[Robert C Weaver was the first black cabinet member, Johnson's Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development.]

THE NEGRO AS AN AMERICAN

When the average well-informed and well-intentioned white American discusses the
issue of race with his negro counterpart there are many areas of agreement.
There are also certain significant areas of disagreement.

Negro Americans usually feel that whites exaggerate progress; while whites
frequently feel that negroes minimize gains. Then there are differences relative
to the responsibility of negro leadership. It is in these areas of dispute that
some of the most subtle and revealing aspects of negro-white relationships
reside. And it is to the subtle and less obvious aspects of this problem that I
wish to direct my remarks.

Most middle-class white Americans frequently ask, "Why do negroes push so? They
have made phenomenal progress in 100 years of freedom, so why don't their
leaders do something about the crime rate and illegitimacy?" To them I would
reply that when negroes press for full equality now they are behaving as all
other Americans would under similar circumstances. Every American has the right
to be treated as a human being and striving for human dignity is a national
characteristic. Also, there is nothing inconsistent in such action and realistic
self-appraisal. Indeed, as I shall develop, self-help programs among non-whites,
if they are to be effective, must go hand-in-glove with the opening of new
opportunities.

Negroes who are constantly confronted or threatened by discrimination and
inequality articulate a sense of outrage. Many react with hostility, sometimes
translating their feelings into overt anti-social actions. In parts of the negro
community a separate culture with deviant values develops. To the members of
this subculture I would observe that ours is a middle-class society and those
who fail to evidence most of its values and behavior are headed toward
difficulties. But I am reminded that the rewards for those who do are often
minimal, providing insufficient inducement for large numbers to emulate them.

Until the second decade of the twentieth century, it was traditional to compare
the then current position of negroes with that of a decade or several decades
ago. The depression revealed the basic marginal economic status of colored
Americans and repudiated this concept of progress. By the early 1930's negroes
became concerned about their relative position in the nation.

Of course, there are those who observe that the average income, the incidence of
home ownership, the rate of acquisition of automobiles, and the like, among
negroes in the United States are higher than in some so-called advanced nations.
Such comparisons mean little. Incomes are significant only in relation to the
cost of living, and the other attainments and acquisitions are significant for
comparative purposes only when used to reflect the negro's relative position in
the world. The negro here--as he has so frequently and eloquently
demonstrated--is an American. And his status, no less than his aspirations, can
be measured meaningfully only in terms of American standards.

Viewed from this point of view what are the facts? Median family income among
non-whites was slightly less than 55 percent of that for whites in 1959; for
individuals the figure was 50 percent.

Only a third of the negro families in 1959 earned sufficient to sustain an
acceptable American standard of living. Yet this involved well over a million
negro families, of which 6,000 earned $25,000 or more.

Undergirding these overall figures are many paradoxes. Negroes have made
striking gains in historical terms, yet their current rate of unemployment is
well over double that among whites. Over two-thirds of our colored workers are
still concentrated in five major unskilled and semi-skilled occupations, as
contrasted to slightly over a third of the white labor force.

Despite the continuing existence of color discrimination even for many of the
well prepared, there is a paucity of qualified negro scientists, engineers,
mathematicians, and highly-trained clerical and stenographic workers. Lack of
college-trained persons is especially evident among negro men. One is prompted
to ask why does this exist? In 1959 non-white males who were high school
graduates earned on the average, 32 percent less than whites; for non-white
college graduates the figure was 38 percent less. Among women a much different
situation exists. Non-white women who were high school graduates earned on the
average some 24 percent less than whites. Non-white female college graduates,
however, earned but slightly over one percent less average annual salaries than
white women college graduates. Significantly, the median annual income of
non-white female college graduates was more than double that of non-white women
with only high school education.

Is it any wonder that among non-whites, as contrasted to whites, a larger
proportion of women than of men attend and finish college? The lack of economic
rewards for higher education goes far in accounting for the paucity of college
graduates and the high rate of drop-out among non-white males. It also accounts
for the fact that in the North, where there are greater opportunities for
white-collar negro males, more negro men than women are finishing college;
whereas in the South, where teaching is the greatest employment outlet for negro
college graduates, negro women college graduates outnumber men.

There is much in these situations that reflects the continuing matriarchal
character of negro society--in a situation which had its roots in the family
composition under slavery where the father, if identified, had no established
role. Subsequent and continuing economic advantages of negro women who found
steady employment as domestics during the post Civil War era and thereafter
perpetuated the pattern. This, in conjunction with easy access of white males to
negro females, served to emasculate many negro men economically and
psychologically. It also explains, in part, the high prevalence of broken homes,
illegitimacy, and lack of motivation in the negro community.

The negro middle-class seems destined to grow and prosper. At the same time, the
economic position of the untrained and poorly trained negro--as of all untrained
and poorly trained in our society--will continue to decline. Non-whites are
doubly affected. First, they are disproportionately concentrated in occupations
particularly susceptible to unemployment at a time when our technology eats up
unskilled and semi-skilled jobs at a frightening rate. Secondly, they are
conditioned to racial job discrimination. The latter circumstance becomes a
justification for not trying, occasioning a lack of incentive for
self-betterment.

The tragedy of discrimination is that it provides an excuse for failure while
erecting barriers to success.

Most colored Americans still are not only outside the mainstream of our society
but see no hope of entering it. The lack of motivation and anti-social behavior
which result are capitalized upon by the champions of the status quo. They say
that the average negro must demonstrate to the average white that the latter's
fears are groundless. One proponent of this point of view has stated that negro
crime and illegitimacy must decline and negro neighborhoods must stop
deteriorating.

In these observations lie a volume on race relations. In the first place, those
who articulate this point of view fail to differentiate between acceptance as
earned by individual merit and enjoyment of rights guaranteed to everyone.
Implicit, also, is the assumption that negroes can lift themselves by their
bootstraps, and that once they become brown counterparts of white middle-class
Americans, they will be accepted on the basis of individual merit. Were this
ture, our race problem would be no more than a most recent phase in the melting
pot tradition of the nation.

As compared to the earlier newcomers to our cities from europe, the later ones
who are colored face much greater impediments in moving from the slums or from
the bottom of the economic ladder. At the same time, they have less resources to
meet the more difficult problems which confront them.

One of the most obvious manifestations of the negro's paucity of internal
resources is the absence of widespread integrated patterns of voluntary
organizations. The latter, as we know, contributed greatly to the adjustment and
assimilation of european immigrants. Both the negro's heritage and the nature of
his migration in the United States militiated against the development of similar
institutions.

Slavery and resulting post-civil war dependence upon whites stifled
self-reliance. Movement from the rural south to northern cities was a far cry
from immigration from europe to the new world. This internal migration was not
an almost complete break with the past, nor were those who participated in it
subjected to feelings of complete foreignness. Thus the negro tended to preserve
his old institutions when he moved from one part of the nation to another; the
immigrant created new ones. And most important, the current adjustment of
non-whites to an urban environment is occurring at a time when public agencies
are rapidly supplanting voluntary organizations.

Although much is written about crime and family disorganization among negroes,
most literate Americans are poorly informed on such matters. The first fallacy
which arises is a confusion of what racial crime figures reflect. When people
read that more than half the crime in a given community is committed by negroes
they unconsciously translate this into an equally high proportion of negroes who
are criminals. In fact, the latter proportion is extremely small.

In a similar vein, family stability, as indicated by the presence of both
husband and wife, which is very low among the poorest non-whites, rises sharply
as income increases.

Equally revealing is the fact that, in all parts of the country, the proportion
of non-white families with female heads falls as incomes rise. A good, steady
pay check appears to be an important element in family stability. Those negroes
who have been able to improve their economic position have generally taken on
many of the attributes of white middle-class Americans.

But poverty still haunts half of the negroes in the united states, and while
higher levels of national productivity are a sine qua non for higher levels of
employment in the nation, they alone will not wipe out unemployment, especially
for minorities. The labor reserve of today must be trained if it is to find
gainful employment. Among non-whites this frequently involves more than exposure
to vocational training. Many of them are functionally illiterate and require
basic education prior to any specialized job preparation.

The very magnitude of these problems illustrates that society must take the
leadership in solving them. But society can only provide greater opportunities.
The individual must respond to the new opportunities. And he does so, primarily,
in terms of visible evidence that hard work and sacrifice bring real rewards.

Many white Americans are perplexed, confused, and antagonized by negroes'
persistent pressure to break down racial segregation. Few pause to consider what
involuntary segregation means to its victims.

To the negro, as an American, involuntary segregation is degrading, inconvenient
and costly. It is degrading because it is a tangible and constant reminder of
the theory upon which it is based--biological racial inferiority. It is
inconvenient because it means long trips to work, exclusion from certain
cultural and recreational facilities, lack of access to restaurants and hotels
conveniently located, and, frequently, relegation to grossly inferior
accommodations. Sometimes it spells denial of a job and often it prevents
upgrading based on ability.

But the principal disadvantage of involuntary segregation is its costliness.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in education and housing. By any and all
criteria, separate schools are generally inferior schools in which the cultural
deprivations of the descendants of slaves are perpetuated.

Enforced residential segregation, the most stubborn and universal of the negro's
disadvantages, often leads to exploitation and effects a spatial pattern which
facilitates neglect of public services in the well-defined areas where negroes
live. It restricts the opportunities of the more successful as well as the least
successful in the group, augmenting artificially the number of non-whites who
live in areas of blight and neglect and face impediments to the attainment of
values and behavior required for upward social and economic mobility.

The most obvious consequence of involuntary residential segregation is that the
housing dollar in a dark hand usually commands less purchasing power than one in
a white hand. Clearly, this is a denial of a basic promise of a free economy.

For immigrant groups in the nation, the trend toward improved socioeconomic
status has gone hand-in-hand with decreasing residential segregation. The
reverse has been true of the negro. Eli Ginzberg, in his book, The Negro
Potential, has delineated the consequences.

It must be recognized that the negro cannot suddenly take his proper place among
whites in the adult world if he has never lived, played, and studied with them
in childhood and young adulthood. Any type of segregation handicaps a person's
preparation for work and life...Only when negro and white families can live
together as neighbors...Will the negro grow up properly prepared for his place
in the world of work.

Residential segregation based on color cannot be separated from residential
segregation based upon income. Both have snob and class appeal in contemporary
America. Concentration of higher income families in the suburbs means that many
of those whose attitudes and values dominate our society do not see the poor or
needy. But more important, cut off by political boundaries, it is to their
interest not to see them.

Yet there are over 30,000,000 Americans who experience poverty today. For the
most part, we resent them and the outlays required for welfare services. They
are a group which is separate from the majority of Americans and for whom the
latter accept only the minimum responsibility. Thus we have, for the first time,
class unemployment in the United States.

I happen to have been born a negro and to have devoted a large part of my adult
energies to the problem of the role of the negro in America. But I am also a
government administrator, and have devoted just as much energy--if not more--to
problems of government administration at the local, the state and the national
level.

My responsibilities as a negro and an American are part of the heritage I
received from my parents--a heritage that included a wealth of moral and social
values that don't have anything to do with my race. My responsibilities as a
government administrator don't have too much to do with my race, either. My
greatest difficulty in public life is combating the idea that somehow my
responsibilities as a negro conflict with my responsibilities as a government
administrator: and this is a problem which is presented by those negroes who
feel that I represent them exclusively, as well as by those whites who doubt my
capacity to represent all elements in the population. The fact is that my
responsibilities as a negro and a government administrator do not conflict; they
complement each other.

The challenge frequently thrown to me is why I don't go out into the negro
community and exhort negro youths to prepare themselves for present and future
opportunities. My answer is somewhat ambivalent. I know that emphasis upon
values and behavior conducive to success in the dominant culture of America was
an important part of my youthful training. But it came largely from my parents
in the security and love of a middle-class family. (And believe me, there is
nothing more middle-class than a middle-class minority family!)

many of the youth which I am urged to exhort come from broken homes. They live
in communities where the fellow who stays in school and follows the rules is a
"square." They reside in a neighborhood where the most successful are often
engaged in shady--if not illegal--activities. They know that the very policeman
who may arrest them for violation of the law is sometimes the pay-off man for
the racketeers. And they recognize that the majority society, which they
frequently believe to be the "enemy," condones this situation. Their experience
also leads some of them to believe that getting the kind of job the residents in
the neighborhood hold is unrewarding--a commitment to hard work and poverty. For
almost all of them, the precepts of ben franklin are lily-like in their
applicability.

Included in the group are the third generation of welfare clients. It is in this
area--where they learn all the jargon of the social workers and
psychologists--that they demonstrate real creativity. It is in activities which
"beat" the system that they are most adept--and where the most visible rewards
are concentrated.

All youth is insecure today. Young people in our slums are not only insecure but
angry. Their horizons are limited, and, in withdrawing from competing in the
larger society, they are creating a peculiar, but effective, feeling of
something that approaches, or at least serves as a viable substitute for,
security. In the process, new values and aspirations, a new vocabulary, a new
standard of dress, and a new attitude toward authority evolve. Each of these
serves to demonstrate a separateness from the dominant culture.

As a realist, I know that these youth relate with me primarily in a negative
sense. They see me in terms of someone who has been able to penetrate, to a
degree, the color line, and to them I have bettered the "enemy." If I should
attempt to suggest their surmounting the restrictions of color, they cite
instances of persons they know who were qualified--the relatively few boys or
girls in their neighborhood who finished high school or even college--only to be
ignored while white youths with much less training were selected for good jobs.
And such occurrences are not unique or isolated in their experience. The example
which will be an inspiration to the negro boys and girls whose anti-social
behavior distresses most whites and many negroes is someone they know who has
experienced what they have experienced and has won acceptance in the mainstream
of America. When the Ralph Bunches, William Hasties, and John Hope Franklins
emerge from their environment, the achievements of these successful negroes will
provide models which have meaning for them.

This is reflected in the occupations which provide the greatest incidence of
mobility for slum youth. One thinks immediately of prize fighting and jazz
music. In these fields there is a well established tradition of negroes, reared
in the ghetto areas of blight and poverty, who have gone to the top. For youth
in a similar environment, these are heroes with whom they can and do identify
and relate. And in these fields, a significant proportion of the successful are
non-whites. For only in those pursuits in which native genius can surmount (if
indeed it does not profit from) lack of high level training does the dominant
environment of the negro facilitate large-scale achievement.

For many successful older colored Americans, middle-class status has been
difficult. Restricted, in large measure, to racial ghettos, they have expended
great effort to protect their children from falling back into the dominant
values of that environment. And these values are probably more repugnant to them
than to most Americans. This is understandable in terms of their social origins.
For the most part, they come from lower-middle class families, where industry,
good conduct, family ties, and a willingness to postpone immediate rewards for
future successes are stressed. Their values and standards of conduct are those
of success-oriented middle-class Americans.

It is not that responsible negroes fail to feel shame about muggings,
illegitimacy, and boisterousness on the part of other negroes.
Many--particularly the older ones--feel too much shame in this connection.
Accordingly, some either repudiate the "culprits" in terms of scathing
condemnation or try to escape from the problem lest it endanger their none too
secure status.

These attitudes, too, are shifting. The younger middle-class negroes are more
secure and consequently place less stress upon the quest for respectability. But
few negroes are immune from the toll of upward mobility. Frequently their
struggle has been difficult, and the maintenance of their status demands a heavy
input. As long as this is true, they will have less energy to devote to the
problems of the negro subculture. It is significant, however, that the sit-ins
and freedom marches in the south were planned and executed by negro college
students most of whom come from middle-class families.

Middle-class negroes have long led the fight for civil rights; today its
youthful members do not hesitate to resort to direct action, articulating the
impatience which is rife throughout the negro community. In so doing they are
forging a new solidarity in the struggle for human dignity. There are today, as
there always have been, thousands of dedicated colored Americans who don't make
the headlines but are successful in raising the horizons of negroes. These are
the less well-known leaders who function at the local level. The teachers,
social workers, local political leaders, ministers, doctors, and an assortment
of indigenous leaders--many among the latter with little formal education--who
are effective have familiarized themselves with the environmental factors which
dull and destroy motivation. They become involved with the total negro
community. They demonstrate--rather than verbalize--a concern for negro youth's
problems. They are trying to reach these young people, not by coddling and
providing excuses for failure, but through identification of their
potentialities and assistance in the development of these. Involved are both
genuine affection and sufficient toughness to facilitate and encourage the
development of self-reliance.

Those, white and black alike, who reach the newcomers in our urban areas avoid
value judgments relative to cultural patterns. When they suggest thrift, good
deportment, greater emphasis upon education and training, they do so as a
pragmatic approach. For them, it is not a matter of proselytizing, but in a
matter of delineating those values and patterns of behavior that accelerate
upward mobility in contemporary American society. Such a sophisticated approach
enables them to identify deviations from dominant values and conduct which are
not inconsistent with a productive and healthy life in modern urban communities.
The latter are left undisturbed, so that there will be a minimum adjustment of
values and concepts and the maximum functional effectiveness on the part of
individuals who will not soon become middle-class America.

What are the responsibilities of negro leadership?

Certainly the first is to keep pressing for first-class citizenship status--an
inevitable goal of those who accept the values of this nation.

Another responsibility of negro leadership is to encourage and assist negroes to
prepare for the opportunities that are now and will be opened to them.

The ultimate responsibilities of negro leadership, however, are to show results
and maintain a following. This means that it cannot be so "responsible" that it
forgets the trials and tribulations of others who are less fortunate or less
recognized than itself. It cannot stress progress--the emphasis which is so
palatable to the majority group--without, at the same time, delineating the
unsolved business of democracy. It cannot provide or identify meaningful models
unless it effects social changes which facilitate the emergence of these models
from the environment which typifies so much of the negro community.

But negro leadership must also face up to the deficiencies which plague the
negro community, and it must take effective action to deal with resulting
problems. While, of course, crime, poverty, illegitimacy and hopelessness can
all be explained, in large measure, in terms of the negro's history and current
status in America, they do exist. We need no longer be self-conscious in
admitting these unpleasant facts, for our knowledge of human behavior indicates
clearly that anti-social activities are not inherent in any people. What is
required is comprehension of these--a part of society's problems--and remedial
and rehabilitation measures.

Emphasis upon self-betterment if employed indiscriminately by negro leaders is
seized upon by white supremacists and their apologists to support the assertion
that negroes--and they mean all negroes--are not ready for full citizenship.
This, because of the nature of our society, negro leadership must continue to
stress rights if it is to receive a hearing for programs of self-improvement.

Black muslims, who identify the white man as the devil, can and do
emphasize--with a remarkable degree of success--morality, industry, and good
conduct. But, the negro leader who does not repudiate his or his followers'
Americanism can do so effectively only as he, too, clearly repudiates
identification with the white supremacists. This he does, of course, when he
champions equal rights, just as the black muslims accomplish it by directing
hate toward all white people.

Most negroes in leadership capacities have articulated the fact that they and
those who follow them are a part of America. They have striven for realization
of the American dream. Most recognize their responsibilities as citizens and
urge others to follow their example. Sophisticated whites realize that the
status of negroes in our society depends not only upon what the negro does to
achieve his goals and prepare himself for opportunities but, even more, upon
what all America does to expand these opportunities. And the quality and nature
of future negro leadership depends upon how effective those leaders who relate
to the total society can be in satisfying the yearnings for human dignity which
reside in the hearts of all Americans.