with Gunnar Myrdal
a copy of the Myrdal study,
An American Dilemma
southern black is a social, political and an economic untouchable
suffering the ordeals of lower wages, poll taxes, a heavy burden
on voting, a below average education, a one party system, crude
demagoguery and corrupt state and local administrators."
1937, Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist, was commissioned by the
Carnegie Foundation to do a study of race in the United States. The
groundbreaking study was later published as An American Dilemma:
The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Bunche contributed more
than three thousand pages to the study based on field research conducted
throughout the South.
Bunche's notes for An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Myrdal concluded that the contradiction between democratic ideals
of equality and the reality of racism and segregation would inevitably
put enough pressure on the conscience of white America to effect reform.
Bunche, in contrast, was doubtful that white Americans harbored any
guilt. The following illustrates their different perspectives. During
a visit they made to a southern jail, Myrdal lunched with the warden
while Bunche was forced to eat with the black chain gang. For Myrdal
this was evidence of the "American dilemma" in that the warden had
to have become aware of the injustice in his act. Bunche, however,
doubted that the warden suffered from a guilty conscience.