St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1942-10-02

privileges OF American citizenship
Negroes are not now psychology
cally prepared to accept response
bility for the acts of the collective
big House" to get his ration OF
corn meal and fat-back. After re.
ceiving his supplies, and just be-
fore leaving, he looked at the plan
tation owner and said, "By the way
Captain, l hear the Japs done de.
clared war on you white folks!'
Then there is the story of small
Negro community in the backwoods
of Mississippi, none of whose in
habitants could read or write. Not
knowing much about the war and
being timid about asking white
people to explain it, they sent one
of their men to nearby town to
see if he could discover, without
asking direct questions, what 1t
was all about. After standing
around all day and hearing many
references to the attempted rape of
Hawaii, he returned to his commu-
nifty and reported that Uncle Sam
and the Japs were fighting about
an cold whore" called Pearl Har-
Dor. This feeling of being alien, of
being isolated from the interests of
the total society, can be noted
among all classes of Negroes. Even
those who are more aware of the
international issues of the World
War share, nevertheless, a deep
seated resentment against their
cultural isolation.
Not many Negroes have any
strong conviction that the present
struggle will improve their status,
and without such a conviction
morale is necessarily low. AS Pro-
fessor Louis Wirth, the University
of Chicago sociologist, has pointed
out, ''to make great sacrifices
willingly a group must have an
unambiguous cause for which to
struggle. They must be imbued
with the feeling that their cause
is right, that something desirable
will result or something undesira-
BILE will be abolished through their
collective action" Even the war
effort has been marked by many
specific instances of discrimination
segregation in the armed forces,
segregation of Negro blood in the
Red Cross blood banks, the shoot
ing and killing of Negro soldiers
in uniform by military and civilian
police, and especially the discrimi-
nation against Negroes in defense
industries. All these things con-
tribute to the d1saffection of the
Negro toward the war effort. He
compares them constantly with the
avowed detectives of the war and
recalls his own establishment with
the results of the First World War
AS matter of fact, in many re-
gions the more frequently the slo-
gans of democracy are raised for
the general population the lower
falls Negro morale. The general
bitterness was summed up by a
young Negro who, on being in
Quoted into the army, said, "Just
carve on my tombstone, here lies
a black man killed fighting a vel
low man for the protection of a
white man." Another Negro boy
expressed the same feeling when
he said he was going to get his
eyes slanted so that the next time
a white man showed him around he
could fight back.
Such statements reveal the re-
sentiment which has been gener-
ated by the Negroes isolation and
indicate his lack of identification
with the purposes and privileges of
the majority group, his growing
tendency toward psychological
Identification with other non-white
people, and his hope for a change.
The growing Identification of the
American Negro with non-white
people all over the world is no fig
ment of Nazi propaganda. A re-
cent issue of Negro weekly con-
tanned five articles and an editorial
on colored people outside of Amer
lea. One article was on the African
trade unions in South Africa; two
were on the Indian situation; one
was on Churchill's statement that
the Atlantic Charter was not to be
applied to colonies held by the
United Nations; and one was on
Negroes in South America. 1t may
seem odd to hear India discussed
in poolrooms on South State Street
in Chicago, but India and the pos
sibility of the Indians obtaining
their freedom from England by any
means have captured the magma