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5

The measurements of modern science and the mounting achievements of individual Negroes do not in themselves nullify the comparative primitiveness of a high proportion of the American Negro population. However. while these findings and achievements provide no easy "solution: for the problem relating to racial frictions, they do indicate that the customary justification for the old solution is no longer acceptable.

The fact is officially recognized by the War Department: "In all the vast number of studies by psychologists and other scientists during the past two or three decades, there is not one piece of research which proves that Negroes are, as a group mentally or emotionally defective by heredity ... The Army accepts no doctrine of racial superiority or inferiority." 21

21 War Department Pamphlet No. 20-6, "Command of Negro Troops," 29 February 1944.

Racial Generalization

Even when the concept of superiority and inferiority is finally dropped or avoided, the tendency to generalize concerning Negroes as a group in such a way that the generalization appears to apply to each individual Negro continues to obstruct all progress in understanding or analysis. It is very easy to us the term "the Negro" in such a way as to imply that [[underlined]]each[[/underlined]] Negro is somehow, magically, "The Negro."

The greatest bar to intelligent analysis on the part of many individuals who have the intellectual capacity and the background of knowledge necessary for analysis. Early in the training of Negro pilots, since he had flown with more of these pilots than anyone else