St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1944-03-31
By J. Saunders Kedding

In study of the American Ne
gro problem there is constant dan
ger of following a cold trail to a
pohtico-rational dead-end or of
fetching up in an geological stale
mate like White Supremacy or Race
Purity. Unlike other social prob
lens of near-equal magnitude, the
race problem in America is not
specifically related to social
trends" 1t is only in part related
to graphs and charts and the stats
teal vines which root in so much
of our social thinking. Where once
it was taken for granted, even by
such thinkers as Reuter-, Hrdlicka
and Sumner, that statistics told the
whole story, we now have learned
that the statistics are mere chapter
headings in a story so complex and
so intricately interviewer into all
that America is that the unfolding
of it is no less than the unfolding,
layer by teeming layer, of the
American mind. In the last twenty
years, social scientists and social
minded writer's have limited at this.
The most rewarding of the recent
studies are based on this postulate.
But it has taken a European
scholar, DR.. Gunnar Myrdal, to
start the long story of the race
problem from the basic, stated as
sumption that "the American Ne
gro problem is a problem in the
heart of the American" The as
sumption is no INFESTED thesis. 1t
is an assumption from facts, and it
represents the true knowledge"
arrived at after nearly five years
of scientific study of most of the
available material. That the facts
are authentic and the study of the
highest caliber seem no matters for
question to anyone who is familiar
with the literature of American So
GEOLOGY and with the reputation of
Gunnar Myrdal. In one capacity
or another, such names as Boas,
Frazier, Odum, Park and Dubois
Are linked with the study. The
facts are mountain-high and some
If them in themselves so revealing
hat they have been published in
separate volumes. The gathering
of these facts was a job of col
alteration; the analysis, the syn
thesis and the final Interpretation
of them were DR.. Myrdal's job.
can American Dilemma" is the end
result.
For the last three-quarters of a
century the Negro problem has not
been what it has been avowed to
be. 1t is not altogether suscep-
tible of scientific or technical solu-
ton. The glorifcation of the scien-
tific attitude after 1875 and the
success of the application of scien-
tifc methods to other problems mis-
led social thinkers. The application
of these methods to the race prob
lem was the excuse for much seri-
Gus nonsense, for in the South
much effort was spent to justify
scientifically the place in which the
Negro was held in American life.
The Scientific" and rationaistic
documents that grew out of this
effort were legend. The social
scientists reached their views
guided by set of general assump-
lions in their selection and inter
probation of the empirical data"
The result of these studies was con-
fusion COMPOUNDED by opportunism.
The American deed ran contrary to
the American creed. It was not
only important to prove the Negro
inferior (the morbidity and NOR
tally rates, the crime indexes were
the evidence); it was equally i'm
portant to believe with William
Sumner that nothing could be done
about cultural inferiority. "It is
the greatest folly of which man can
be capable, to sit down with a slate
and pencil to plan out a new social
world" w. 1. Thomas had not yet
published his "Sourcebook for So
cial Origins" and W. E. B. Dubois
was just beginning those studies
at Atlanta University that prom
ised so much for the future.
The potentials of that future
did not begin to be realized until