Harry Golden and His Theories on Gradual Integration

Another passage that caught my fancy in Black and White and other Political Stripes was the entry by Harry Golden. Similar to my previous entry’s writer, both Golden and Baker were writers for newspaper. Golden’s paper is not read as much as Golden’s New York Times, but the Carolina Israelite sure made me laugh. “The Vertical Negro Plan” gave a few concrete reasons on how to gradually assimilate African Americans. His writing in the 50’s must have been very controversial. One, because he wrote in the 50’s, and two, he wrote in the South.
He uses three plans in order to emancipate the slaves. The first is his Golden Vertical Negro Plan, which requires all schools to provide only desks in all public schools. The idea that there will be no desks means the Negro has not “set” himself anywhere, thus, he cannot be ridiculed. The second solution reminded me of A Modest Proposal’s. Although it has nothing to do with eating Irish babies, it does offer a solution dealing with babies. The theme behind My White Baby Plan is to offer white housekeeping women the opportunity to free up some time in their day. They would do this by hiring baby-sitters on a daily jobs, The only incongruence would be that the babysitters are black. This seems very logical because it would improve the lives of both black and white women, on the other hand, it would be pretty radical to let a stranger babysit your baby, especially a negro one. He offers, “a mutual exchange of references, then the people can sort of pool their children at a central point in each neighborhood, and every time a Negro wants to go to the movies all she need do is pick up a white child-and go” (437). This would solve the problem of Negros running away with white women’s babies. The final, and most formal plan, is the Golden “Out-of-Order” Plan. He states that Negros in North Carolina represents 39% of the population and he has already implemented the plan, and it works. If a department store or local park were to shut down the “white” water fountain, after a short period of time, the whites would assimilate to the “black” fountain. Genius! Desegregation!
I appreciated Golden’s writing because of its novel ideas. As we learned the first half of the semester, a novel or incongruent idea is funny to the audience. These theories are pretty novel to the young adult living in the 21st century, and I sure got a kick out of them.