76
PARTISAN REVIEW
can do whatever they want to do. Perhaps that
is
exactly what they
are
doing, in which case we had best all go down in prayer.
The level of Negro education, obviously, is even lower than the
general level. The general level is low because, as I have said, Ameri–
cans have so little respect for genuine intellectual effort. The Negro
level is low because the education of Negroes occurs in, and is designed
to perpetuate, a segregated society. This, in the first place, and no
matter how much money the South boasts of spending on Negro
schools, is utterly demoralizing.
It
creates a situation in which the
Negro teacher is soon as powerless as his students. (There are exceptions
among the teachers as there are among the students, but, in this country
surely, schools have not been built for the exceptional. And, though
white people often seem to expect Negroes to produce nothing but ex–
ceptions, the fact is that Negroes are really just like everybody else.
Some of them are exceptional and most of them are not.)
The teachers are answerable to the Negro principal, whose power
over the teachers
is
absolute but whose power with the school board
is slight.
As
for this Principal, he has arrived at the summit of his
career; rarely indeed can he go any higher. He has his pension to
look forward to, and he consoles himself, meanwhile, with his status
among the "better class of Negroes." This class includes few,
if
any,
of his students and by no means all of his teachers.
The
teachers, as
long as they remain in this school system, and they certainly do not
have much choice, can only aspire to become the Principal one day.
Since not all of them will make it, a great deal of the energy which
ought to go into their vocation goes into the usual bitter, purposeless
rivalry. They are underpaid and ill-treated by the white world and
rubbed raw by it every day; and it
is
altogether understandable that
they, very shortly, cannot bear the sight of their students. The children
know this ; it is hard to fool young people. They also know why they
are going to an overcrowded, outmoded plant, in classes so large that
even the most strictly attentive student, the most gifted teacher cannot
but feel himslf slowly drowning in the sea of general helplessness.
It is not to
be
wondered at, therefore, that the violent distractions
of puberty, occurring in such a cage, annually take their toll, sending
female children into the maternity wards and male children into the
streets. It is not to be wondered at that a boy, one day, decides that
if
all this studying
is
going to prepare him only to be a porter or an
elevator boy-or his teacher-well, then, the hell with it. And there
they go, with an overwhelming bitterness which they will dissemble
all
their lives, an unceasing effort which completes their ruin. They
