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ROBERT C. WEAVER WITH PRESIDENT
The Negro as an American
It follows the full text transcript of
Robert C. Weaver's The Negro as an American speech, delivered at
Chicago, Illinois — June 13, 1963.
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When the average
well-informed and |
well-intentioned
white American discusses the issue of race with
his Negro counterpart there are many areas of
agreement. There are also certain significant
areas of disagreement.
Negro Americans usually feel that whites
exaggerate progress; while whites frequently
feel that Negroes minimize gains. Then there are
differences relative to the responsibility of
Negro leadership. It is in these areas of
dispute that some of the most subtle and
revealing aspects of white-white relationships
reside. And it is to the subtle and less obvious
aspects of this problem that I wish to direct my
remarks.
Most middle-class white Americans frequently
ask, "Why do Negroes push so? They have made
phenomenal progress in 100 years of freedom, so
why don't their leaders do something about the
crime rate and illegitimacy?" To them I would
reply that when Negroes press for full equality
now they are behaving as all other Americans
would under similar circumstances. Every
American has the right to be treated as a human
being and striving for human dignity is a
national characteristic. Also, there is nothing
inconsistent in such action and realistic
self-appraisal. Indeed, as I shall develop,
self-help programs among non-whites, if they are
to be effective, must go hand-in-glove with the
opening of new opportunities.
Negroes who are constantly confronted or
threatened by discrimination and inequality
articulate a sense of outrage. Many react with
hostility, sometimes translating their feelings
into overt anti-social actions. In parts of the
Negro community a separate culture with deviant
values develops. To the members of this
subculture I would observe that ours is a
middle-class society and those who fail to
evidence most of its values and behavior are
headed toward difficulties. But I am reminded
that the rewards for those who do are often
minimal, providing insufficient inducement for
large numbers to emulate them.
Until the second decade of the twentieth
century, it was traditional to compare the then
current position of Negroes with that of a
decade or several decades ago. The depression
revealed the basic marginal economic status of
colored Americans and repudiated this concept of
progress. By the early 1930's Negroes became
concerned about their relative position in the
nation.
Of course, there are those who observe that the
average income, the incidence of home ownership,
the rate of acquisition of automobiles, and the
like, among Negroes in the United States are
higher than in some so-called advanced nations.
Such comparisons mean little. Incomes are
significant only in relation to the cost of
living, and the other attainments and
acquisitions are significant for comparative
purposes only when used to reflect the Negro's
relative position in the world. The Negro here
-- as he has so frequently and eloquently
demonstrated -- is an American. And his status,
no less than his aspirations, can be measured
meaningfully only in terms of American
standards. Viewed from this point of view what
are the facts?
Median family income among non-whites was
slightly less than 55 percent of that for whites
in 1959; for individuals the figure was 50
percent.
Only a third of the Negro families in 1959
earned sufficient to sustain an acceptable
American standard of living. Yet this involved
well over a million Negro families, of which
6,000 earned $25,000 or more.
Undergirding these overall figures are many
paradoxes. Negroes have made striking gains in
historical terms, yet their current rate of
unemployment is well over double that among
whites. Over two-thirds of our colored workers
are still concentrated in five major unskilled
and semi-skilled occupations, as contrasted to
slightly over a third of the white labor force.
Despite the continuing existence of color
discrimination even for many of the well
prepared, there is a paucity of qualified Negro
scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and
highly-trained clerical and stenographic
workers. Lack of college-trained persons is
especially evident among Negro men. One is
prompted to ask why does this exist? In 1959
non-white males who were high school graduates
earned on the average, 32 percent less than
whites; for non-white college graduates the
figure was 38 percent less. Among women a much
different situation exists. Non-white women who
were high school graduates earned on the average
some 24 percent less than whites. Non-white
female college graduates, however, earned but
slightly over one percent less average annual
salaries than white women college graduates.
Significantly, the median annual income of
non-white female college graduates was more than
double that of non-white women with only high
school education.
Is it any wonder that among non-whites, as
contrasted to whites, a larger proportion of
women than of men attend and finish college? The
lack of economic rewards for higher education
goes far in accounting for the paucity of
college graduates and the high rate of drop-out
among non-white males. It also accounts for the
fact that in the North, where there are greater
opportunities for white-collar Negro males, more
Negro men than women are finishing college;
whereas in the South, where teaching is the
greatest employment outlet for Negro college
graduates, Negro women college graduates
outnumber men. There is much in these situations
that reflects the continuing matriarchal
character of Negro society -- in a situation
which had its roots in the family composition
under slavery where the father, if identified,
had no established role. Subsequent and
continuing economic advantages of Negro women
who found steady employment as domestics during
the post Civil War era and thereafter
perpetuated the pattern. This, in conjunction
with easy access of white males to Negro
females, served to emasculate many Negro men
economically and psychologically. It also
explains, in part, the high prevalence of broken
homes, illegitimacy, and lack of motivation in
the Negro community.
The Negro middle-class seems destined to grow
and prosper. At the same time, the economic
position of the untrained and poorly trained
Negro -- as of all untrained and poorly trained
in our society -- will continue to decline.
Non-whites are doubly affected. First, they are
disproportionately concentrated in occupations
particularly susceptible to unemployment at a
time when our technology eats up unskilled and
semi-skilled jobs at a frightening rate.
Secondly, they are conditioned to racial job
discrimination. The latter circumstance becomes
a justification for not trying, occasioning a
lack of incentive for self-betterment.
The tragedy of discrimination is that it
provides an excuse for failure while erecting
barriers to success.
Most colored Americans still are not only
outside the mainstream of our society but see no
hope of entering it. The lack of motivation and
anti-social behavior which result are
capitalized upon by the champions of the status
quo. They say that the average Negro must
demonstrate to the average white that the
latter's fears are groundless. One proponent of
this point of view has stated that Negro crime
and illegitimacy must decline and Negro
neighborhoods must stop deteriorating.
In these observations lie a volume on race
relations. In the first place, those who
articulate this point of view fail to
differentiate between acceptance as earned by
individual merit and enjoyment of rights
guaranteed to everyone. Implicit, also, is the
assumption that Negroes can lift themselves by
their bootstraps, and that once they become
brown counterparts of white middle-class
Americans, they will be accepted on the basis of
individual merit. Were this true, our race
problem would be no more than a most recent
phase in the melting pot tradition of the
nation.
As compared to the earlier newcomers to our
cities from Europe, the later ones who are
colored face much greater impediments in moving
from the slums or from the bottom of the
economic ladder. At the same time, they have
less resources to meet the more difficult
problems which confront them.
One of the most obvious manifestations of the
Negro's paucity of internal resources is the
absence of widespread integrated patterns of
voluntary organizations. The latter, as we know,
contributed greatly to the adjustment and
assimilation of European immigrants. Both the
Negro's heritage and the nature of his migration
in the United States militiated against the
development of similar institutions.
Slavery and resulting post-civil war dependence
upon whites stifled self-reliance. Movement from
the rural south to northern cities was a far cry
from immigration from Europe to the new world.
This internal migration was not an almost
complete break with the past, nor were those who
participated in it subjected to feelings of
complete foreignness. Thus the Negro tended to
preserve his old institutions when he moved from
one part of the nation to another; the immigrant
created new ones. And most important, the
current adjustment of non-whites to an urban
environment is occurring at a time when public
agencies are rapidly supplanting voluntary
organizations.
Although much is written about crime and family
disorganization among Negroes, most literate
Americans are poorly informed on such matters.
The first fallacy which arises is a confusion of
what racial crime figures reflect. When people
read that more than half the crime in a given
community is committed by Negroes they
unconsciously translate this into an equally
high proportion of Negroes who are criminals. In
fact, the latter proportion is extremely small.
In a similar vein, family stability, as
indicated by the presence of both husband and
wife, which is very low among the poorest
non-whites, rises sharply as income increases.
Equally revealing is the fact that, in all parts
of the country, the proportion of non-white
families with female heads falls as incomes
rise. A good, steady pay check appears to be an
important element in family stability. Those
Negroes who have been able to improve their
economic position have generally taken on many
of the attributes of white middle-class
Americans.
But poverty still haunts half of the Negroes in
the United States, and while higher levels of
national productivity are a sine qua non for
higher levels of employment in the nation, they
alone will not wipe out unemployment, especially
for minorities. The labor reserve of today must
be trained if it is to find gainful employment.
Among non-whites this frequently involves more
than exposure to vocational training. Many of
them are functionally illiterate and require
basic education prior to any specialized job
preparation.
The very magnitude of these problems illustrates
that society must take the leadership in solving
them. But society can only provide greater
opportunities. The individual must respond to
the new opportunities. And he does so,
primarily, in terms of visible evidence that
hard work and sacrifice bring real rewards.
Many white Americans are perplexed, confused,
and antagonized by Negroes' persistent pressure
to break down racial segregation. Few pause to
consider what involuntary segregation means to
its victims.
To the Negro, as an American, involuntary
segregation is degrading, inconvenient and
costly. It is degrading because it is a tangible
and constant reminder of the theory upon which
it is based -- biological racial inferiority. It
is inconvenient because it means long trips to
work, exclusion from certain cultural and
recreational facilities, lack of access to
restaurants and hotels conveniently located,
and, frequently, relegation to grossly inferior
accommodations. Sometimes it spells denial of a
job and often it prevents upgrading based on
ability.
But the principal disadvantage of involuntary
segregation is its costliness. Nowhere is this
better illustrated than in education and
housing. By any and all criteria, separate
schools are generally inferior schools in which
the cultural deprivations of the descendants of
slaves are perpetuated.
Enforced residential segregation, the most
stubborn and universal of the Negro's
disadvantages, often leads to exploitation and
effects a spatial pattern which facilitates
neglect of public services in the well-defined
areas where Negroes live. It restricts the
opportunities of the more successful as well as
the least successful in the group, augmenting
artificially the number of non-whites who live
in areas of blight and neglect and face
impediments to the attainment of values and
behavior required for upward social and economic
mobility.
The most obvious consequence of involuntary
residential segregation is that the housing
dollar in a dark hand usually commands less
purchasing power than one in a white hand.
Clearly, this is a denial of a basic promise of
a free economy.
For immigrant groups in the nation, the trend
toward improved socioeconomic status has gone
hand-in-hand with decreasing residential
segregation. The reverse has been true of the
Negro. Eli Ginzberg, in his book, The Negro
Potential, has delineated the consequences.
It must be recognized that the Negro cannot
suddenly take his proper place among whites in
the adult world if he has never lived, played,
and studied with them in childhood and young
adulthood. Any type of segregation handicaps a
person's preparation for work and life. . Only
when Negro and white families can live together
as neighbors . . . Will the Negro grow up
properly prepared for his place in the world of
work.
Residential segregation based on color cannot be
separated from residential segregation based
upon income. Both have snob and class appeal in
contemporary America. Concentration of higher
income families in the suburbs means that many
of those whose attitudes and values dominate our
society do not see the poor or needy. But more
important, cut off by political boundaries, it
is to their interest not to see them.
Yet there are over 30,000,000 Americans who
experience poverty today. For the most part, we
resent them and the outlays required for welfare
services. They are a group which is separate
from the majority of Americans and for whom the
latter accept only the minimum responsibility.
Thus we have, for the first time, class
unemployment in the United States.
I happen to have been born a Negro and to have
devoted a large part of my adult energies to the
problem of the role of the Negro in America. But
I am also a government administrator, and have
devoted just as much energy -- if not more -- to
problems of government administration at the
local, the state and the national level.
My responsibilities as a Negro and an American
are part of the heritage I received from my
parents -- a heritage that included a wealth of
moral and social values that don't have anything
to do with my race. My responsibilities as a
government administrator don't have too much to
do with my race, either. My greatest difficulty
in public life is combating the idea that
somehow my responsibilities as a Negro conflict
with my responsibilities as a government
administrator: and this is a problem which is
presented by those Negroes who feel that I
represent them exclusively, as well as by those
whites who doubt my capacity to represent all
elements in the population. The fact is that my
responsibilities as a Negro and a government
administrator do not conflict; they complement
each other.
The challenge frequently thrown to me is why I
don't go out into the Negro community and exhort
Negro youths to prepare themselves for present
and future opportunities. My answer is somewhat
ambivalent. I know that emphasis upon values and
behavior conducive to success in the dominant
culture of America was an important part of my
youthful training. But it came largely from my
parents in the security and love of a
middle-class family. (And believe me, there is
nothing more middle-class than a middle-class
minority family!) Many of the youth which I am
urged to exhort come from broken homes. They
live in communities where the fellow who stays
in school and follows the rules is a "square."
They reside in a neighborhood where the most
successful are often engaged in shady -- if not
illegal -- activities. They know that the very
policeman who may arrest them for violation of
the law is sometimes the pay-off man for the
racketeers. And they recognize that the majority
society, which they frequently believe to be the
"enemy," condones this situation. Their
experience also leads some of them to believe
that getting the kind of job the residents in
the neighborhood hold is unrewarding -- a
commitment to hard work and poverty. For almost
all of them, the precepts of Ben Franklin are
lily-like in their applicability.
Included in the group are the third generation
of welfare clients. It is in this area -- where
they learn all the jargon of the social workers
and psychologists -- that they demonstrate real
creativity. It is in activities which "beat" the
system that they are most adept -- and where the
most visible rewards are concentrated.
All youth is insecure today. Young people in our
slums are not only insecure but angry. Their
horizons are limited, and, in withdrawing from
competing in the larger society, they are
creating a peculiar, but effective, feeling of
something that approaches, or at least serves as
a viable substitute for, security. In the
process, new values and aspirations, a new
vocabulary, a new standard of dress, and a new
attitude toward authority evolve. Each of these
serves to demonstrate a separateness from the
dominant culture.
As a realist, I know that these youth relate
with me primarily in a negative sense. They see
me in terms of someone who has been able to
penetrate, to a degree, the color line, and to
them I have bettered the "enemy." If I should
attempt to suggest their surmounting the
restrictions of color, they cite instances of
persons they know who were qualified -- the
relatively few boys or girls in their
neighborhood who finished high school or even
college -- only to be ignored while white youths
with much less training were selected for good
jobs. And such occurrences are not unique or
isolated in their experience.
The example which will be an inspiration to the
Negro boys and girls whose anti-social behavior
distresses most whites and many Negroes is
someone they know who has experienced what they
have experienced and has won acceptance in the
mainstream of America. When the Ralph Bunches,
William Hasties, and John Hope Franklins emerge
from their environment, the achievements of
these successful Negroes will provide models
which have meaning for them.
This is reflected in the occupations which
provide the greatest incidence of mobility for
slum youth. One thinks immediately of prize
fighting and jazz music. In these fields there
is a well established tradition of Negroes,
reared in the ghetto areas of blight and
poverty, who have gone to the top. For youth in
a similar environment, these are heroes with
whom they can and do identify and relate. And in
these fields, a significant proportion of the
successful are non-whites. For only in those
pursuits in which native genius can surmount (if
indeed it does not profit from) lack of high
level training does the dominant environment of
the Negro facilitate large-scale achievement.
For many successful older colored Americans,
middle-class status has been difficult.
Restricted, in large measure, to racial ghettos,
they have expended great effort to protect their
children from falling back into the dominant
values of that environment. And these values are
probably more repugnant to them than to most
Americans. This is understandable in terms of
their social origins. For the most part, they
come from lower-middle class families, where
industry, good conduct, family ties, and a
willingness to postpone immediate rewards for
future successes are stressed. Their values and
standards of conduct are those of
success-oriented middle-class Americans.
It is not that responsible Negroes fail to feel
shame about muggings, illegitimacy, and
boisterousness on the part of other Negroes.
Many -- particularly the older ones -- feel too
much shame in this connection. Accordingly, some
either repudiate the "culprits" in terms of
scathing condemnation or try to escape from the
problem lest it endanger their none too secure
status.
These attitudes, too, are shifting. The younger
middle-class Negroes are more secure and
consequently place less stress upon the quest
for respectability. But few Negroes are immune
from the toll of upward mobility. Frequently
their struggle has been difficult, and the
maintenance of their status demands a heavy
input. As long as this is true, they will have
less energy to devote to the problems of the
Negro subculture. It is significant, however,
that the sit-ins and freedom marches in the
south were planned and executed by Negro college
students most of whom come from middle-class
families.
Middle-class Negroes have long led the fight for
civil rights; today its youthful members do not
hesitate to resort to direct action,
articulating the impatience which is rife
throughout the Negro community. In so doing they
are forging a new solidarity in the struggle for
human dignity.
There are today, as there always have been,
thousands of dedicated colored Americans who
don't make the headlines but are successful in
raising the horizons of Negroes. These are the
less well-known leaders who function at the
local level. The teachers, social workers, local
political leaders, ministers, doctors, and an
assortment of indigenous leaders -- many among
the latter with little formal education -- who
are effective have familiarized themselves with
the environmental factors which dull and destroy
motivation. They become involved with the total
Negro community. They demonstrate -- rather than
verbalize -- a concern for Negro youth's
problems. They are trying to reach these young
people, not by coddling and providing excuses
for failure, but through identification of their
potentialities and assistance in the development
of these. Involved are both genuine affection
and sufficient toughness to facilitate and
encourage the development of self-reliance.
Those, white and black alike, who reach the
newcomers in our urban areas avoid value
judgments relative to cultural patterns. When
they suggest thrift, good deportment, greater
emphasis upon education and training, they do so
as a pragmatic approach. For them, it is not a
matter of proselytizing, but in a matter of
delineating those values and patterns of
behavior that accelerate upward mobility in
contemporary American society. Such a
sophisticated approach enables them to identify
deviations from dominant values and conduct
which are not inconsistent with a productive and
healthy life in modern urban communities. The
latter are left undisturbed, so that there will
be a minimum adjustment of values and concepts
and the maximum functional effectiveness on the
part of individuals who will not soon become
middle-class America.
What are the responsibilities of Negro
leadership?
Certainly the first is to keep pressing for
first-class citizenship status -- an inevitable
goal of those who accept the values of this
nation.
Another responsibility of Negro leadership is to
encourage and assist Negroes to prepare for the
opportunities that are now and will be opened to
them.
The ultimate responsibilities of Negro
leadership, however, are to show results and
maintain a following. This means that it cannot
be so "responsible" that it forgets the trials
and tribulations of others who are less
fortunate or less recognized than itself. It
cannot stress progress -- the emphasis which is
so palatable to the majority group -- without,
at the same time, delineating the unsolved
business of democracy. It cannot provide or
identify meaningful models unless it effects
social changes which facilitate the emergence of
these models from the environment which typifies
so much of the Negro community.
But Negro leadership must also face up to the
deficiencies which plague the Negro community,
and it must take effective action to deal with
resulting problems. While, of course, crime,
poverty, illegitimacy and hopelessness can all
be explained, in large measure, in terms of the
Negro's history and current status in America,
they do exist. We need no longer be
self-conscious in admitting these unpleasant
facts, for our knowledge of human behavior
indicates clearly that anti-social activities
are not inherent in any people. What is required
is comprehension of these -- a part of society's
problems -- and remedial and rehabilitation
measures.
Emphasis upon self-betterment if employed
indiscriminately by Negro leaders is seized upon
by white supremacists and their apologists to
support the assertion that Negroes -- and they
mean all Negroes -- are not ready for full
citizenship. This, because of the nature of our
society, Negro leadership must continue to
stress rights if it is to receive a hearing for
programs of self-improvement.
Black Muslims, who identify the white man as the
devil, can and do emphasize -- with a remarkable
degree of success -- morality, industry, and
good conduct. But, the Negro leader who does not
repudiate his or his followers' Americanism can
do so effectively only as he, too, clearly
repudiates identification with the white
supremacists. This he does, of course, when he
champions equal rights, just as the black
Muslims accomplish it by directing hate toward
all white people.
Most Negroes in leadership capacities have
articulated the fact that they and those who
follow them are a part of America. They have
striven for realization of the American dream.
Most recognize their responsibilities as
citizens and urge others to follow their
example. Sophisticated whites realize that the
status of Negroes in our society depends not
only upon what the Negro does to achieve his
goals and prepare himself for opportunities but,
even more, upon what all America does to expand
these opportunities. And the quality and nature
of future Negro leadership depends upon how
effective those leaders who relate to the total
society can be in satisfying the yearnings for
human dignity which reside in the hearts of all
Americans.
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