Notebook: The White Problem
Gans, Herbert J.
As demographers had predicted ever since the 1960's, many American cities are now predominantly negro, and have elected negro mayors and city councils. This has generated widespread unrest...
...First, he demonstrated that the minority population has traditionally suffered from "muscular deprivation," which he traced to the failure of the White family to teach physical fitness to its children, making them unable to learn once they entered school...
...being outvoted at the polls, they were subject to police brutality and to more subtle indignities from the very legal, educational and welfare agencies that were set up to help them...
...Or, as a flippant delegate later put it, "Mr...
...Nor could the White youngsters hold jobs, he went on, because of their cultural predisposition to "careerism," a type of occupational motivation that encouraged them to prepare for only one kind of work, making them unemployable in a rapidly changing economy...
...A young radical who had tried to organize in minority neighborhoods supported this proposal, but added that the Whites' apathy also resulted from having too much money, and proposed a revival of the positive income tax...
...The next speaker, a social worker, talked about the "independency pattern," the Whites' inability to depend on others, and their need to do everything by themselves...
...One he called "matefixation," the preference for living with one spouse, which he thought harmful because children growing up with a single set of parents could not cope with the diversity of modern life...
...Charley just doesn't have a natural sense of rhythm...
...The conference received so much favorable publicity that other cities held similar meetings, and one mayor commissioned a well-known negro sociologist to write the now famous Patterson paper...
...Hung up on their fathers, many girls could not marry, others were driven to adultery with older men, and some even resorted to incest...
...Both analyses of the White problem were questioned by the luncheon speaker, a psychiatrist, who pointed out that in our leisure society, the emphasis on jobs and job training was misplaced...
...He was followed on the podium by a minister, who agreed that Puritanism had done considerable damage in the past, but felt recent White difficulties should be ascribed to "moral confusion," brought about by the illness and death of God...
...He argued for government programs to train the minority population in civil disobedience...
...Moreover, they insisted, the Whites were suffering from powerlessness...
...the White race leadership arguing that Patterson's portrayal of White family difficulties was insulting, and negro social scientists charging that his findings had been old-hat for a generation...
...When the minority population was still a majority, it had committed immoral acts which it considered moral, among them waging war, cheating in school, and defending monogamy while taking lovers or subscribing to Playboy...
...The report was debated bitterly...
...and "reality obsession," the failure to escape which produced anxiety and even mental illness...
...Second, the educator pointed to "cognitive deterioration," a speech defect that had developed in 19th century universities and was being perpetuated by outmoded grammar texts used in minority public schools...
...This speech defect prevented children from talking in accepted 20th century ways, and created problems when they applied for jobs...
...While these difficulties stemmed initially from the male's position during Puritanism, they were currently exacerbated by suburban renewal, which was forcing White families, though untrained for urban life, to move back to the city...
...The other he ascribed to patriarchy, and the mother's resulting inability to serve as a proper model for her daughters...
...Patterson fought back, upsetting the White leaders by backing their own proposals for government action, and pointing out that city hall was not given to reading sociological texts...
...Patterson located the problem in two characteristics of the White family...
...The real problem was the minority population's reluctance to relax and enjoy itself, which he traced to "deferred gratification," the tendency to put off having fun...
...As a result, they could not be reached by public welfare and case work techniques, would not accept job retraining, muscular enrichment or aspirational counseling, and ultimately regressed into a state of despair he called ragged individualism...
...The negro population, one speaker suggested, had in the past suffered from similar degradations, but had overcome them by protests, demonstrations and riots, while the Whites, who valued order above all, could not use these methods...
...These consequences were a natural outcome, he argued, of the centurieslong subjection to Puritanism, which forced men and women to spend all their time either at work or at church, and denied them the normal human the past, but felt recent White diffital health...
...The afternoon session was given over to the White race leaders, who argued that the minority problem was fundamentally economic and political...
...This has generated widespread unrest among the minority White population, and as a result, the worried mayor of a large Eastern city recently called a conference of negro social scientists and White race leaders to discuss the White problem...
...He called for the resurrection of the deity and the introduction of moral education courses in schools for the racially disadvantaged...
...As a result, Whites had become seriously addicted to nic otine, which was now leading to high rates of lung cancer, heart disease and other forms of self-destruction...
...There was neither enough work nor leisure to go around, and until the federal government stepped in to provide both, the retraining, enrichment and counseling schemes could only increase White despair...
...The conference was opened by a prominent educator who diagnosed the White problem in three ways...
...This set off another round of arguments, and nothing has yet been done about the White problem, producing a loud sigh of relief among urban politicians, who are thus spared from taking action that could only lose them votes among the majority population...
Vol. 13 • September 1966 • No. 5
