America’s South—II FONDNESS FOR THE “OLD-TIME NIGRUH”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29052, 14 November 1959, Page 12

America’s South—II FONDNESS FOR THE “OLD-TIME NIGRUH”

[By

DAVID MARQUAND

in the “Guardian,” Manchester)

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

Race haunts the South like a buried crirpe, impossible to escape or ignore. It is there in the exquisite obsequiousness of a Negro waiter, in the sudden merriment of -a gaggle of Negro youths, in the momentary hostility that flickers in the eyes of an old Gullah woman selling corn in Charleston market. It is there even in the colour of the Negroes: they are not black — most of them are brown, and some are as light as a Greek, or a Spaniard. It is there, too, in the endlessly recdrrent jokes and anecdotes of the whites; Negro jokes are as common in the South as Jewish jokes in Brooklyn—with the difference that in Brooklyn it is the Jewk who tell them. Most blatantly, it is there In the terrible notices, “White Men,” “Coloured Men,” “White Ladies,” “Coloured Women.’’ Above all, it governs the elaborate ’ code of behaviour which separates the Negro community from the white as effectively as if they were on different planets. It is not just that no Negro can eat in a downtown restaurant or sleep in a downtown hotel. . More important than that, no Negro can be on terms of unselfconscious equality with a white man once he has passed the age of 12, You can meet Negroes on business but never socially. You can even visit a Negro in his home; he cannot visit you in yours. A Freudian Ring

This web of prejudice is as much part of the South as the magnificent Blue Ridge mountains or the strange .desolate beauty of Mississippi; and every Southerner you meet is caught in it somewhere. But it is almost impossible for a foreigner to estimate its toughness or even discover its origins. Nowadays, fashionable explanations have a Freudian ring. Negroes, it is said, are sexually attractive to whites; the taboo placed on them sets up guilt feelings in the whites; the Negro then serves as the scapegoat for the guilt. Perhaps. Negroes certainly allege that in many of those rape cases which run through Southern folklore as a terrible warning the woman has raised the cry of rape simply to escape social ostracism. It is true, too, that in conversations with white conservatives the ultimate sexual argument is bound to appear sooner or later: “would you like to see your sister. • But the casual tourist, not equipped with Freudian scalpels, will probably feel that more prosaic explanations also have some weight. It is not altogether an accident that the South is the most conservative region in the country, though the poorest; that in all the raucous gallery of Southern demagogues only the Long dynasty in Louisiana ever brought much tangible benefit to its constituents. Jim Crow, after all, did not spring fully armed from the brow of Captain John Smith 350 years ago. In fact, the present pattern on segregation was imposed on the South only about 60 years ago, as a deliberate political manoeuvre by which poor whites were divided from poor Negroes. Even now, the subordination of the Negro has an obvious economic motive. Wages are lower, trade unions weaker. In the South orainary middle-class families have domestic ’ servants—a scarcely attainable luxury in the North. The subtler satisfactions of prestige and status are more important stall. Compare the 'delicate flattery of a Negro porter in the Deep South with the brutal democracy of New York or Chicago.

This is what Southerners mean when they tell you, somewhere around the third whisky, that of course they love “the old-time Nigruh.” The new, brash, upstart Negroes who swarm into the South from New York, as N.A.A.C.P. agitators (“mostly mulattoes, anyway,” 1 was told by one indignant conservative), are, of course, thoroughly unpleasant and ough. to be put down, But once upon a time Nigruhs were not like that They lived, careless and happy, trusting the white man who bore their burdens for them, bound to him in a dignified and voluntary patriarchy. At first this sounds like blatant hypocrisy. In fact, it is utterly sincere.

Most Southerners do love the Nigrulj—in his place. Not far below the surface of the Southern mind is the picture of an idyllic Golden Age—and the picture is not entirely ignobly. When white Southerners tell you that they grew up with Negroes, that they know the Negro better than a cold Yankee theorist, they are telling the truth. If the Southern Way had been nothing but violence and exploitation, it would long ago have collapsed. In fact, its greatest defence is that some of the finest, as well as some of the beastliest, emotions support it. Negro Victories How stubborn is the defence? Though it will be many years before the Negro can sit down at the white man’s table, on equal terms, he has won several important gains in the last few de-

cades. Desegregation in the armed forces has taught Southern boys that it is possible to share a billet with a Negro without disaster. Violence and intimidation are less common than they were. Lynching has practically gone. Even the elaborate code of etiquette ig. less rigid than it was. Perhaps* the greatest Negro victory of all is that you can now shake a Negro by the hand and call him “Mister.” (This was the taboo of taboos. The “Charleston News and Courier” once used to run a Negro society page. The women had to be referred to as “Madame,” the men as “Colonel,” “Brigadier,” or “General.") Following the classic revolutionary pattern, these gains only stimulate the appetite for more. But how can more be won? The Negroes, after all, are Americans, asking to be treated as equals by other Americans, not colonial people in revolt against alien rule. In the long run their only worth-while victory is acceptance. But their tragedy is that their goal mav be endangered by the steps they take to reach it. The Supreme Court decision has made little difference to oufright reactionaries. South Carolina, In was told, has moved only “from 3 marble to granite." But in less , exalted quarters there is some ; resentment against being told to, run just as they were learning, to crawl. On the other hand the new Negro middle class is in a hurry. It suffers from the humiliations of discrimination more than its 7 share-cropper fathers did; it ii ’ only after you have the money to go into a restaurant that you care about being prevented; it* is when you can read yourself 1 that you want education for your » children. It knows that it can never batter down the walls of white supremacy by Itself; it needs the help of the mass of , ordinary Negroes. But the mass „ of ordinary Negroes is inert and unconcerned. It can only be ■; wakened by dramatics spectacular victories. Passive Resistance These difficulties have left the Negro leaders in the South divided and uncertain, often bitterly jealous of each oti er Some say the whole N.A.A.L.F.strategy is a mistake. • “A voteless people is a hopeless people,” I was told; what is * needed is a campaign for registration, not to squeeze more Negro children into white schools, in Birmingham I heard vague talk of direct action. Negroes, it was suggested, should use the lavatories reserved for whites, and passively resist being dra nwav Passive resistance is very much in the air since the great bus boycott in Montgomery, but no-one— including the charming and diffident Martin Luther King -seemed to have any clear ide* what it means or where it can bC Ye? P the dominant impression : from meeting Negro teadere to the Soith is one of strength, not weakness. Most of them anfc preachers. “You’all they say when they shake and when they talk you can hear the magnificent rhythms the Authorised Version and the rich imagery of Southern revl * aU Beneath the charm and the rhetoric there is a shrewd eye fa the facts of the situation, and a breathtaking assu J? nce “ eventual victory. ‘ know how to get into tne Promised Land, but they know it’s there—and they know they will reach it in the end. As one of them said to me. after a long conversation (it is hope.ess to tC to reproduce the accent). Th* South is like a man siting on the mourner’s bench. Sunday after Sunday he sits and sits. For years he sits. Then, « ldd ““ y ’ ’ he gets religion.”—(Concluded)