Mydral's Assumptions on Race Relations: A Conceptual Commentary

There is no little divergence of opinion as to the extent of segregation and discrimination in the interpersonal sphere. The literature tends to emphasize interesting individual experiences, which may be exceptions. In eliciting opinions as to the extent of segregation and discrimination, there exists enough divergence of interest to result in the collection of beliefs rather than facts. These beliefs are important data in themselves, but are no substitute for the facts. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944) ********** IN 1941 AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL IN FRANKLINTON, Louisiana, explained to a researcher from Fisk University that race relations in the town had improved after a series of murders several years earlier, which had ended with the shooting of one of these fresh crackers by a Negro. The principal, Robert W. Johnson, quoted with considerable pride a saying of local residents: You know, these niggers around here will kill you. (1) In Monroe, Louisiana, another Fisk investigator noted the buoyancy of spirit among local African Americans as well as recognition of racial separation. Although black citizens in Monroe understood their place, the investigator learned from a black confidant that white people also have place. When they get out of it, these Negroes will put them back in it. Indeed, while riding a crowded local bus the investigator noticed whites were sitting in the back and some colored people sitting near the front or middle. The confidant recalled a problem once because a Negro sat in front of a person. The black passenger insisted that he was going to sit down. If the man wanted him to get up, come up there and make him move. (2) The team of black social scientists from Fisk University, who came to Louisiana in the fall of 1941 under the direction of the eminent sociologist Charles S. Johnson to study black elementary and secondary schools, recorded interviews and observations that are especially relevant in light of historians' growing interest in how black and southerners together shaped peculiar society during the Jim Crow era. (3) As historians like Robin D. G. Kelley and Michael K. Honey have shown, day-to-day black resistance, such as black passengers' refusal to abide by segregation laws on buses, became commonplace in southern cities during World War II, as round-the-clock defense production triggered overcrowding in urban areas. (4) But as testimony collected by the Fisk group in Franklinton and Monroe suggests, black Louisianians in late 1941 displayed self-confident behavior even without the stress of a population boom caused by the war emergency. In fact, the Fisk investigators did not find the static system of oppression and black powerlessness described in the monographs of contemporaries, social scientists like John Dollard, Hortense Powdermaker, Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner of the late 1930s and early 1940s, or in the bleak interpretations of more recent historians like Neil R. McMillen and others. Instead the Fisk team noted in certain Louisiana parishes a more dynamic racial paradigm that grew from a variety of factors. Close kinship ties, similar economic concerns, and the important element of leadership, both black and white, contributed to the creation of a pattern of black assertiveness and flexibility not usually attributed to race relations in the Deep South on the eve of World War II. Although the example of interracial compromise observed by the Fisk team in late 1941 reflected only a very fragile truce in a tension-filled Jim Crow society, it nonetheless suggests a degree of fluidity and protest in the pre-World War II era that historians are just beginning to understand. (5) The caste monographs, which focused on two towns in Mississippi, cannot be thought of as offering a definitive model of race relations across the South in the 1930s, any more than Birmingham or Selma, Alabama, can be considered as typical of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. …

Mill and town school children of a southern Piedmont community are compared in their educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Results indicate that the lower-class mill children have relatively high aspirations and expectations and so share in the American dream of getting ahead. However, the mill-village setting mitigates against fulfilling the dream. A MAJORITY of the sociological studies of the relationship between social class and level of aspiration agree on two major points: (1) the lower the social class, the lower the level of aspiration:' and (2) the lower the social class, the less favorable the social milieu in encouraging high aspiration and in preparing for attainment.2 There is less agreement, however, on possible interpretations of these generalizations as posed by the following question: Do lower class children have lower levels of aspiration because they do not share the American * A revision of a paper read before the twenty-third annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 7, 1960. 1 Examples of recent studies illustrating this are: LaMar T. Empey, Class and Occupational Ambition: A Comparison of Absolute and Relative Measure, American Sociological Review, 21 (December 1956), pp. 703-709; Archie 0. Haller and W. H Sewell, Farm Residence and Levels of Educational and Occupational Aspiration, American Journal of Sociology, 62 (January 1957), pp. 407-411; R. A. Mulligan, Socio-Economic Badkground and College Enrollment, American Sociological Review, 16 (April 1951), pp. 188-196; Bernard C. Rosen, Race Ethnicity, and the Achievement Syndrone, American Sociological Review, 24 (February 1959), pp. 47-60; W. H. Sewell, A. 0. Haller, and M. A. Straus, Status and Educational and Occupational Aspiration, American Sociological Review, 22 (February 1957), pp. 67-73; Alan R. Wilson, Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys, American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), pp. 836-845. 2 Studies emphasizing this include: Ely Chinoy, Tradition of Opporutnity and the Aspirations of Automobile Workers, American Journal of Sociology 57 (March 1952), pp. 453-456; Allison Davis, Social Class Influs A. B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1949); H. H. Hyman, Value Systems of Different Classes, in Reinhard Bendix and S. M. Lipset (eds.) Class, Statcus and Power (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1953), pp. 426-442; Genevieve Knupfer, Portrait of the Underdog, in Bendix and Lipset, op. cit., pp. 255-263; Jackson Toby, Orientation to Education as a Factor in School Maladjustment of Lower-Class Children, Social Forces, 35 (March 1957), pp. 259266; W. L. Warner, R. J. Havighurst, and M. B. Loeb, Who Shall Be Editcated? (New York: Harpers, 1944). A cross-cultural study in this area is one by Mary E. Goodman, Values, Attitudes, and Social Concepts of Japanese and American Children, American Anthropologist, 59 (December 1957), pp. 979-999. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.33 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:19:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

More than half a century has passed since the publication of <i>An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy</i>, Gunnar Myrdal's agonizing portrait of the pervasiveness of racially prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory practices in American life. Central to Myrdal's work was the paradox posed by the coexistence of race-based social, economic, and political inequality on the one hand, and the cherished American cultural values of freedom and equality on the other. In the five decades since the publication of this work, there has been a dramatic decline in white Americans' overt expressions of anti-black and anti-integrationist sentiments and in many of the inequalities Myrdal highlighted in his monumental work. Yet the persistence of racial antipathy is evidence of the continuing dilemma of race in American society. This collection of original essays by leading race relations experts focuses on the recent history and current state of racial attitudes in the United States. It addresses key issues and debates in the literature, and it includes chapters on the racial attitudes of African-Americans as well as whites. The volume will be of great importance to students and scholars concerned with the sociology and politics of contemporary American race relations.

Morland, J. K. 1958 Educational and occupational aspirations of mill and town school children in a Southern community. Social Forces 59 (December): 169-175. Reiss, Jr., Albert J. 1963 Status deprivation and delinquent behavior. Sociological Quarterly 4 (Spring): 135-150. Reissman, L. 1959 Class in American Society. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Roach, J. L. and D. K. Gursslin. 1965 The lower class status frustration and social disorganization. Social Forces 43 (May):501-510. Rodman, Hyman. 1963 The lower class value stretch. Social Forces 42 (December):205-215. 1966 Illegitimacy in the Caribbean social structure: reconsideration. American Sociological Review 31 (October):673-683. Rosenberg, Morris. 1962 Test factor standardization as a method of interpretation. Social Forces 41 (October) :53-61. Seanger, G. and N. S. Gordon. 1950 The influence of discrimination on minority group members in its relation to attempts to combat discrimination. Journal of Social Psychology 31:95-120. Shils, Edward A. 1963 The theory of mass society. Pp. 30-47 in P. Olson (ed.), America as a Mass Society. New York: Free Press. Short, Jr., J. F. 1964 Gang delinquency and anomie. Pp. 98127 in Marshall B. Clinard (ed.), Anomie and Deviant Behavior. London: Collier Macmillan Limited. Spergel, Irving. 1964 Tacketville, Slumtown, Haulberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stephenson, R. N. 1957 Mobility orientation and stratification of 1,000 ninth graders. American Sociological Review 22 (April): 204-212. Turner, Ralph H. 1964 Social Context of Ambition: Study of High School Seniors in Los Angeles. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co. Wilson, A. B. 1959 Residential segregation of social classes and aspirations of high school boys. American Sociological Review 24 (December): 836-845. Wilson, T. P. 1969 A proportional-reduction-in-error interpretation for Kendall's tau-b. Social Forces 47 (March):340-342. Zetterberg, Hans L. 1966 On motivation. Pp. 124-141 in Joseph Berger, et al., (ed.), Sociological Theories in Progress. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.

These two volumes, An American Dilemma' by Dr. Gunnar Myrdal are perhaps the culminating achievement of classical scholarship on the subject of race relations. They bring to finest expression practically all the vacuous theories of race relations which are acceptable among the liberal intelligentsia and which explain race relations away from the social and economic order. The theories do this in spite of the verbal desire of the author to integrate his problem in the on-going social system. In the end the social system is exculpated, and the burden of the dilemma is poetically left inthe hearts of the American people, the esoteric reaches of which, obviously, may be plumbed only by the guardians of morals in our society. This critical examination, to be sure, is not intended to be a review of An American Dilemma. As a source of information and brilliant interpretation of information on race relations in the United States, it is unsurpassed. We are interested here only in the validity of the meanings which Myrdal derives from the broad movements of his data. The data are continually changing and becoming obsolescent; but if we understand their social determinants we can not only predict change but also influence it.

Since its publication in 1944, many Americans have described Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma as a defining text on US race relations. Here, Maribel Morey confirms with historical evidence what many critics of the book have suspected: An American Dilemma was not commissioned, funded, or written with the goal of challenging white supremacy. Instead, Morey reveals it was commissioned by Carnegie Corporation president Frederick Keppel, and researched and written by Myrdal, with the intent of solidifying white rule over Black people in the United States. Morey details the complex global origins of An American Dilemma, illustrating its links to Carnegie Corporation’s funding of social science research meant to help white policymakers in the Anglo-American world address perceived problems in their governance of Black people. Morey also unpacks the text itself, arguing that Myrdal ultimately complemented his funder’s intentions for the project by keeping white Americans as his principal audience and guiding them towards a national policy program on Black Americans that would keep intact white domination. Because for Myrdal and Carnegie Corporation alike, international order rested on white Anglo-Americans’ continued ability to dominate effectively.

Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875–1951) is a neglected figure within North American sociology, yet he made a distinctive contribution to the sociology and politics of race relations. He was one of the first sociological critics of eugenics and developed a distinctive approach to race relations and the position of subject minorities derived from a critical analysis of European empires. His approach was complementary to that of Du Bois with whom he had a close relationship. In this article, we trace Miller’s critique of eugenics and the idea of ‘Americanisation’ as a policy of immigrant assimilation, showing the distinctiveness of his approach within North American sociology, including the milieu of Chicago sociology with which he was associated. We also examine the connection between his sociology of race and Park’s position on race relations as being a process of gradual assimilation. We conclude with discussion of the Chicago school influence over Gunnar Myrdal’s The American Dilemma and the alternative approach to race relations that both Du Bois and Miller had already outlined in the 1920s.

Mill and town school children of a southern Piedmont community are compared in their educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Results indicate that the lower-class mill children have relatively high aspirations and expectations and so share in the American dream of getting ahead. However, the mill-village setting mitigates against fulfilling the dream. A MAJORITY of the sociological studies of the relationship between social class and level of aspiration agree on two major points: (1) the lower the social class, the lower the level of aspiration:' and (2) the lower the social class, the less favorable the social milieu in encouraging high aspiration and in preparing for attainment.2 There is less agreement, however, on possible interpretations of these generalizations as posed by the following question: Do lower class children have lower levels of aspiration because they do not share the American * A revision of a paper read before the twenty-third annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 7, 1960. 1 Examples of recent studies illustrating this are: LaMar T. Empey, Class and Occupational Ambition: A Comparison of Absolute and Relative Measure, American Sociological Review, 21 (December 1956), pp. 703-709; Archie 0. Haller and W. H Sewell, Farm Residence and Levels of Educational and Occupational Aspiration, American Journal of Sociology, 62 (January 1957), pp. 407-411; R. A. Mulligan, Socio-Economic Badkground and College Enrollment, American Sociological Review, 16 (April 1951), pp. 188-196; Bernard C. Rosen, Race Ethnicity, and the Achievement Syndrone, American Sociological Review, 24 (February 1959), pp. 47-60; W. H. Sewell, A. 0. Haller, and M. A. Straus, Status and Educational and Occupational Aspiration, American Sociological Review, 22 (February 1957), pp. 67-73; Alan R. Wilson, Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys, American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), pp. 836-845. 2 Studies emphasizing this include: Ely Chinoy, Tradition of Opporutnity and the Aspirations of Automobile Workers, American Journal of Sociology 57 (March 1952), pp. 453-456; Allison Davis, Social Class Influs A. B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1949); H. H. Hyman, Value Systems of Different Classes, in Reinhard Bendix and S. M. Lipset (eds.) Class, Statcus and Power (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1953), pp. 426-442; Genevieve Knupfer, Portrait of the Underdog, in Bendix and Lipset, op. cit., pp. 255-263; Jackson Toby, Orientation to Education as a Factor in School Maladjustment of Lower-Class Children, Social Forces, 35 (March 1957), pp. 259266; W. L. Warner, R. J. Havighurst, and M. B. Loeb, Who Shall Be Editcated? (New York: Harpers, 1944). A cross-cultural study in this area is one by Mary E. Goodman, Values, Attitudes, and Social Concepts of Japanese and American Children, American Anthropologist, 59 (December 1957), pp. 979-999. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.33 on Sat, 26 Nov 2016 04:19:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

An Exploratory Study of Attitudes of Negro Professionals toward Competition with Whites

Before Brown: The Racial Integration of American Higher Education DAVID W. LEVY I. The landmark case of Brown v. Board ofEducation of Topeka' is known, at least in its general outline and result, to millions ofAmerican citizens. It may, in fact, be the most univer­ sally recognized of all of the decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. No reputable high school or college textbook in American history fails to mention it as one of those monumental determinations of the High Court that changed forever the fabric of American life. And there can be no doubt that the Brown case—followed as it was by spirited debate, invigorated efforts on behalfof integration, and bitter resistance by many whites—fully deserves the notice it has received since 1954. How is it possible, after all, to overestimate the importance of the decision that declared unconstitutional the long-established practice ofracial segregation in elementary and high school pul But while the Brown case resulted in a flood ofcommentary and debate and anger and violence, and while the Brown case has been retold many times and from numerous perspec­ tives by historians, participants, textbook writ­ ers, and others, the prior episode, centering around the legal attack on racial segregation in higher education, has been relatively little stud­ ied. Perhaps because the demolition of segre­ gation in the nation’s colleges and universities education?2 was accepted rather more calmly by the gen­ eral public, it has tended to be given much less attention. But that story too was an important one. It was a dramatic and profoundly signifi­ cant episode in the history of race relations in our country. It too was characterized by enor­ mous courage and heavily freighted with im­ plications and lessons about the complicated connections between law and social change. In the battle to rid American colleges and univer- RACIAL INTEGRATION 299 sities ofthe injustices ofsegregation, moreover, the Supreme Court played a decisive role . . . and one which paved the way for the Justices’ monumental opinion of 1954. II. In the late 1930s, when for practical pur­ poses the effective attack on segregated higher education began in earnest, the availability of post-secondary education for African Ameri­ cans was largely a matter of region. In the North, no state university prohibited the en­ trance of black students. Once they were on campus, however, they were subjected to vari­ ous sorts of discrimination, often connected with the university’s social and extra-curricu­ lar life. Some of that discrimination was for­ mal, but most of it was unwritten, quietly un­ derstood, and traditional. Northern private schools had varying policies, but Gunnar Myrdal, in his classic study of 1944, An American Dilemma, offered this generaliza­ tion: “Private universities in the North restrict Negroes in rough inverse relation to their ex­ cellence: the great universities—Harvard, Chi­ cago, Columbia, and so on, restrict Negroes to no significant extent if at all. . . . Most of the minorprivate universities and colleges prohibit or restrict Negroes. Some of these permit the entrance of a few token Negroes, probably to demonstrate a racial liberalism they do not feel.” Probably there were fewer than a dozen or so African-American faculty members in all northern colleges and universities.3 In the South, of course, things were very different. At the outbreak of World War II, seventeen states and the District of Columbia maintained, by law, separate school systems at all levels. The post-secondary education of African Americans in Southern states was car­ ried out in 117 all-black colleges. Thirty-six of these were public schools; ofthe private ones, only seven were not church-related.4 Atten­ dance in these black Southern colleges had been growing steadily: they had 2,600 students in 1916, 7,600 in 1924, 34,000 in 1938, and 44,000 in the 1945-46 academic year. Although this was an impressive rate of growth, it must be remembered that by 1940, one out ofevery twelve Southern white youths received some college education, while only one out ofa hun­ dred Southern black youths did. Just as impor­ tant, moreover, is that despite theirhealthy rate ofgrowth, and despite the myth that...

Relatively little attention has thus far been bestowed upon US black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier’s (1894‒1962) interest in Latin America and his five-month-long field trip to Brazil in 1940‒41. His study of race relations in Brazil would have a lasting impact on his career – which included a close collaboration with Gunnar Myrdal’s project “The American Dilemma,” his presidency of the American Sociological Association (ASA), a two-year residence in Paris at UNESCO, and his efforts to develop African Studies at Howard University, then the top US black university. It also influenced his world-wide, fairly comparative, perspective on race relations and racism. As many as 15 of Frazier’s chapters or papers deal one way or another with Brazil.

THIS INVESTIGATION tested the hypothesis that whites and Negroes have similar relative preferences. This approach contrasts with that taken by the majority of students of race relations because although such investigations have studied opinions and attitudes often and preferences occasionally,' they have seldom studied relative preferences. Such results, though of great interest, are not especially helpful from the point of view of those who wish to improve race relations. For example, 64 per cent of a national sample in 1963 and 70 per cent in 1966 said that Negroes have tried to move too fast.2 This fact may have been interesting and ominous, but it would hardly help anyone decide what to do. It is suggested that an approach based on relative preferences may be more instructive to those who wish to attempt remedial action. Such an approach is suggested by Gunnar Myrdal's Rank Order of Discrimination. Myrdal developed this notion in his well-known book, An American Dilemma, and Rose also discussed Myrdal's position.3 Myrdal postulated that whites had a specific hierarchy of importance attached to discriminatory practices, and that hierarchy of resentment of Negroes toward these practices was parallel to the ranking of the whites, but reversed in order of intensity of feeling. He predicted that whites will be least receptive to integration leading to social contact and most receptive to economic, legal, and political equality. He predicted that Negroes will insist least strongly on integration that results mainly in social contact and most strongly on economic, legal, and political equality. Despite the numerous attitude studies done since Myrdal developed his hypothesis, very few studies indeed seem to be relevant to Myrdal's formulation. These writers could find only two articles directly related to Myrdal's hypothesis.4 The Banks study was based on a Negro sample from Ohio, and the Edmunds study was based on a white and a Negro sample from Oklahoma and Texas. Although neither study agreed with Myrdal to the last detail, they generally agreed in showing that legal, political, and economic goals were preferred to educational, residential, and interpersonal integration. The only minor exception to this general trend was the

This essay examines the ideological underpinnings of Steven Lubet’s Interrogating Ethnography. I argue that Lubet’s text draws from an ideological tradition best exemplified by An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal’s influential 1944 study of U.S. race relations. This tradition posits the notion of an enduring and egalitarian American Creed, which ensures that the United States’ liberal-democratic institutions are fundamentally decent and fair in principle. I show how an unsubstantiated belief in the American Creed informs Lubet’s claims about contemporary ethnographic research and, in doing so, limits the usefulness of his text. Ultimately, I conclude, Interrogating Ethnography epitomizes the ways in which troublesome ideological frameworks continue to shape debates about social science methodology.

American Creed valuations more readily endorsed than specific ones with situational relevance, but the degree to which a given item represents a fait accompli for the respondent seems to be a factor in determining whether the majority of the sample accept or reject it. This finding supports the definition of the situation interpretation of race relations favored by Lohman and Reitzes, Blumer, Killian, Rose and others.11 Where the formal group structure defines a given action in clear-cut terms and where these definitions are acted out by most of the members, then an individual's valuations (or attitudes, as the case may be) tend to follow even though initially he might have preferred a different state of affairs. Table 2 summarizes the amount of agreement and disagreement for the ten itempairs. Each person responded to ten itempairs for a total of 1030 paired responses. Of these, 647 were consistent, the subjects agreeing or disagreeing with both sides of a given item-pair. No dilemma is indicated in these response-pairs. remaining 383 response-pairs were inconsistent, indicating a potential dilemma. Whether a dilemma exists, however, depends on the respondent's reactions to his own inconsistencies. Analysis of response patterns rather than individuals facilitates statistical treatment of the data where multiple responses are permitted, but it does raise a question as to J Joseph D. Lohman and Dietrich C. Reitzes, Note on Race Relations in Mass Society, op. cit., and Deliberately Organized Groups and Racial Behavior, American Sociological Review, 19 (1954), pp. 342-348; Herbert Blumer, and the Social Act, Social Problems, 3 (1955), pp. 59-65; Arnold M. Rose, Intergroups Relations vs. Prejudice: Pertinent Theory for the Study of Social Change, Social Problems, 4 (1956), pp. 173-176 and Inconsistencies in Attitudes Toward Negro Housing, Social Problems, 8 (1961), pp. 286-293; and Lewis M. Killian, The Effects of Southern White Workers on Race Relations in Northern Plants, American Sociological Review, 17 (1952),

ABSTRACTIn US intellectual and academic life, the 1940s and 1950s stand out as a period abounding with attempts to assay the characteristic and distinctive forms of ‘American culture’ and ‘American society,’ from Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma and the oft-noted ‘Tocqueville revival’ to works by Harold Laski, Max Lerner, David Riesman, C. L. R. James, the ‘consensus historians,’ and the early writers in the field of American Studies. Viewed as the culmination of a half-century span (roughly 1900–1950) of cultural nation-building, this rush of ‘American’ definitions at mid-century was shot through with politics – but in complex ways that are not adequately captured by the familiar recourse to Cold War anticommunism as the presumed ideological bedrock of the time. By treating this cultural nationalism as the outcome of an uneven and combined intellectual-historical process, we see how elusive (and illusory) the enterprise of designating ‘American’ traits actually was.