strong emotional response in us, no matter what our racial
background. Thus for a person to eat with a knife in place
of a fork, or to go about the streets hatless, or for a woman
to wear short dresses when long ones are in fashion, are all
violations of the patterns we have been brought up to feel
right and proper, and we react violently to them. More serious, for a young man not to "settle down” and make as much
money as he can is regarded as bordering on the immoral,
while, in the régime of sex the rigid patterns have been remarked upon, as has been the unmitigated condemnation which
the breaking of these taboos calls forth. The examples which
I have given above of the reaction of the Negro to the general
cultural patterns of this country might be multiplied to include
almost as many social facts as are observable, and yet, wherever
we might go, we would find the Negro reacting to the same
situations in much the same fashion as his white brother.
What, then, is the particular Negro genius for culture? Is there such a thing? Does he contribute something of his vivid, and yet at the same time softly gracious personality to the general culture in which he lives? What there is to-day in Harlem distinct from the white culture which surrounds it, is, as far as I am able to see, merely a remnant from the peasant days in the South. Of the African culture, not a trace. Even the spirituals are an expression of the emotion of the Negro playing through the typical religious patterns of white America. But from that emotional quality in the Negro, which is to be sensed rather than measured, comes the feeling that, though strongly acculturated to the prevalent pattern of behavior, the Negroes may, at the same time, influence it somewhat eventually through the appeal of that quality.
That they have absorbed the culture of America is too obvious, almost, to be mentioned. They have absorbed it as all great racial and social groups in this country have absorbed it. And they face much the same problems as these groups face. The social ostracism to which they are subjected is only different in extent from that to which the Jew is subjected. The fierce reaction of race-pride is quite the same in both groups. But, whether in Negro or in Jew, the protest avails
