Cities 07

OBE #1
What characteristic problems (and ways of dealing with them) were specific to the early African American urban experience?

Du Bois outlines the various ways in which the African American population of Philadelphia was restrained to few or no options regarding their subsistence in an urban environment. He describes the physical segregation of the Seventh Ward, which was the primary African American neighborhood, in the following passage:
“North of it is the residence and business section of the city; south of it a middle class and workingmen’s residence section; at the east end it joins Negro, Italian and Jewish slums; at the west end, the wharves of the river and an industrial section separating it from the grounds of the University of Pennsylvania and the residence section of West Philadelphia.”
In addition to describing the African American residences’ physical barring from certain areas of the city, Du Bois points out that they are also shunned from social and economic opportunities. He shows that the segregation of African Americans is primarily due to social rather than legal systems. Although opportunities for African Americans to find employment is theoretically possible (in a legal and political sense), the workings of a complex and sometimes unintentional social system prevent this from happening. For example, Du Bois shows that African American residents of Philadelphia often have only bad options and concerning social interaction within the city, he writes:
“If an invitation is issued to the public for any occasion, the Negro can never know whether he would be welcomed or not; if he goes he is liable to have his feelings hurt and get into unpleasant altercation; if he stays away, he is blamed for indifference. If he meet a lifelong white friend on the street, he is in a dilemma; if he does not greet the friend he is put down as boorish and impolite; if he does greet the friend he is liable to be flatly snubbed.” Du Bois refers to psychological impacts that can take place because of the many small ways in which an individual can be discriminated against. He says “Any one of these things happening now and then would not be remarkable or call for especial comment; but when one group of people suffer all these little differences of treatment and discriminations and insults continually, the result is either discouragement, or bitterness, or over sensitiveness, or recklessness. And people feeling thus cannot do their best.” Therefore, it is not only the fact that employers will often straight out not hire an African American, but they are put at yet a further disadvantage because of the many trying social situations which they confront.
Du Bois shows how not only African Americans are discriminated against, but how sympathetic white people are also shunned, which ultimately further perpetuates the disadvantages of the African Americans. This is to say that white people who would otherwise be sympathetic to African Americans often are deterred from doing so through another side to this social system. Du Bois tells an anecdote about a prominent lawyer who sought to find employment for a young black girl as a typist. All of the employers to whom he talked said they would be happy to have her work in their offices until they found out that she was not white. Du Bois writes: “It happened, however, that the girl was so light in complexion that few not knowing would have suspected her descent. The lawyer therefore gave her temporary work in his own office until she found a position outside the city. ‘But,’ said he [the lawyer], “to this day I have not dared to tell my clerks that they worked beside a Negress.” Du Bois describes a different manifestation of this problem in the following way: “If he gain the affections of a white woman and marry her he may invariably expect that slurs will be thrown on her reputation and on his, and that both his and her race will shun their company.”

Jonathan Little