nevertheless, the protest motive is not without influence on Negro lead-
ership in the South. For one thing, some protest is almost a necessary
ingredient in the leadership appeal to Negroes. The furthering of race
pride and racial solidarity is the means of diminishing internal strivings
in the Negro community and of lining up the community into a working
unity. Whites sometimes understand this, and there is, therefore, also a
certain amount of “tolerated impudence” which a trusted and influential
Negro leader can get away with even in the presence of whites. If the
Negro community feels sure that he, nevertheless, retains the ear of whites,
such a guarded outspokenness will increase his prestige. Negro leaders are
often keenly aware of just how far they can go with white people—^just
what they can afford to say, how they should say it, and when they should
say it. Often a protest will be produced under the cover of a joke, or in a
similar form, so that the whites do not quite get the full meaning or,
anyhow, can pretend that they have not got it. There is a whole technique
for how to “tell it right in the face of the whites” without being caught.
The stories about such successful protests under cover form a mythology
around a Negro leader who has the admiration and allegiance of his
community.
But much more generally the Negro community enjoys the demon-
stration of the Negro protest—as long as it does not become too dangerous
for racial harmony. The vicarious satisfaction taken in the victories of
Negro athletes who have beaten white competitors has long been ob-
served.^ The esteem in the Negro community for the “bad nigger” is
another point. The “bad nigger^^ is one who will deliberately run the risks
involved in ignoring the caste etiquette, behaving impudently and threaten-
ingly toward whites and actually committing crimes of violence against
them. Because he often creates fear in the white community, and because he
sometimes acts the role of “Robin Hood” for lesser Negroes in trouble
with whites, he is accorded a fearful respect by other Negroes.^ He cer-
tainly does not become a Negro “leader.” But, particularly in the lower
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