The Study of Racialism

kpauljohnson

Having become interested in Berry thanks to his Almost White (1963) I have ordered a couple of his other books and the last, Odds and Ends (1990, when the author was 89 years old) arrived today. It's a collection of material from four decades. The article of greatest interest to this site and forum appeared in Common Ground, Spring 1942. I'll quote most of the first two pages below:
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Let no one call me a radical. I was born and bred in the Deep South, of a long line of Colonial Dames, D.A.R.s, U.D.C.s, and unreconstructed rebels. At a very tender age I acquired strong prejudices against Republicans, New Englanders, and the tariff. Even earlier, though, I had learned the orthodox racial creed of the South and had mastered the complicated code of interracial etiquette. I knew which race was superior and which was foreordained to hew the wood and draw the water. It was perfectly obvious to me that Negroes were naturally lazy, musical, and incompetent. I knew "instinctively" how to deal with them. I addressed them as "Auntie," "Mammy," and "Daddy," but never as "Mister," "Mistress," or "Miss." They cut my hair and rubbed on the tonic but never shook my hand. They prepared my food and served it to me but never sat at the table with me. They called only at our back door and occupied the rear seats on the bus. They had their own churches and schools. To me this all seemed entirely rational and proper...

Before I had graduated from short pants I had played havoc with the Apostles' Creed, much to the consternation of aunts, uncles, and parents. My faith in the racial creed remained unshaken much longer, until college professors, books, and several years' residence abroad combined to make me skeptical. In consequence, in place of the racial creed of my youth, I now hold to a new one:

First, our popular, orthodox ideas about race are no better than superstitions. They were born, not of cool, scientific thinking, but were smuggled into our heritage to justify exploitation, to protect privilege, to arouse nationalism, or to cover ignorance.

Second, there are no fundamental differences between the various races.

Third, there is no such thing as a race in the first place...races are fictions, the modern equivalent of witches, ghosts, and goblins, existing only in our minds, although we commonly treat them as though they were real, existing entities.
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I love the disingenuous way he starts out denying that he's a radical, and ends up saying "but our entire culture is based on a gigantic lie about race." He spent his entire professional career based in Missouri (curator of the museum at the University of MO, 1931-45) and Ohio (professor of sociology and anthropology at Ohio State, 1946-64.) This suggests to me he was too radical to stay in South Carolina or the South as a base, but he returned to the South frequently to research what he called Meztizo groups over a 25 year time frame.