The Negro Secondary School Population

This chapter is concerned with the population of colored persons in the United States. We might consider all persons between certain ages normally corresponding with grades, but we know little of this age range in isolation. Moreover, we would leave out of account a large number of pupils. Secondary is not a well defined concept. We prefer the designation secondary for the grades 7-12, and shall reserve high school for the more traditional range of grades 9-12. The point of view of this chapter is that social movements or organizations may not be understood in isolation. They are systems of social tensions which in turn are parts of larger systems. More specifically, the nature of schools in a community is determined by a matrix of socialeconomic tensions in which they are imbedded. But even if we did not entertain this point of view, necessity would force the approach, for our information about Negro pupils is disappointingly meager. It follows that any discussion including social-economic status must involve inferences from the status of the general population. If it is said that the approach overlooks the selective nature of pupils, we answer that necessity forces it and we suggest that selection is far less potent among Negro pupils in schools than has been claimed because of identifying small numbers with selection. We shall sketch in outline the social milieu of Negro pupils as it may be presumed to influence them. In a caste system, to a marked extent, the individual who partially escapes its limitations must nevertheless discover his goals within it. There is no social magic which by sheer pull of incentives can immediately transform the individual without reference to his past. Here centers one of the startling fallacies into which the psychology of intelligence has fallen. It has tended to operate in vacuo. Thus, some American psychologists have attempted to estimate mental abilities of races by comparing racial groups of the same grade designation with little thought of the social-cultural milieux in which these groups spend their lives outside the day. Should we posit race as an important factor? On this point visibility is low because of ignorance and confusion of other factors with race. Thus in the United States it has been a part of the credo of students of the Negrowhite race problem to assume that differences, by no means unique, are due to race. This much seems clear: The core of the race problem rests upon superficial differences such as skin color, hair texture, and behavior correlates of social-cultural deprivation. May observes

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