Negro Group Research Articles

A Word List from Southeast Arkansas

ALTHOUGH extended study has been devoted to the speech habits of northern Arkansas,' no examination of which I am aware has been made of the southeastern portion of the state. This low section, often referred to as 'delta' land, is interesting from a linguistic standpoint for it represents an amalgamation of several influences. Into this section have come settlers from Tennessee and Mississippi on the east, from Louisiana on the south, and from Texas on the west. The 'Old South' is represented by several large cotton plantations; the 'New South,' with its outside influences, by the industries of oil, lumber, and truck farming. From approximately four hundred expressions, the sixty-five listed here have been chosen as the most distinctive of the region.2 They were gathered from the campus, from the surrounding communities, and from Negro groups. But the usage of these three groups overlaps to such an extent that in the following alphabetical list I have indicated the source only in those few instances in which the expression is distinctly limited to one group. The most striking impression which I received during this investigation came from the remarkable linguistic fecundity of the region. Colloquialisms referring to motion are especially frequent and interesting. In addition to seventeen words of this character in the list I noted these

A Comparison of White and Indian Student Attitudes Toward the Negro

It is important for students of race prejudice to know the attitudes of various racial groups towards other racial groups. Ideally, comparisons should be made between the attitudes of each group toward itself and toward each other group in the experiment, but this is not always feasible because of the lack of satisfactory techniques for study, or because comparable groups of subjects are not satisfactorily represented in any available population. For this last reason it is often impossible to determine the attitudes of various racial groups toward only one race, while the lack of comparable scales for measuring attitudes of each group toward each other group prevent satisfactory comparisons even where the problem of selection of subjects is not so formidable. The study reported here cannot claim to have overcome either of these difficulties, although a beginning in inter-race attitude studies has been made. Where the larger Indian boarding schools are found it is sometimes possible to make Indian and white comparisons, but even in such cases it is rarely possible to obtain a large group of Negroes of the same age and school background for comparison. In the present study of attitude toward the Negro data are available on more than one hundred Indian and more than one hundred white students in Lawrence, Kansas, but on only a few Negroes. The data were collected in 1934, the subjects being 105 students from Haskell Institute who were studying Problems in American Government, and 110 white students from the Lawrence High School who were taking Problems in Civil Government. The attitudes of the thirteen Negro high school students taking the same course as the white students were also obtained.' All students were in the same school grade and of very similar age. The Indian students came from various regions of the country; the other two groups were residents of the community and natives of a small territory in the Middle West. The Thurstone scale for measuring Attitude Toward the Negro was employed for the study. The statements composing the scale and their numerical values are as follows:

Social Administration of the Kru. A Preliminary Survey

Opening ParagraphThe Kru, a West African Negro group, inhabit the central and southern part of Liberia. They are surrounded by the Basa peoples to the north-west, by the Grebo to the south-east and by the Putu to the north-east. The informant, Thomas Tarbour (Sieh Tagbweh), from whom the following material was derived, was a native of Grand Cess (Siglipo), a large coast town near the border of the Grebo country. The Kru, along with other related groups in that part of West Africa, have a tradition of having migrated from far to the north-east. The physical type is that of the short, stocky Bush negro. No archaeological work has been done in the region, and such ethnological material as has been collected is a mere beginning.

The American Problem of Rural Education

In two divisions of North America, the United States and Mexico, rural' education appears to be a two-fold problem, first because of conditions affecting the rural population as a whole, and secondly, because of neglected groups in the general population,-Negroes in the United States, and Indians in Mexico. It is the thesis of this paper that the problem in the United States is essentially the same for the white and the Negro group, and that reorganization and redirection is the next progressive step for the solution of the whole problem, regardless of racial issues. To this end, the writer will seek (1) to show the nature of the problem, (2) to explore the Mexican plan for dealing with a similar situation to obtain possible suggestions, and (3) to outline the major steps that reorganization and redirection might profitably take.

New Emphases in the Education of Negroes

A present-day study of the education of Negroes reveals several encouraging facts: 1. Among those who control the public purse strings there is a growing inclination to give Negroes an elementary and a secondary education in partial return for the taxes which are collected, both directly and indirectly, from Negro citizens. 2. The same professional standards for white and Negro teachers are being imposed. 3. There is the tacit admission that Negroes, wherever public funds permit, should have better-paid teachers, longer school terms, and better physical equipment. On the other hand, several serious problems face those who seek to improve the education of Negroes. These problems may be stated as follows: 1. How can American social education be re-directed and re-organized to include the Negro group as a vital and integral part of American society? 2. How can men and women learn to think scientifically about American education? 3. What are and what should be the new emphases in American education? The discussion which follows assumes that the encouraging elements will continue and that the problems, stated above, will be solved in proportion as thoughtful men and women of intelligence and good will apply themselves to bringing together the education of Negroes and the formulation of a sound theory of American social education.

Chicago Annual

The impression carried away from the forty-sixth annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, which opened October 24th at the Art Institute of Chicago, is that America is, or should be, a pretty interesting and unquestionably exciting place to paint about. The fixtures of the old shows, the foreign landscapes, the seascapes, the figure paintings, the nudes, even the snowscapes, are generally absent here. Nor are the supposed followers of Cézanne, through abstraction right down to the remotest surrealism, in any acknowledged evidence. On the contrary, it is obvious here at any rate that America has “gone” American, and done so by the way of Peter Bruegel the Elder. For there are dozens of paintings of county fairs, picnics, farm scenes, street scenes, political meetings and negro groups, and in practically every one there is that careful detail which is not exclusively conditioned by the work of art per se, but by the desire of the artist to describe, to tell you something, to give you a picture of the section of America he is interested in, or, as is more likely, thinks you ought to be interested in.

Measuring Negro Self-Respect

Recently, the writer undertook to construct an attitudes scale which he hoped might prove of some value in forming some sort of measurement of the Negro's self-respect. It was proposed to construct a scale of attitudes which was calculated to prove of some merit in the measurement of the dedegrees of self-respect possessed by various Negro groups. What was meant by self-respect was racial selfrespect. It was in the belief that the establishment of maximal harmonious relationships among the several races comprising the United States population depended upon each group's understanding the attitudes of the components of that particular race group. To construct the scale a preliminary form was produced and tried out. This preliminary form was called A Scale Attitude of Negroes Toward Negroes. This preliminary scale took the form of a questionnaire which consisted of sixty items; these items were obtained from several sources. First, several attitudes scales which had been used in the measurement of whites toward the Negro were examined since it was thought that many of the situations involving Negrowhite relationships might also involve Negro-Negro relationships. These were found to be particularly helpful by way of suggesting the types of questions which it was best to use on such a questionnaire. The next method of selection was to examine several books which dealt with the question of race, particularly the Negro group and cull from them significant statements about the Negro, whether they were favorable or unfavorable to him. Among these books were found statements that ranged from the most unfavorable to the most favorable opinions concerning the Negro. The next source was that of magazine articles about the Negro that have appeared in white magazines either by white or Negro authors. Some thirty or more of these articles were read and significant statements taken from them. The Negro newspapers were likewise used; their editorial expressions and the statements made by several of their columnists were considered. Other items were used which were thought of by the writer suggested by many of his experiences and a fair measure of acquaintance with many of the ramifications of the Negro-white problem as well as with the Negro-Negro problem in the United States. From these several sources some two hundred and fifty statements were selected. Originally, statements taken from books and magazines were set down exactly as they appeared in the context from which they were taken. It was discovered that due to the scientific nature of racial studies most of these statements were couched in phraseology that might easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted by a large number of a heterogeneous population consisting of persons ranging in educational equiva-

The Effect of the Depression on Medical Students of the Negro Group and on Internships Available

The Effect of the Depression on Medical Students of the Negro Group and on Internships Available

Some Factors in the Development of Negro Social Institutions in The United States

The assimilation of Negroes into the white culture is attributable largely to the conditions of the first hundred years of slavery in the Upper South. White institutional complexes have tended to be adopted entire from the formal social institutions to the minor modes of everyday behavior. The lag which exists between Negro and white institutions in any given area is due to the fact that acculturation was incomplete at the time of emancipation, that there has since been increasing separation of the races, and especially that economic drag has re-enforced cultural isolation and retarded the rate of cultural change among the Negro population. Cultural isolation, race prejudice, and economic drag have caused the intensification of those Negro institutions which offer opportunities for leadership and self-expression within the Negro group, particularly the church and the lodge. Race consciousness since emancipation has given rise to various agencies for racial solidarity, the Negro press being the most import...

Intelligence Differences Between American Negroes and Whites

The adequate comparison of two groups or races involves two requirements, namely, a fair sampling of the groups in question and a fair instrument of measurement. All the differences of opinion as to the meaning of our results of intelligence tests of Negroes and whites revolve about these two problems: Is the group of Negroes measured a fair sampling of the total group of Negroes in the United States? Are the tests used fair to the Negro group? These two questions permeate this whole controversy of Negro versus white intelligence, just as they permeate the whole controversy of differences in intelligence between any racial groups. There are those who believe that no two racial groups have been adequately compared in these two respects. Either the tests are not adequate or the sampling of the groups is not adequate. Others believe that we have approximated some adequacy in these respects with reference to some racial groups. Hence there is no consensus of opinion among psychologists in the whole field of racial differences. The difficulties with reference to national groups living in different countries are very great, and few, if any, adequate comparisons have been made, none on a large scale. Such national surveys should follow the method used in the notable survey of Scottish intelligence made by the Scottish Council for Research in Education. In this survey all the children born in 1921 (ages 10.5 to 11.5) were tested. The distribution of this age group can be considered an adequate picture of the intelligence of the people of Scotland. If, now, we had a similar survey of the children of England or of the United States, we could compare the intelligence of the various countries. In regard to the countries mentioned the other problem of an adequate test could be easily solved, because the language and civilization is practically identical. When we come to the comparison of countries having different languages and civilizations, the problem of a fair test looms large. Translations of verbal tests are of no use, because similar verbal tests in two languages have never yet been equated in difficulty. Non-language tests seem to be the only possible tools for measurement. The ideal experiment would thus seem to be to measure on a non-language test one or two age-groups in the countries to be compared. This has not yet been done. Coming now to the comparison of American Negroes and American whites, we find our problem simpler than that of the comparison of groups living in different countries and speaking different languages. Our American groups, Negroes and whites, live in the

Basic Considerations of Methodology in Race Testing

To the naive individual trained somewhat in individual and group testing, but largely unacquainted with experimental psychology, genetics, and anthropology, race testing is a simple process. Here, say, are some schools for Negro children. How do Negroes compare in with white children? He gets permission from the authorities concerned to apply a short test to 734 children of grades three to eight inclusive, orders some tests with which he is acquainted from slight experience with testing, or, probably, looks up in a pamphlet some tests that will test both school achievement and intelligence. He applies these tests in the several grades as per instructions in the manuals, allowing exactly the proper time for each test (or each part of it), and is reasonably careful in preliminary statements (or foreexercises, if provided) to make clear to every child what is to be done. The test blanks are taken up, and he secures the age of each child from the blank space for age and verifies it by the records. Then with-the use of stencils for scoring objectively, he scores all papers, calculates I.Q.'s and E.Q.'s and tabulates his results. He finds that the mean I.Q. of the Negroes is .75 and that the E.Q. is .80, say; and from the equation A.Q. =E.Q./I.Q. (or EA/MA), he finds that the Negro group has an accomplishment quotient of .80/.75= 1.07. He publishes his results as showing that while the Negroes have only three fourths as much intelligence as white children, they profit more from their work than do the white children, getting an A.Q. of 1.07, i.e., above the norm. Correlating the Negro I.Q.'s with the degree of lightness of skin, he finds (as he may find) a coefficient of .25 ?.023, and concludes that the lighter-colored Negroes have the higher I. Q.'s because of the superior abilities they inherited from some white ancestor whose physical traits they approximate more nearly than do full-blooded Negroes. Is this not similar in some respects at least, to what most of us have done sometime or other? Let us examine the procedure.

The Education of Negro Ministers

It is not surprising that the Negro minister whose chief function it was to deal with religion in the realm of the supernatural would be the first to emerge in the Negro group and the first to achieve acceptance by the group. Nor is it strange that slave masters would permit a degree of freedom in religion before they would allow it to exist in social and economic areas. Religion is non-competitive. Frequently it does not deal with social and economic needs. Often it projects its hopes in a distant future or dreams of a heaven where the values sought here, but unattained, will be realized in some far-off glory land. The early religion of the Negro was, possibly of necessity, largely of this sort; so it was much easier for the Negro to achieve freedom in religion than it was for him to acquire it in other fields. It is probably true that leaders in great numbers, in social, economic and political areas, would have never been permitted to rise as rapidly as they were allowed to rise in religious circles. Since his religion was non-competitive and since the values sought were not directly those of this world, the Negro was allowed more freedom in church and religion. In a sense, nothing is more vitally a part of man than his religion. It is far more difficult to keep a man, though a slave, from expressing and practicing his religion than it is to prohibit him from expressing and exercising his social and political views. Religion is as close to man as breathing. Then, too, there was the element of fear. The Negro who said God had called him to preach and demonstrated it with convincing speech would naturally make an impression upon a few slave owners. There is a traditional belief that it is a dangerous thing to tamper with a man of God. Even since emancipation some whites have feared the Negro's influence with God. It is reported, and on good authority, that a prominent judge in an outstanding Southern town said on one occasion that he stood in fear of the prayers of C. T. Walker more than he did all the other forces in that state combined. Carter G. Woodson in The History of the Negro Church has pointed out that many decades prior to emancipation powerful Negro preachers impressed the whites by their eloquent speech which was an asset to the Negro in his quest for freedom. As previously stated, the Negro minister was the first to be accepted by the Negro group; primarily because of the nature of religion, partly because the minister was the first to be tolerated in appreciable numbers by the slave owners and because he

Studies in Negro Leadership: Age and Occupational Distribution of 1,608 Negro Leaders

A statistical analysis of 1,608 American Negro leaders reveals a group comparatively young in years, males being somewhat older than females. A widening of occupational acitivity is found. The time-honored occupations of teaching and the ministry have competitors in the newer fields of medicine and law. The newer occupations requiring greater support directly from the Negro group are in part an index of the growing economic and social achievements of the supporting Negro population.

The Vocabulary of the American Negro as Set Forth in Contemporary Literature

T HE four books selected as a basis for this preliminary study of the vocabulary of the American Negro as set forth in contemporary literature are: Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (New York, 1928), Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven (New York, 1926), Eric Walrond's Tropic Death (New York, 1926), and R. Emmet Kennedy's Gritny People (New York, 1927). Two of these books are by Negroes. All four authors have had opportunities for the study of the speech of the Negro and their work may legitimately be used for a purpose such as is here contemplated. McKay and Van Vechten have written of the Negro in New York City. Harlem to-day has the largest group of Negroes which has ever lived together under the modern conditions of city life. The results of their contact with the white residents of our most sophisticated city are apparent in both novels. Tropic Death is one of the most powerful collections of short stories published during recent years. The author, a native of Jamaica, writes of the Negro in that island, in other parts of the West Indies, and in Panama. Here we see the influence of long association with the white residents of English, Irish, French, and Spanish origin. Kennedy's book is a series of episodes in the daily life of the Negroes in a small settlement in Louisiana. The author likens it in form to the tales of the Canterbury pilgrims. For seventy-five years, we have been gaining a false impression as to the speech of the Negro in America. Hundreds of novels and countless short stories have been written by authors with no first-hand knowledge of how a Negro speaks and without either a desire to present a correct record or any realization of why such a presentation is desirable. Many plays and vaudeville sketches have been produced under the same circumstances. The best known of these, Uncle Tom's Cabin, has probably been played oftener in the United States than any other drama. Its dialogue is entirely unauthentic. No other race has ever been so consistently misrepresented by dramatic, musical, and literary forms as has the Negro. The minstrelshow for nearly a century offered a spectacle, unique in the annals of the theatre, in portraying the members of a particular race as clowns 24

Width of Head and Pelvis in Homo

IN the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, April-June 1929, Prof. John Cameron cites cranial measurements of numerous races, showing that the female skull is proportionately broader than that of the male. The races measured are Bushman, Hottentot, various groups of negroes, Melanesian, Tasmanian, and Australian. It occurred to me that the adaptive character of a broad pelvis might perhaps be correlated with an increased breadth of the head, the latter being then a secondary consequence of a sexual character of functional importance. The breadth of the head (relative breadth) might again perhaps have other consequences.

Feebleminded and Pauper Negroes in Public Institutions

NO consideration of the American race problem can avoid discussion of the relative abilities of the Negro and white groups. In comparing the two groups, several criteria have been employed, some of these relating to various more or less abstract standards of judgment, such as brain weight, brain structure, temperament, and intelligence rating. Others are concerned with concrete achievements, such as school records, social behavior and economic success. The data on which this article is based relate to both categories, but chiefly to the latter, for they furnish an indication of economic capacity by showing the extent to which each group fails in its efforts to cope with its environment. It is not to be inferred that such

The Black Girl Passes

A SCARCELY noted result of the interaction between whites and blacks in this country is the gradual and steady elimination of the black girl from all participation in community life. So pressed is she by forces both within and without the Negro group that her ultimate disappearance seems already decreed. Casual confirmation of her doom may be had by comparing the 'color of gatherings of young Negroes of today with that of similar assemblages of twenty-five years ago. Such comparison reveals the fact that the earlier bodies were noticeably blacker. That is to say, the percentage of black people in them was greater. Today black faces in any Negro audience are few. Brown is the predominating hue, while the increasing number of yellow and white countenances promises to give a paler cast to future groups. The black girl has not been altogether left out of Nature's scheme of perpetuating life, but more and more she has been denied the privilege to mate and her children therefore have been few. The progeny of her lighter colored, more frequently wedded sister consequently outnumbers hers. The result is inevitable. Relentlessly she is being discarded. This inference may be substantiated by a merely cursory examination into other facts. Such an examination will show that everywhere the black girl is vanishing. She is not only being ousted from that sphere so lately entered by women, the economic, and not only from that purely feminine realm called society, but she is being forced out of the domain which for centuries has been conceded to be woman's particular heritage, namely, the home. In the economic world, where the black girl is employed at all, she is shunted into the least desirable positions. It is she who toils longest hours at the most degrading work for the smallest pay. Time was when she could command coveted positions. The black mammy tradition is only one faint glimmer of her former refulgence. But black mammy long since disappeared in reality and is rapidly passing as a memory. Her dusky daughter, no matter how comely, faces a keen industrial competition in which heavy pigmentation spells defeat. For Negro women generally there has been for many years one preferred avenue of endeavor. By them and by their brothers the profession of teaching has been and is regarded as a select occupation. Those engaged in it were looked up to as perhaps topmost of the upper crust, enviable possessors of that prestige which goes with the notion that a charmed life exists upon the higher social levels. To be a teacher has been for Negroes a great desideratum. Many an aspiring parent therefore has submitted to grilling sacrifices that his daughter might enter this select class and the family thus win the social leverage thereunto appertaining. Consequently the profession of teaching became the chief outlet for the energies of the rapidly advancing number of trained women. Into it almost exclusively the colleges poured their yearly quotas of sweet girl graduates. Frequently also a Nkegro girl conquered the handicaps and prejudices of the Civil Service and became a government clerk. Occasionally Negro women graduates of the country's foremost schools entered the professions. There have been and are successful Negro women physicians, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers and even ministers. And of late

Racial differences in the intelligence of school children.

After tabulation and discussion of racial differences in intelligence found by previous workers, author gives results of testing 2457 public school children of Tennessee, Louisiana, and California with Goodenough Intelligence Test for Young Children, which is independent of language. A number of racial stocks were included: Orientals, Spanish-Mexican, Jews, Indians, Negroes, and Europeans of various nationalities. The distribution of IQ's shows that the South Europeans and Negro groups rank very much below American children and those of North European stock. The rank-order of various nationality-groups corresponds very closely to that found by means of other intelligence tests. In order to be fair to foreign groups, no children from schools in superior residential districts were tested. Bibliography of 46 titles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

A Grammar of the Kafir Language

AFAIR-MINDED critic would start a review of this work by a general verdict of praise for its compactness and usefulness. It is an excellent grammar of the Kosa1 language of that southernmost group of Bantu-speaking negroes known unfortunately by the most inappropriate term, the Arab word Kafir, or “Unbeliever.” The group of Bantu peoples who inhabit the coastlands of the southern extremity of Africa, between the Transkei River in Cape Colony and Inhambane in the Portuguese Province of Mocambique, had better be styled generically “Zulu” rather than “Kafir” or “Kafir-Zulu.” A Grammar of the Kafir Language. By J. McLaren Pp. xiv + 240. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906.) Price 5s.