Social Stratification and Intellectual Roles in the Negro Community

Abstract

HE NEGRO INTELLECTUALS in America function as | symbols of racial worth and as instruments for racial protest 1 and betterment. Their preoccupation with ideas and their disposition to use ideas in the arena of action distinguish them from other groupings in the Negro community. Equally important for these symbolic and instrumental functions, however, is their socio-economic status, which tends to be well above that of the average for the Negro community as a whole. By exploring this factor in the behaviour of the Negro intellectuals we may arrive at a more balanced interpretation of the motivational complex in specific interaction situations.l Our inquiry is facilitated by the fact that in recent years sociologists and anthropologists have engaged in an extensive amount of research on social stratification in the United States. In terms of volume Lloyd Warner and his associates have been the most productive among these researchers. However, numerous other investigators, while restricting the scope of their inquiries and making less sweeping claims for their findings, have delved into various aspects of the class structure of any number of communities rural and urban, religious and secular, industrial and commercial, immigrant and native.2 Much of this research has been focused on the white social structure. However, the Negro has not been ignored, and there is now available a substantial literature concerning socio-economic differentiation within the coloured community.3 Warner and his associates, unable to devise an over-all theory that would encompass the I5,000,000 American Negroes, have fallen back on a caste-class concept of both dubious origin and questionable applicability.4 However, this concept and the subsequent mode of analysis which it prescribes has been widely accepted and has been very influential in much of the recent research. It would appear to be most fruitful when applied to certain static, rural communities of the Deep South. Its value diminishes nvhen effiorts are 235