ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Negro preachers, teachers, professionals, and businessmen have had to build their whole economic and social existence on the basis of the segregation of their people, in response to the dictates of the white society. The Negro problem is working on the white man's mind too, even, and not least, when he wants to convince himself and others that it is settled for all time. Over large areas of America where there are few or no Negroes, the Negro problem is of minor importance to the people living there. To these ordinary white Americans, the only reason why the Negro problem has a higher salience than, say, the problem of British imperialism in India or, the Irish question, is his citizenship in the United States and, consequently, his feeling of national responsibility. When talking about the Negro problem, everybody—not only the intellectual liberals—is thus anxious to locate race prejudice outside himself.
