Southern Racial Attitudes: Conflict, Awareness, and Political Change

Abstract

Differences in racial attitudes between southern whites and Negroes are extreme and intensely felt. As south ern Negroes become more militant and politically powerful, and as the national government intervenes more vigorously in their behalf, the consensus within the two races and conflict be tween them produce problems for which the normal processes of compromise and accommodation are largely inoperative. The majority of neither race correctly perceives the attitudes of the other. Negro opposition to segregation is unlikely to change, and pressure from the rest of the nation is unlikely to dimin ish. The attitudes of white southerners are gradually being altered. In the "peripheral" South, the greater awareness by whites of Negro discontent, the existence of a significant mi nority of white moderates, and the growing number of Negro voters make the accommodation of racial conflict politically possible. In the deep South, white awareness of Negro opinion and the number of white moderates and Negro voters are too small at present to permit white politicians to compromise. But forces within the South and from outside seem to be working in that direction.