Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Fall 2004
While thousands of pages have since been written on related issues, and hundreds of studies funded and commissions convened, it might well be true that no single work since An American Dilemma has combined comprehensive social scientific research with a path-breaking argument that could define a consensus and drive policy. As noted scholar and long-time Daedalus editor Stephen Graubard provocatively commented, “It is extraordinary that there has been no successor study to that of Myrdal, that no foundation or corporate group has to this date recognized the need for a fundamental reinvestigation of what is incontestably the most serious problem that plagues American society today” (Clayton, ed., An American Dilemma Revisited, p. 1). Whatever one’s views on that subject, a look back at what made the Myrdal study uniquely possible in its day, and more difficult to imagine now, tells us a lot about the continuing battle to improve the lives of African Americans and the possibilities of advancing the still-polarized debate about race.
The Study’s Content
Myrdal argued that there was a fundamental dilemma within individual Americans, who were torn between the ideals of what he called the American Creed—values of democracy and equal opportunity—and the realities of discrimination and segregation. “The American Negro problem is a problem in the heart of the American. It is there that the interracial tension has its focus. It is there that the decisive struggle goes on…” (An American Dilemma, Introduction). In Myrdal’s view, it was due to this struggle that change would inevitably take place.
The study was also a clarion call for Americans to live up to the ideals of the American Creed or face a deterioration of the values and vision that unites the country and makes it great. “The Negro problem is an integral part of, or a special phase of, the whole complex of problems in the larger American civilization” (An American Dilemma, Introduction). Framing it this way dovetailed well with the ideas later expressed by Martin Luther King, Jr.; it helped black Americans and the white liberals who would join together in the civil rights movement articulate the urgency of addressing what Myrdal called “a century-long lag of public morals” (Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations, p. 58).
Another key facet of Myrdal’s argument was to set the study in an international context, predicting that, for Americans, having defined World War II as a struggle for liberty and equality and against Nazi racism would force a redefinition and reexamination of race in the United States. Myrdal also thought that the treatment of blacks in the U.S. would affect its international prestige and power.
The book’s argument was supported by extensive sociological research and data that demonstrated the dire state of blacks and the depth of discrimination. This gave the framing, which resonated on a moral level, a heft and persuasiveness that increased its impact. An American Dilemma drew upon thirty-one commissioned research memoranda on every aspect of black life and interracial relations. And Myrdal carried out extensive field research, touring the country and talking with black and white leaders, journalists, schoolteachers, clergy, academics, labor union members, businessmen, farmers, law enforcement officers and many more.