The Next Decade in Race Relations

Abstract

A plan for action requires both a philosophy and a strategy. It is beside the point to belabor further the historical fact that it is necessary for American Negro citizens to struggle for their citizenship rights with the very government that granted them. Since it it obvious that they must, a strategy is required. The philosophy, however, remains the same for both the Negro minority and the nation. There is no evidence that anything more is sought by Negroes than is theirs already in principle. The problems to be dissolved are neither ethical nor political, but sociological and psychiatric. In recent years major attention has been given to educational methods aimed at counteracting an unfavorable public opinion regarding Negroes, and to pressure tactics of varying degrees designed to secure certain minority rights. These have been essential and in some measure successful. This educational campaign has had to concern itself with many elementary issues of education, health and work against the heavy inertia of a public sentiment weighted with a variety of unscientific beliefs. One result has been the building up of a new body of knowledge regarding the Negro as a minority group. But another result has been the emotional solidification of this group as a self-conscious and struggling minority. Thus, while there hag been a considerable measure of group development on the one hand, and an improvement for Negroes in the matter of relative status, it cannot be said that there has been a comparable growth in For, in the very nature of things the white and Negro groups have withdrawn, as groups, farther apart. One of the evidences of this withdrawal has been, strangely enough, the multiplication of formal and very largely artificial interracial committees normally viewed as hopeful signs of increasing interracial unity. If there had been a development of racial understanding comparable to the gains sought and in some instances achieved by Negroes, such committees would not be necessary. For the Negroes who make up a part of these committees would be functioning as interested local citizens in the common institutional programs of these committees. There would, similarly, be less need for influential white persons of good will to ally themselves with selected Negroes on the special issue of Negro problems. A more recent and perhaps more useful conception of race relations is not alone the struggle for Negro development nor the interest of others in Negro welfare, but collaboration of whites and Negroes in programs for the common good. Tie extent to which this is possible, or can be made possible, is perhaps the best current index to improved race relations. The point of view suggests the strategy that might be adopted in taking the next steps to promote racial understanding.