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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 8. “The Advantages of the Disadvantages”
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Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories 795
monopolies behind the caste bar. This applies to ministers, teachers, and
practically all other professionals, as well as to most Negro businessmen.
Caste is their opportunity. They are exploiting ^^the advantages of the dis-
advantages.”*
When we remember, further, that the upper class Negroes, even more
than other upper class American groups, are responsible for the thinking
on their group^s problem, the question must be raised as to how this situa-
tion influences popular theories on the Negro problem. This is a viewpoint
somewhat different from the viewpoint we have followed until now, when
we have asked with what white group Negroes have sought allegiance. Here
a crucial matter is the attitude toward segregation. It is the upper class
Negroes who have felt and expressed most clearly and persistently the
Negro protest against segregation. They have manned the chief organization
to defend the civil rights of Negroes, the N.A.A.C.P. ;
they have developed
the doctrine that all segregation is wrong and that full democratic partici-^
pation and integration is right and is the ultimate goal to be fought for.
The observer often finds them complaining that lower class Negroes do not
resent strongly enough the Jim Crow restrictions.
The sincerity of the upper class Negroes^ opposition to segregation cannot
be doubted. The fact that they themselves thrive in its shelter is seldom
discussed openly and publicly.*^ When occasionally it is brought up, the
intellectual dilemma is projected into a distant future by the recognition that
segregation will not be abolished soon, and by the reflection that such a
change will lose opportunities for them in the Negro market but gain
opportunities for them in the wider American market.
Nevertheless, the opposition against segregation in upper class circles
is directed primarily against those sectors of the caste system where it
functions least as a shelter to themselves. The protest is thus outspoken
and unanimous in regard to exclusion from hotels, restaurants, theaters,
concerts, and segregation in transportation facilities. It is ordinarily less
unanimous with respect to segregation in education. Negro schools provide
employment for Negro teachers who, with present prejudice, would most
of the time have less chance in a nonsegregated school system. If there is
a segregated school system, the main interest becomes to improve the Negro
schools and to guarantee the Negro teachers equal salaries.
In regard to segregation in hospitals the observer finds the same ambiva-
lence. As soon as separate Negro set-ups are provided at all, the Negro pro-
test shows a tendency to become directed toward demanding better facilities
in these set-ups and, particularly, toward the monopolizing of the jobs as
‘This term was popularized by H. B. Frissell, the second principal of Hampton
Institute.
’
^Except, of course, by the critics among the radical Negro intellectuals and by the
social scientists.
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