Dr. Henderson went on in his paper to summarize many of the mitigating factors earlier mentioned, including socio-economic status, recreational limitations, inadequate sex education within Negro families and schools, and the tensions generated by discrimination. But he suspected that these various factors together do not account for more than half the problem: “Without a statistically valid basis for it, my opinion is strong that the primary factor is that of motivation. The simple fact is that many Negro boys and girls do not want strongly enough to avoid producing illegitimate children. The rank and file of those who are at the lowest social levels have not changed their attitude to illegitimacy since the days of slavery when sexual laxness in Negroes was tolerated and even encouraged.” [Emphasis supplied.]
A notable comment along that line appeared in the St. Louis Evening Whirl, a Negro newspaper, early in 1960, in an account of a colored woman who complained, after giving birth to her ninth illegitimate child, that her allowance under Aid to Dependent Children had been cut from $185 to $110 a month. She felt “discriminated against.” Said the Whirl editorially:
Mrs. Brown thinks that she is entitled to live a normal life with a boyfriend and not have to waste money running around hotels and rooming houses. They can’t afford it.
Mrs. Brown is young and normal. She is only 29. She cannot stop having a boyfriend and romance now. She believes that poor people are entitled to social pleasures and normal living.
This newspaper agrees with this version of living. The rich have everything they want. Why can’t poor people have a little fun? A lot of our foolish laws need changing. We do not condemn Mrs. Brown. We rather praise her. She is living proof of a good woman—one who is promulgating her race.
When our race increases in number to a much larger extent, we can demand more, get more, and show our power and authority at the polls.
This remarkable attitude, which views the sexual act as casually as a good-night kiss, is reported by school administrators and law-enforcement officials among Negroes across the nation. In Philadelphia, District Attorney Victor H. Blanc in 1958 typically reported confiscation of large quantities of pornographic pictures among Negro pupils in the public schools; much of the material was intended to encourage interracial “Sex Clubs” led by Negro teen-agers who regard fornication, in the Negro newspaper’s phrase, as “social pleasures and normal living.”
Another of Dr. Johnson’s characteristics, in the list that made up his “stereotype” of the typical Negro, was summarized under “law observance” as “relatively high incidence of social disorder; drunkenness, fighting, gambling, petty stealing, etc.” Here, too, some measurable data may be had. Nathaniel Weyl has summed up the picture succinctly:
“For well over a century the Negro has been responsible for an alarmingly disproportionate share of American crime. In 1950 his felony rate was almost three times the national average. Thirty per cent of the two million persons arrested for major crimes in 1957 were colored.
“While his contribution to all types of crime, except political crime, has been excessive, the Negro has gravitated toward the most serious offenses and, above all, toward crimes of violence. In recent years he has accounted for well over half the nation’s murders, non-negligent manslaughters, aggravated assaults and robberies.” [Emphasis supplied.]