St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1944-05-19
By DAN GARDNER

Probably our greatest need to-
day is someone to give the race a
lasting lesson in the fundamental
values of life beyond the mere rou-
tine of getting the job to earn the
money with which to buy food, pay
the rent and purchase clothes.
Without going into the long ar
gumentative passages of profound
sociological whyfores and where
fores of the race problem, it can be
safely said that the American Negro
stands in danger of losing every
social advantage he has won or
been granted unless he pulls him
self together right away and gets
rid of his own burden. That burden
is, lack of mass discipline, lack of
respect for the rights of others, and
true pride in honest race achieve
ment.
The war is going to end some day
and when it does, many of the tenn
porary advantages we have won in
the midst of a national hysteria are
going to be taken from US by the
white man flushed with victory and
with enhanced pride in the abilities
of the Nordic to rule the world, in
Guiding its darker peoples.
Dark Future Looms
The prejudices which we fight at
home so valiantly are going to be
more vicious, and necessary to the
white man as he settles down to re-
construction of his domestic social
order. First and foremost among
the reasons that will be put for
ward why the Negro must be kept
in the status of a second rate citi-
zen or inferior being is that he can
not control his own people. 1t will
be claimed that he must constantly
be supervised by whites whether
by policemen, lynching mobs, or
Jim Crow rules and regulations) to
avoid serious consequences to the
overall pattern of American domes-
tic social and economic values.
The white man is going to point
to all the outward manifestations
of our lack of control as basis for
his superior attitude; he is going
to illustrate his case with the in
creasing incidents of our juvenile
delinquency, pointing out cases
which he will contend stress charac-
teristic racial tendencies. He is
going to show that Negro children,
masses of them are almost COM
pletely ignorant of the disciplinary
controls that go with American
family life and run wild through a
thousand streets of as many Amer
lean cities until they either settle
down of their own accord or are dis
ciplined by the prison cell, gallows
or electric chair. He is going to
point out, in his argument for his
reason for putting increased pres
sure on the Negro, that Negro lead
ership is demanding and getting
more economic and social advan-
tages than the Negro public or is
ready to receive, that the Negro of
earlier generations (reared in the
fear of the white man, taught by
example to accept the inferior stat
us in which he was placed) is typi-
cal of the kind of Negro to be de-
sired to live in the midst of the
''new white" civilization the white
man intends to build in this country
after the war.
We Suffer Too Much Haste
It is strange, indeed, that in our
rapid acquisition of better places
in American life-the outstanding
jobs that have come to us in rec
ognition of our abilities; the social
prestige we are attaining on the ex-
PLOTS of our Marian Andersons,
Paul Robesons, Joe Louises, Ben
Davises, George Washington Car
vers, and so on-those leading us
haven't seen the fact that the great
mass of Negroes-the 20 million
and over of us who make up Amer
ica's biggest minority group-are
being criminally neglected.
1t would be lovely indeed, if that
small minority of the American Ne
groes who have had the advantages
of schooling, exposure to cultural
influences are ready to take their
place in the Negro middle class,
were all that mattered.
The problem then would be basil
cally changed. The possibilities of