Some Dynamics of Anti-Nesro Prejudice

With the Negro revolution in America occupying such a prominent role in current events, the emphasis in this paper will be placed on some psychoanalytic dynamics of the racial problem not heretofore dwelt upon in the literature, with particular application to the issue of integrated housing. I fully realize that the problem of prejudice is extremely intricate and involved.15 Previous authors18, 20, 21 in their presentations have accentuated phallic components of the genesis of anti-Negro prejudice. Sterba21 in his analysis of the Detroit race riots of 1943, felt that white hostility was generated because the Negro represented both the sibling rival and the Oedipal father to his white assailants. This has been further elaborated by Rosenbaum20 in regard to the riots at Oxford, Mississippi, related to the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in 1962. Rodger18 in his paper deals with an analysand of upper-middle-class, Southern white background, who became a violent segregationist and terminated his analysis at the time when public transportation was being integrated in his city. Dream material presented prior to termination revealed that the Negro was feared as the castrating father.

This paper will stress the anal components of white hostility and aggression toward the Negro. During the summer of 1963 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where overt discrimination has been practiced in the area of real estate for many years, the City Council debated the merits of a Fair Housing Ordinance. Ann Arbor is a city with a population