The Relative Status of the Negro in the United States--A Critical Summary

Abstract

Democracy is theoretically and essentially a single status system in which certain complexes of rights, obligations, and privileges may be acquired voluntarily but not by force. In the United States socially accepted classifications based upon race and color have created a special status for Negroes. This status is at once defined by law in some geographical and social areas, and by customs in others. It is this principle of the special social status of race-or color-identified people which has in part effected a legal status for Negroes, or has played a predominant part in determining the social position of Negroes within the total community. This series of papers, therefore, deals with selected status situations that are based upon the observable phenomena of race and color. The facts they present should mirror the likenesses and differences of people affected by this nation's peculiar status systems. Any general analysis of this sort is to some degree arbitrary as to the subjects included and excluded, phases of the data emphasized to a greater or lesser degree, the order of treatment, and the scheme of social values used as a basis for pronouncing judgment. Eclecticism, moreover, invariably involves some degree of personal predilection, for the personal, professional, and social judgments of the authors are evident throughout the volume. However, the volume in its totality permits a meaningful interpretation of a wide variety of aspects of the Negro's position within the United States' status system and the frame of reference established by the, editor. The cue and key to the problems discussed in this volume are to be found in the implied definitions of relative status. Almost without exception the authors establish their comparisons between Negroes (or nonwhites) and the generalized white population. While this is an acceptable and valid method, of description and analysis it certainly does not exhaust the possibilities of scientific exploration. One may raise a question as to whether or not this comparison of the special status group with the generalized other population provides the most meaningful and accurate type of analysis. The context of the analyses presented herein is an implied rather than a stated one. The relative status of the Negro population is established, in gaming parlance, the hard way. Slight shifts in the frames of reference-the comparison of Negroes with other nonwhites, with foreign-born whites, or native-born whites, with the statuses of migrating populations, or with populations 25 years of age and over-may have indicated totally different types of statu changes.