An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Volume 2 (Black & African-American Studies) 1st Edition

by Gunnar Myrdal (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1560008576

ISBN-10: 1560008571

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In this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks.

The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal―a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused.

When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written."

-The American Political Science Review

"A novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it."

-The American Sociological Review

About the Author

Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) served as Swedish minister of trade and commerce, a Rockefeller Fellow, and wrote An American Dilemma at the invitation of the Carnegie Corporation. He returned to his homeland where he was, until his death, professor at the Institute of International Economic Relations at Stockholm University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (December 31, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 822 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1560008571
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560008576
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.86 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #848,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #904 in Human Rights Law (Books)
- #1,505 in Human Rights (Books)
- #1,955 in Sociology (Books)

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Michael G.

Timeless and required reading

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2021

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If you're studying or working in diversity, this is a must read. No slogans or quickie answers. The data is not dated and will reflect current conditions.

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LuvChestertonLewis

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2017

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The pages I bought this book for to reference are missing- published that way now.

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wallace yates

Amazon delivers

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2018

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Like all items very well with no problem

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THE SECOND VOLUME OF A PENETRATING, HISTORICALLY-IMPORTANT STUDY

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2020

[NOTE: page numbers refer to a paperback edition covering pages 523-1483.]

He notes, “The main reasons why Negroes want to have Negro officers appointed to police departments… are to have a more understanding, less brutal police supervision of the Negro community, and to have an effective supervision of Negro offenders against other Negroes… in Southern Negro communities I have met the complaint from law-abiding Negroes that they are left practically without police protection.” (Pg. 542)

He recounts, “The author has observed that in the North, and particularly in New York’s Harlem, he has occasionally been made to feel unwelcome in Negro restaurants… The Negroes who have attempted to ‘Jim Crow’ me have explained their actions partly as revenge and partly as the result of suspicion against the intentions of white people who frequent Negro places. It has always disappeared and changed into the greatest friendliness when I have disclosed myself as not being an American.” (Pg. 577)

He states, “It is often maintained---even by Negro intellectuals---that the fight for the Negroes’ civil rights and against discrimination in institutional segregation is doomed to be fruitless, as the inequalities have much deeper roots and are upheld by sanctions other than law. This criticism, however, overlooks several points. The courts in the Southern states want to have their decisions upheld and the state authorities want to have their policies covered by law as far as possible… And court decisions are increasingly exposing the Southern statues backing the system of institutional segregation as unconstitutional. This system is thus gradually losing its legal sanctions and increasingly depending upon extra-legal or illegal sanctions.” (Pg. 629)

He observes, “Without any doubt a Negro with light skin and other European features has in the North an advantage with white people when competing for jobs available for Negroes. It is less true in the South… The whites continue to associate the nearness to their own physical type with superior endowments and cultural advancement, and the preponderance of fair-skinned Negroes in the upper strata seems to give this prejudice a basis in fact. Perhaps of even greater importance is the fact that the Negro community itself has accepted this color preference. In conversation negroes often try to deny or to minimize this fact. But there are a number of indications which an observer cannot help recording. For one thing, many individual Negroes will be found, when speaking about themselves, to rate their own color lighter than it actually is, but practically none rate it darker.” (Pg. 697)

He suggests, “the Negro preacher… has more influence with the Negro masses than a white lower class preacher … has with the white masses… The author also has the impression that Negro leaders, more often than whites (among their own people), take on a rather dictatorial and paternalistic attitude toward their own Negro followers. They seem to mimic, in a smaller degree, the role of the upper class white Southerner in his relation to his Negro dependents.” (Pg. 732)

He says, “physical attack upon the whites is suicidal. Aggression has to be kept suppressed and normally is suppressed… The shielding of Negro criminals and suspects, the dislike of testifying against another Negro, and generally the defensive solidarity in the protective Negro community has a definite taint of hostility. The truth is that Negroes generally do not feel they have unqualified moral obligations to white people. This is an observation which a stranger visiting around in the Negro communities cannot help making time and again. The voluntary withdrawal which has intensified the isolation between the two castes is also an expression of the Negro protest under cover.” (Pg. 763)

He notes, “both upper class and lower class Negroes are likely to swing between, on the one side, desire for intense isolation and resentment against other Negro social classes and, on the other side, race solidarity based on the caste protest against white society. For few individuals n any one of the various classes is the state of his feelings toward the rest of the Negro community a stable one.” (Pg. 767)

He says, “The tragedy of caste is that it does not spare the integrity of the soul either of the Negro or of the white man. But the differences in degree of distortion of world view is just as great as the difference in size between the American Negro community and the rest of the world.” (Pg. 784)

He observes, “As Negro institutions are improved and increasingly manned exclusively by Negro professionals, segregation itself is undoubted becoming fortified in America… powerful Negro vested interests in segregation are created. The trend is also in line with the rise of the Negro protest, which, on the one hand, means intensified ‘race pride’ and, on the other hand, voluntary withdrawal and increasing isolation of Negroes from the larger American scene. The Negro protest… thus comes to build up a new spiritual basis for segregation.” (Pg. 797)

He states, “The extraordinary thing is how the national ethos works, in the short run, as a bar against clear and constructive thinking toward mitigating the inequalities which, contrary to the American Creed, are inflicted upon a weak group. In the long run, this same Creed might come to sage, not only as now, America’s face, but perhaps also its soul.” (Pg. 800)

He argues, “To the Negro people dishonest leadership is a most important cause of weakness in concreted action. It should be preached against and fought against. It should be a main topic in the teaching at Negro universities, in the Negro journals, in Negro adult education. If a generation of young Negroes could be brought up to understand how scrupulous honesty could tremendously strengthen the Negro cause… this would mean a great deal for Negro progress.” (Pg. 857)

He notes, “it must never be forgotten that the Negro church fundamentally is an expression of the Negro community itself. If the church has been otherworldly in outlook and indulged in emotional ecstasy, it is primarily because the downtrodden common Negroes have craved religious escape from poverty and other tribulations… the rivalry and factionalism, the organizational weakness and economic dependence of the Negro church, the often faltering economic and sexual morals of the preachers and their suspicion of higher education---all this reflects life as it is lived in the subordinate caste of American Negroes.” (Pg. 877)

He suggests, “The Negro press… is bound to become ever stronger as Negroes are increasingly educated and culturally assimilated but not given entrance to the white world.” (Pg. 912)

He argues, “In the South three generations ago white people had for their defense a consistent and respectable theory, endorsed by the church and by all sciences… The Negro was a completely different species of mankind: undeveloped, ‘childlike,’ amoral, and much less endowed with intellectual capacities than the white man…The gradual destruction of the popular theory behind race prejudice is the most important or all social trends in the field of interracial relations.” (Pg. 1002-1003)

He concludes, “the Negro problem is not only America’s greatest failure but also America’s incomparably great opportunity for the future. If America should follow its own deepest convictions, its well-being at home would rise immeasurably. The century-old dream of American patriots, that America should give to the entire world its own freedom and its own faith, would come true. America can demonstrate that justice, equality and cooperation are possible between white and colored people.” (Pg. 1021)

This is a true sociological “classic,” that will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying African-American history.

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tennisace2

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2014

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Reggy

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2017