The American Negro Problem in the Context of Social Change

Abstract

The highly elaborate social system which controls relations between Negroes and whites in the United States, especially in the Southern states where it had been built up for over a century, has shown signs of weakening especially since 1940. The major forces in this decline are analyzed as im personal, large-scale social forces arising outside the system of race relations—such as industrialization, urbanization, economic prosperity, the decline of the cotton economy, the growth of the United States as a great power with international obligations in a world that also includes hostile Communist states and neutral Negro states, and the ascendancy of the federal government over the state governments. A secondary set of variables in the social change are held to be a variety of "reform" organiza tions, with differing philosophies and strategies, which collec tively have created a social movement to improve or to equalize the position of Negroes. A tertiary set of variables analyzed are psychological changes. The major changes in race relations themselves are described, so that a summary picture of the position of the Negro in American society as of 1964 is presented.