The Position of the Negro in the American Social Order: Where Do We Go From Here?

Abstract

Reuter characterizes the period of Negro effort since Emancipation, as blind fumbling for a new basis of racial accommodation, arising from the fact that Negroes are trying to achieve equal status in the common social order. The whites are trying to prevent democratic equality. Negro is a problem in the American social order because his aspiration and behavior are oriented toward a goal that a dominant majority does not want realized. This is a pill difficult for us to swallow. We have tried hard to believe that American race prejudice was the foible of a few; that the majority of white Americans were with us, if they realized our plight, or if they could be persuaded that the interests of their country were bound up with the interests of the Negro group. Clearly it is not enough for us to prove that our rise, development and equality, will not hurt the whites; we are required to convince them that our survival and success are bound up with theirs. This at best requires a long, slow fight intelligent, determined men, with infinite patience and unswerving ideals. Foreign observers, as Seiferth says, from Ratzel and Schurz and Hoetsch, see salvation only by determination of the colored race itself; while later observers see increased friction as the Negro grows more intelligent, and even a clash between the dogmas of human equality and racial exclusion. BIOLOGY