The Present Status of Race Relations, with Particular Reference to the Negro

Abstract

The practical student of education in our American democracy asks a very simple and direct question about the familiar issue of race. Are relations improving? The assumption back of this question is that neither education nor democracy can be expected to function adequately against the issues of race, which have been, in the past, deeply rooted in our American institutions. The essence of the Negro-white in America is change itself. In a stable society the Negroes would perhaps be a of the inertia of primitive backwardness, but not a in the present-day sense, any more than they were a race problem under the institution of slavery. If the Negro kept his place there would be a caste situation, and this is something quite different from the American Negro problem. What gives vitality to the present issue is the fact that the status of the Negro changes in itself, along with the broad changes in the basic economy and institutional life of the country. This makes necessary a constant re-definition of relations. In this area of social ferment and transition our problems arise. The patterns of relations vary geographically and over periods of time. The struggle, on the one side, to improve status, and on the other side the resistance to this change, constitute a large part of the problem, and define the relations current wherever they are encountered. It is difficult to discuss relations scientifically. The kind of knowledge out of which human relations are built is not systematic, but personal. The scientific knowledge that we have is not in the field of relations, but of race, and this is the field of the anthropologist. It might be observed in passing that the revision of certain earlier observations in this field regarding fundamental differences and their significance have shifted the essential basis of relations; but the problems, as such, continue. Race and relations in the United States are a complex of many elements. Beyond the observable fact of group differences in physical features, whether or not these have any intrinsic meaning, there is the fact that is a state of mind and an historical philosophy. The factors which determine relations, thus, include not only consciousness of race, but the values and meanings which are given to the observable physical differences. Most of the differences assumed to be racial are social and cultural, and these are in constant process of change. The more constant factor is that of racial visibility. Where certain cultural traits and emotional evaluations are associated with visible groups, whether with or without foundation in fact, problems exist, and the problems condition the relations. The most conspicuous racial groups