Poll On Negro Status Reveals Liberal Trend

Poll On Negro Status Reveals Liberal Trend

Findings from an SAA-conducted student and faculty poll on the "Negro problem" are summarized and the author reports that "a general broad-minded attitude among the students and members of the faculty with decided percentages in favor of negro-white cooperation and social contact."

Volume 42, Number 21

The Campus Editorial Board

The Campus

05/17/1945

The Campus Editorial Board

"Students gave 69 percent, faculty 66 percent rejection to the prospect that Negroes are inferior to Whites; 85 percent and 62 percent of the respective groups considered the difference between the races as social rather than physiological."

"Very few objections were voiced in the questionnaire to living side by side with the Negro race until contact becomes as close as in rooming and dating. Many comments and qualifications indicate that opposition to intermarriage is due to existing social conditions and the stigma that would be imposed on offspring resulting from such marriage. Accordingly, the ballots showed that 75 percent of the students object to sexual combination of races, while 25 do not. Moreover, only 12 percent would agree to marry Negros...This student viewpoint is supported by the faculty votes which indicate a 66 percent opposition to the former proposition and a 100 percent rejection of the latter."

"In bringing the problem directly to the campus, the SAA poll found 60 percent of the students objecting to the encouragement of Negro applications in quantity; only 9 percent would refuse a course under Negro instruction. The faculty gives a 57 percent majority to refusal of Negro applications and a 79 percent assent to their employment on the faculty."