An American Dilemma - Analysis

Analysis

Myrdal believed he saw a vicious cycle in which whites oppressed negroes, and then pointed to negroes' poor performance as reason for the oppression. The way out of this cycle, he argued, was to either cure whites of the prejudice he believed existed, or to improve the circumstances of negroes, which would then disprove whites' preconceived notions. Myrdal called this process the “principle of cumulation."

In Black-White Relations: The American Dilemma, Junfu Zhang gives this description of Myrdal's work:

According to Myrdal, the American dilemma of his time referred to the co-existence of the American liberal ideals and the miserable situation of blacks. On the one hand, enshrined in the American creed is the belief that people are created equal and have human rights; on the other hand, blacks, as one tenth of the population, were treated as an inferior race and were denied numerous civil and political rights. Myrdal's encyclopedic study covers every aspect of black-white relations in the United States up to his time. He frankly concluded that the "Negro problem" is a "white man's problem." That is, whites as a collective were responsible for the disadvantageous situation in which blacks were trapped.

Myrdal, writing before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, alleged that northern whites were generally ignorant of the situation facing negro citizens, and noted that "to get publicity is of the highest strategic importance to the Negro people." This proved, given the pivotal role played by the press in the movement, to be strikingly prescient.