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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 11. The Commission on Interracial Cooperation
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848 An American Dilemma
taken part in the local interracial committees or in the Atlanta Commission
have privately made acid comments on the interracial movement. They
complain that the white participants are not sincere enough, and that there
is too much of the old paternalism in the whole approach. The Commission
is frequently called a ^^face saving” device, a “gesture organization.” But
these observations were made in the years 1938-1939, when the activity in
the local committees was at a low ebb and when the activity also of the main
Commission was not as vigorous as earlier. The revitalization which the
Commission has since gone through may have changed the attitudes of
conservative Negro leaders.
By the younger Negro intellectuals the Commission is condemned for
the “naive assumption that when the two races know and understand
each other better, the principal incidents of the race problem will then
disappear.’”®^ The Commission is accused of having a “defeatist attitude,
since it accepts the existing racial patterns while asking favors and exceptions
with them.”‘‘ The Commission is criticized for using “influence” instead of
“pressure.” They point out that the Commission does not reach, and has not
even attempted to reach, the lower classes of whites and Negroes between
whom the friction is most acute.^®^
This criticism seems too strong. It overlooks the power situation in the
South. A movement which sets out to change public opinion and social
institutions in the South and which wants to reap some fruit in the near
future must make opportunism its tactical principle. It must develop an
indirect approach instead of a direct attack. And it is no “naive assumption”
that ignorance fortifies race prejudice, injustice and discrimination in the
South. Education and cooperation will, therefore, have their effects even if
they are slow to develop liberal political power which can force great
reforms. The Commission is a useful agency. This, of course, should not
exclude other and more radical efforts at the same time. Also it does not
exclude a criticism that the Commission could work more effectively. But its
* Bunche, op. c’tt.y Vol. 4, pp. 557 ff.
*‘ln the very nature of race relations in this country, the white members of the interracial
groups must take upon themselves the responsibility for fixing the measures of values in
inter-group relationships. It is not merely a question of ho*w much the Negro is to ask
for or to expect, but also hov) he is to ask for it, or indeed, whether he should oik for it at
all, since it may often be more ‘strategic’ to permit his sympathetic white friends to act
on his behalf. It is the whites alone who are in a position to advise the Negro that it is
better for him to ask for little and to anticipate something than to ask for too much and
gain nothing. It is the white, also, who can lean on realism and inform the Negro that
if he goes before responsible ofiicials in the community and demands or asks for benefits,
his appeals are apt to be ignored. Whereas, if his white friends appear in his behalf, he
has a better chance to receive the favor. That this half-a-loaf approach of the inter-
racialist has won local benefits of various kinds for Negroes in particular communities is
not denied^ but this is no storming of the bastions of racial prejudice nor does it even
avm toward tVvem." Uhtd., Vo\. 4, pp.
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