Social segregation

“ Former Governor Byrnes stated that “the hope” of the South was voluntary segregation. [113] Proposals for voluntary segregation, of course, contain no provision for Negro parents who desire integrated schools for their children.
The News and Courier has been a consistent advocate of voluntary segregation. In defending this approach, the Charleston paper said:
Happiness cannot be measured in worldly goods, nor social position, nor many of the things that some of us hold too dear. ”

“ All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities. A Negro slum may be in dangerous proximity to a white residence quarter, while it is quite common to find a white slum planted in the heart of a respectable Negro district. One thing, however, seldom occurs: the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost never live in anything like close proximity. ”

“ This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads35 inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segregation forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. ”

“ The third was a report of a survey conducted for the American Jewish Congress in 1947 by Max Deutscher and Isidor Chein. They sent a questionnaire to 849 social scientists, asking, first in the affirmative and then in the negative, “ [Do you] believe that enforced segregation has (has not) a detrimental psychological effect on members of the racial or religious groups which are segregated?” A second question, similarly phrased, sought the social scientists’ opinions on whether such segregation has detrimental effects on the majority group imposing the segregation. ”

“ Setting aside social barriers, which in early times as well as now undoubtedly tended to keep intermingling peoples separate, it would seem that in the more populous communities of modern times a greater permanence of the single combining elements might occur, owing to their larger numbers, which make the opportunities for segregation more favorable. ”

“ The device of insuring greater harmony of social life by segregation of the insubordinate and elimination of the criminal, aims, on the other hand, at progress, and belongs to dynamic sociology. The thing does not have to be done over and over again in order to hold ground already gained. ”

“ In a large measure this segregation is not so much an expression of voluntary desire as it is a situation forced upon mental defectives through those natural intellectual and social deficiencies which restrict them to environments economically and otherwise less desirable to normal people. ”

“ But if this cause of incompleteness be duly borne in mind, social segregations will be seen to conform entirely to the same principle as all other segregations. Analysis will show that either by external incident forces, or by what we may in a sense regard as mutual polarity, there are ever being produced in society integrations of those units which have either a natural likeness or a likeness generated by training. ”

“ Nor does this exhaust the possibilities of social help available for the poorer members of society in cities in which there is a satisfactory distribution of rich and poor, that is, in which the segregation of different social strata in separate areas has happily not befallen. ”

“ We condemn the segregation of foreign races in different sections of our large cities. But the segregation of the better, or at least more fortunate, classes, is just as bad and more disastrous to the welfare of the city. ”

“ That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens. ”

“ What so absurd as unguarded wealth? The day of high board fences is passing. While segregation will supply certain opportunities, which we may profit by, if we use them as stepping-stones to higher things, it can only do so, if there is courage to defend what has been won. ”

“ Whereas such discriminatory policies and practices result in segregated patterns of housing and necessarily produce other forms of discrimination and segregation which deprive many Americans of equal opportunity in the exercise of their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ”

“ It may be argued that if this psychological law is true in practice the necessity for segregation exists in the imagination only—that the Race Problem will solve itself on the principle of self preservation and self interest if let alone and given time. ”

“ It is this class regardless of color that creates and supports all civilization; this class that in all the ages of the past, throughout history, in every nation on earth has been the lower class; for the badge of Labor has always been the symbol of servitude and upon the brow of Labor there has always been the brand of social inferiority. ”

“ Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society ”

“ With a few notable exceptions, most Negro spokesmen appear to spend their time condoning and minimizing the characteristics that deprive their race of a “first-class” reputation. Are Negro neighborhoods filthy? The Negro, it is said, has no incentive to clean them up. Why does this appalling rate of illegitimacy persist? The Negro, it is said, must relieve the frustrations brought on by segregation. Are Negro incomes generally low? It is all the fault of the white man: He deprives the Negro of job opportunities. ”

“ In cities where the professional and well-to-do class is large they have formed society—society as discriminating as the actual conditions will allow it to be; I should say, perhaps, society possessing discriminating tendencies which become rules as fast as actual conditions allow. This statement will, I know, sound preposterous, even ridiculous, to some persons; but as this class of colored people is the least known of the race it is not surprising. These social circles are connected throughout the country, and a person in good standing in one city is readily accepted in another. ”

“ Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that assimilation today has proceeded much beyond where it was at the earlier periods. Blush or shudder, as many will, mixture of blood has been making inroads on segregation faster than change in law. No clear line of separation between the races has been observed. More and more a large population with as much claim to white as to colored blood baffles any justice in classification for segregation. ”

“ The status of the black population, as a distinct and alien race, condemns the race to remain, in perpetuum, the laboring class. If its blood can not commingle with that of the whites, social advancement ceases at an early stage; the higher social planes are incapable of attainment; whereby is broken a fundamental social law that allows to the individual full freedom to rise or fall in the social scale, without hindrance from race prejudice or prestige. ”

“ Here we encounter one of the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the under race. ”

“ The practice of racial segregation is not in keeping with the ideals of Democracy and Christianity.
(2) Racial segregation is robbing not only the segregated but the segregator of his human dignity. Furthermore, the propagation of racial prejudice is unfair to the generations yet unborn. ”

“ Thus it may be in the interest of the Association in every case to make a frontal attack on segregation, to press for an immediate breaking down of racial barriers, and to sacrifice minor points that may win a given case for the major points that may win other cases too. ”

“ He thus became the chief defender of two things or two ideas, slavery and particularism, to which the developing character of the nineteenth century was utterly opposed; slavery here and everywhere was doomed to be beaten down by the tide of humanitarianism, while localism, and sectionalism, and all other tendencies to exclusiveness and segregation, were at variance with those great forces of aggregation and of nation-building which were manifest in the whole civilized world. ”

“ Another reason for segregation is the criminality and immorality of the Negro race. Even if it would benefit a few Negroes or satisfy their vanity to travel with whites or to live on the same street with them is little reason why the comfort, property values, health and morals of the whites should be endangered thereby. The better elements of society have rights as well as the worst and the majority should receive consideration as well as the minority. ”

“ More necessary than legislation is a more vigorous and alert public opinion among the Whites, which will put a stop to social mixing of the two races. Social separation is the key to minimizing the evils of race mixture at the present time. ”

“ But take a community of a thousand, and let ten such internal groups be formed, and every group will have to canvass more or less hard to increase its number. For the other nine hundred people, being able to pick and choose, are likely to feel a deep indifference to the question of joining any segregation at all. ”

“ How far are the home mores responsible for criminal manifestations of an immigrant group? Crisis and the courts,—It is characteristic of city life that all sorts of people meet and mingle together who never fully comprehend one another. The anarchist and the club man, the priest and the Levite, the actor and the missionary who touch elbows on the street, still live in totally different worlds. So complete is the segregation of vocational classes that it is possible within the limits of the city to live in an isolation almost as complete as that of some remote rural community. ”

“ Negroes tend to flock together as do members of other racial groups. I do not regard this as segregation. When an effort is made from without to group them together, which carries along with it restrictions of movement, residence or activity, we have segregation. Racial solidarity seems to me to be the conscious or unconscious reaction to segregation. ”

“ Then, as regards the segregation from foreigners, it is evident that we need employ little time, for such of the town populations as have maintained a fair state of morality amid the evils of large cities, are not likely to be materially affected by the bad habits and customs of the white races; and as for those who have never led a steady life, it would not much matter with whom they mixed. ”

“ On another occasion the News and Courier declared that “Negroes wishing to engage in activities repugnant to white people are also free to earn a living elsewhere.” To secure employment in the South, Negroes should be willing “to observe community customs.” [182]
The policies of the Citizens Council at least temporarily have been successful inasmuch as they have postponed an immediate showdown on the school segregation issue. Just how long such unofficial measures will continue to be successful is problematical. ”

“ They are excluded (a) because their industrial standards of living are such that their admission in large numbers will tend to injure the welfare of the community industrially, and (b) because the difference in race is so marked that their coming in large numbers is likely to promote social friction, and thus to injure the community politically and socially. ”

“ Such justice is outrageous and such methods disgraceful. Black folk are willing to shoulder their own sins, but the difference between a vagabond and a murderer is too tremendous to be lightly ignored.
“SOCIAL EQUALITY.” At last we have a definition of the very elusive phrase “Social Equality” as applied to the Negro problem. In stating their grievances colored people have recently specified these points:
1. Disfranchisement, even of educated Negroes.
2. Curtailment of common school training.
3. Confinement to “Ghettos.”
4. Discrimination in wages.
5. Confinement to menial employment. ”

“ We believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races–commonly called the Negro Problem-lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness among the Negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery. We believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our own part can cure these social ills. ”

“ When we were poverty-stricken and satisfied if we might live in the alleys of our great American cities, there was no thought of segregation, whether in the matter of our residences, or in that of the employees of our much-heralded republican government. With every increase in accomplishment, or worth, or demand for [485] the better things of life, comes the burden of wrongs, injustice, and rash discrimination. It would be idle here to attempt to recount in detail the grievances we justly have against the government in city, state and nation ”