"Negro Problems in America"

This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

First episode of the series.

Professor Kimball Young, Chairman of the Anthropology and Sociology department at Queens College and one of the country's leading social psychologists, introduces the new series.

Dr. Hortense Powdermaker, one of the world's leading anthropologists, delivers a short talk on the problems of 'Negro' people in America. Their problems, she says, are fundamentally the same as those of white people: finding security. Their lower class, however, is larger than that of whites and they are, on the whole, 'quite far down on the economic ladder.' They also have a legacy of slavery and semi-feudalism to contend with. She refers to the great migration from North to South from farming to unskilled labor. Powdermaker says 'mythical beliefs among whites' limit job opportunities and there are fewer jobs for African Americans because white people are prejudiced against them having these jobs. The average white person thinks all African-Americans are like stereotypes seen in movies.

Powdermaker says the denial of respect as an individual is a harder problem than the difficulty of finding a job. The anthropologist says, "there is nothing in our laws, our constitution, our Bill of Rights, which supports the theory that one race is inferior to another.' She argues there has been progress but there is still a long way to go. "Today with a war being waged against democractic ideas we cannot afford to be tolerant of those discriminations which are fundamentally contrary to the sense and spirit of American democracy. We must become more and more sensitive to violations of that spirit."

In 1939 Powdermaker's study of Indianola, Mississippi (1932-1934) was published. "After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South," was one of the first academic studies of contemporary American culture by an anthropologist.
This study was the source of her groundbreaking theory focusing on the psychological adaptation undergone by Blacks and whites due to their interracial environment. - Wikipedia.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 69793
Municipal archives id: LT887