St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1945-08-10
JAMES GRAY
REVIEWS PRIMER
FOR WHITE FOLKS
James Gray in the st. Paul
Dispatch


this symposium. For after all it
is the white man who insists upon
the segregation of a stable pro-
portion of the citizens of this coun-
try. Segregation, Miss Smith says,
is spiritual lynching. "The lynched
and the lynchers are our own peo-
pie, ourselves, our children"
There will be a little comfort
in this book for people who take
a cautious and conventional view
of the need for a benevolent ty-
ranny over the Negroes. The stu
dents of race relations who have
set down their opinions in these
pages agree, tacitly, that to talk
piously about a gradual evolution
toward a better understanding is
merely to say that we are not yet
ready even to try to solve our
major social problem.
All of the SNUG pretenses are
turned unceremoniously out OF
doors. Those who persist in be-
lieving that the Negro under
slavery lived an exquisite idyll are
invited to reconsider Fanny KEN
ble's famous first-hand report of the
lamentable condition of slaves on
"the dismal swampy rice grounds
of the Savannah" and also the Vir-
ginia Writer'S Project report of
various efforts at insurrection.
Those who parrot the nonsense that
the North only makes matters
worse by interfering in what is
after all Southern family affair
should be required to read Carey
McWilliams' bold discussion of that
explosive subject. Did you, for
example, realize that after the Civil
War the much abused Freedman's
Bureau functioned admirably I'M
til it was deliberately sabotaged in
a political deal? This agreement
committed the Southern vote to
Rutherford B. Hayes in return for
promise that the federal govern
ment would follow a hands-off
policy with regard to the Negro.
Again those who cherish the
primitive notion that differences
in fermentation of the skin are
related to essential differences of
soul should read what the anthro-
biologists, Ruth Benedict and Gene
Weltfish, have to say about that.
Skin color is determined by two
chemicals, carotene which gives a
yellow tinge, and melanin which
gives a brown. every person,
however light or dark his skin may
appear, has some of each of these
materials in his skin. People of
browner compilations simply have
more melanin in their skin. .
1t is not an all-or-nothing differ
ence; it is a difference of proper
ton"
And finally those who nurse
gleefully the thought that the Ne
gro is fundamentally less educable
than his white brother should
glance over some disquieting sta
tistics. Intelligence scores indicate
that white men in Mississippi
where little money comparatively
is spent on anyone's training are
considerably less successful, in
these tests, than Negroes living in
Illinois and New York where much
more money is spent on everyone's
training. Differences in group in
telligence arise not out of differ
ences of augmentation but out of
differences in income, cultural ad-
vantage and general environmental
conditions.
1t would be pleasant to believe
that one book could explode all the
silly myths of racial superiority
which we, sharing one small and
peculiarly odious item of faith with
the Nazis, have fostered. That will
not happen, of course. But primer
for White Folks" should nonethe-
less go into the hands of everyone
who is capable of Judging a prob
lem on the evidence that trained
people are able to offer.
This is no primer, really. It
mixes modesty with a very large
measure of irony in calling itself
that. For here are gathered to-
gether some of the best and most
sober pieces of writing about the
relations between white men and
Negroes that have been produced
in this country.
The book is divided into three
sections. The first, Heritage"
offers a backward glance at the
history of the Negro on American
soil. lin his discussion of "African
Culture" DR.. w. E. B. Dubois
looks little farther still into the
past to give readers a better orien-
tation.) These articles rehearse
history; their critical undertone is
entirely objective and, except in
the instance of Fanny Kemble's
letter, has no hortatory character.