Who Likes Whom

"Would you want your daughter to marry a white man?"

That was the sense of a question put to 721 Chicago Negro families by University of Chicago Sociologists Donald Bogue and Jan Dizard in a four-year study financed by the Ford Foundation. Bogue and Dizard found that nearly half the Negroes said they would try to prevent an interracial marriage, or would permit it only after strong opposition. Most of the others claimed that it "made no difference" if their children married whites. Only a minute percentage--1.1% of Negroes living in slums and 2.5% of Negroes in middle-and upper-income neighborhoods--said that they would encourage their children to marry whites.

"Eighty percent or more of Negro parents would permit their child to marry a white person if the romance had already developed without their knowledge," said the sociologists, "but there is no evidence of a desire for miscegenation, or even interest in promoting it, except among a very tiny minority."

Bogue and Dizard went on to reveal some other racial attitudes they found among the Negroes and 839 white families interviewed. Among their findings:

> Forty-eight percent of the Negroes said they wanted to live in neighborhoods where whites and Negroes were about equal in number; 25% said they didn't care one way or another; 22% wanted to live in neighborhoods that were predominantly or wholly Negro; and 5% said they would prefer to live apart from other Negroes.

> "A majority of the Negroes denied that their race kept them from getting ahead as fast as other people. When faced with discrimination. Negroes tend to become either passively or actively regretful--they, either feel depressed or they get angry. Only about one Negro in 16 believes the Negro is at fault; overall, the Negroes place the blame for the behavior of the whites upon the culture and tradition of the whites and hence believe a good part of the problems of race relations is one of changing the white culture. Negroes do not place all of the blame for the problem of discrimination on the whites, however." The study found that over half of the Negroes "were willing to adopt the position that some, but not most of the troubles that Negroes have are their own fault--their behavior patterns, their outlook on life, and so on."

> "Among whites, persons of European ancestry generally showed the greatest desire for residential segregation. About 8% would dislike living near Italians or Jews. More than one-fifth would not like to live near Japanese. Over 75% would dislike living next to Negroes. The Jewish population itself appears to have a rather high level of prejudice against other groups, especially with regard to Negroes and Puerto Ricans. In fact, Jewish respondents showed a greater level of prejudice toward others than others toward Jews. Negroes are anti-Italian and anti-Semitic to nearly the same extent as native Europeans."

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