Negro Society Research Articles

West Indian Family Organization

West Indian Negro society is bounded by poverty and color frustration. The island of Jamaica is taken as typical of society in the Caribbean. The family or domestic group in this society can be regarded as a phenomenon sui generis. Four types can be distinguished: Christian family, faithful concubinage, maternal, or grandmother, family, and keeper family. These familial forms exhibit a marked degree of stability. But they can be regarded as indicative of the disequilibrium inherent in the society. The contemporary family structure of the Negro in the New World is the result of plantation slavery rather than of a West Arican tradition.

The Negro Merchant: A Study of Negro Anti-Semitism

Negro anti-Semitism involves changes in the class structure of Negro society and the accompanying social movements, such as the rise of a Negro business spirit and Negro business chauvinism. Business associations within the Negro community, among Negro and white merchants, reflect these movements and the tensions that ensue from the struggle of Negro businessmen to win consumer-patronage from white merchants in superior competitive positions. Because of the ethnic character of these white merchants, the antagonism has taken the form of anti-Semitism.

Social Stratification in the Negro Population: A Study of Social Classes in South Boston, Virginia

From time to time there have appeared in the literature on the Negro studies of the class structure within the Negro population. In its historical perspective E. Franklin Frazier, in The Negro Family in the United States, and Negro Youth at the Crossways, has done a remarkable job in tracing the development of the class system in Negro society, defining the situation out of which the structure arose, stating the factors which have determined social status, and describing the characteristics of those classes, especially as they are found in the urban community. Charles S. Johnson has given a very excellent treatment to the problem in his study, Growing up in the Black Belt, and elsewhere.1 While in each case the writer was not primarily concerned with the social stratification in the Negro population as such, their investigations have been particularly valuable in pointing up the problem for investigation. The present study is an empirical investigation of the Negro population in a small Southern town to discover (1) the stratification of the community, to determine whether or not there are within the Negro population the clearly defined upper, middle, and lower classes about which much has been written; and (2) to discover the factors that created the stratification, that maintain it, and that are bring-

Color Names and Color Notions

Although few Negroes are willing to concede the validity of the assertion that plays any significant role in the organization of Negro society, there is ample evidence that differences in skin receive at least verbal recognition in the Negro community.' In popular ditties, in songs about brownskin 'gals', in off color jokes and indelicate stories there are numerous suggestions of the names which, from time to time, have been used to describe the various shades and of the stereotyped conceptions of what each shade or group is like.2 Such names as black, high yellow, chocolate, high brown and sealskin have a wide currency in Negro circles.

Social Classes: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Negro Society

Social Classes: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Negro Society

Informal Post-Graduate Education of College-Bred Negroes

In the doctors' cloak room of a Negro hospital not long ago, I came upon a discussion of the third term in office for the American president, a contrast of the principles and policy of the two major political parties, how the New Deal democrat differs from the Jeffersonian, the question of money, the gold standard, and so on as these discussions commonly wander without regard for argumentation or the fallacies of logic. These gentlemen were physicians, presumably the best educated men in Negro society, having both college and professional school degrees; yet here were questions of current, vital interest to all American citizens under debate scarcely above the level of the man in the street who gets all of his information from tabloid newspapers. It is a sad commentary upon our social intercourse that though marked by good manners and a gentility of greater than veneer-depth in SOME quarters, yet it lacks that cultivation born of a taste for books and love of learning. It is not enough in this modern day of advantage and opportunity to arrogate this intellectual indolence to the fact that the American Negro has enjoyed but seventy-five years of freedom and consequently cannot be expected to assimilate so soon the culture of an older race in point of freedom. This is utter nonsense. The social background of Negroes in the best American colleges in the twentieth century is such that it requires exactly four years to acquire an introduction to the entire history of Western thought consistent with the liberal tradition; that in graduation is the inherent challenge to keep the contact unbroken with books and learning the balance of one's life so that informed, intelligent opinion might elucidate or enliven polite conversation; that the table talk before our children and our living room excursions might reflect good education and thus the best of breeding. To the college-bred I know of no book of cultural intent as difficult to master as the expositions of the leading systems of bridge; yet in almost every home one can get into sound and serious debate quickly on the strategy of bridge. Probably bridge is swankier than books in the theory of the leisure class after the manner of Thorstein Veblen. It is because our so-called intelligentsia have never appreciated the relationship of books to their frame of reference and how out of such a proper relationship the whole structure of genuine and permanent social discrimination must rest, and how great the influence of refinement upon the intercourse of our private lives-indeed this is the key to the indigenous culture of the whole race in this country. Fine feathers most certainly do not make fine birds: a lucky boor with all the trappings or accoutrements of the landed gentry is far more obnoxious than before his stroke of fortune-and some have been to college.