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Some of the Cadillac prosperity is obviously false or forced; many Negroes are driven to spend their earnings in showy ways because they still cannot get the more ordinary things a white man with a similar income would buy, e.g., a decent home or a vacation trip to a good resort. Says a Negro leader in St. Louis (where Negro housing is particularly bad): "A flashy car becomes their living room, the only one they've got." Says a San Francisco Negro: "It is a sort of mobile aspirin tablet."
Despite the flashy cars, the Negro's spending habits have changed radically. He saves much more than he used to. Big insurance companies, which once considered Negro business more trouble than it was worth, now go after it. Loan companies, car dealers, etc. find Negroes excellent credit risks. There are signs that the Negro has begun to develop a large, strong middle class. Some Negro leaders, in fact, believe—and they do not consider it a bad thing—that the Negro is turning into the nation's new Babbitt.
Though Negro home ownership has gone up dramatically, the most depressing feature of the Negro's existence is still his home. Negroes now own nearly a third of the places they live in, a two-thirds rise over 1940. (White home ownership has risen more slowly in the same period, is now 57%.) But nearly a third of all Negro homes are dilapidated, compared with less than 10% in the nation as a whole. More than 20% of all Negro homes are overcrowded, compared with 5^% in the nation as a whole.
The Great Emancipators
The foundation of the Negro's economic progress is the fact that he has broken in large numbers out of farm and domestic work into industry. During World War II, a million Negroes went into defense industries. By & large, they have stayed in industry ever since. Today, nearly 11% of all U.S. industrial workers are Negroes—twice as many as in 1940. Most Negroes are still held to unskilled jobs. But there has been progress:
¶ Among U.S. skilled workers and foremen, 4% are now Negroes, up from 2½% in 1940.
¶Among clerical and sales personnel, 3½% are now Negroes, up from 1% in 1940.
¶Among women professional and technical workers, 7% are Negroes, up from 4½% in 1940.
One big trouble: there simply are not enough qualified Negroes. Example: U.S. industry will hire all the Negro engineers it can get, but few Negro college students go in for science or engineering. They still favor the respectable, relatively secure professions, such as teaching, medicine, the ministry and the law. In business, Negroes are generally in service lines, e.g., undertakers, barbers, cleaners, etc. This is not entirely the result of discrimination. Also to blame: the Negro's lack of confidence, which makes him underestimate his very real opportunities.
Negroes know that they have advanced because these are good times for the country as a whole, and some fear that their gains might melt away in a depression. But most Negro leaders agree that the Negro's progress in the past decade has been too solid ever to be rolled back easily. One measure of that progress is the fact that the Negro's biggest preoccupation is not economics, but social equality.
The biggest single blow against segregation in the U.S. has been struck