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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 38. Negro Popular Theories - 9. Condoning Segregation
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Chapter 38. Negro Popular Theories 799
concerned Negro interests, it would not be without great importance to
the Negro people.
If Negroes accepted residential segregation, they could reasonably
demand that it be developed into a rationally planned policy, so that space
is set aside for Negro sections. Residential segregation without such a
positive policy is more cruel than it need be and than it is usually meant
to be. Likewise, if Negroes accepted widespread economic discrimination,
they could demand that at least certain "Negro jobs” be set aside and also
be defended against white intruders. The present situation of one-sided
competition and exploitation, where Negroes are excluded by the whites,
but where the whites are free to squeeze Negroes out of even their tradi-
tional jobs, easily results in a concentration of unemployment among the
Negro people and their gradual relegation to relief as a normal "occupa-
tion.”
The outside observer of the irrational, inefficient, and cruel American
caste system cannot help making such reflections. He finds, however, that
an intelligent discussion along those lines is almost entirely absent from
America. This absence reveals certain moral taboos of greatest importance.
I have taken interest in discussing these matters with many American
Negroes. Few of them have failed to see the sense of the proposals raised.
But none has expressed approval of them. And they are never touched
upon in Negro literature and in public discussion j
they have never been
thought through. The explanation is this: Negroes jeel that they cannot
afford to sell out the rights they have under the Constitution and the
American Greedy even when these rights have not materialized and even
when there is no immediate frosfect of making them a reality. At the same
time Negroes shoWy by taking this fosition, that they have not lost their
belief that ultimately the American Creed will come out on tof. Referring
merely to the proposal of an isolated black economy, and not to the more
general problem of complete segregation in all fields, which is never men-
tioned by Negroes, James Weldon Johnson once said:
Clear thinking reveals that the outcome of voluntary isolation would be a permanent
secondary status, so acknowledged by the race. Such a status would, it is true, solve
some phases of the race question. It would smooth away a good part of the friction
and bring about a certain protection and security. The status of slavery carried some
advantages of that sort. But I do not believe we shall ever be willing to pay such a
price for security and peace.^^
More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that white writers—who usually
implicitly condone segregation and who therefore might be expected to
want to improve the present very wasteful caste system^®—never say a
word on this problem, which, from their point of view, should be so para-
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