Hull House School of Race Relations

Epistemology

Looking at social behavior and conduct, proponents of the Hull House School argued that race relations could be changed because human behavior was flexible, learned, and capable of social reconstruction. Although they believed in cultural pluralism, they also believed that the individual develops a mind, intelligence, and the ability to take the role of the [Page 660]other—abilities that generate a self that learns organized attitudes of the community toward social situations. These attitudes form perspectives emerging from the group and the “generalized other.” People sharing the same neighborhood and community develop shared experience, which proponents saw as the greatest of human goods. The self emerges from others and is not in conflict with others unless it is taught to be in conflict, in this view.

According to the Hull House School, the self emerges in a society that is “racialized” or fundamentally divided into ethnic and racial/ethnic groups. As a result, the natural unity of the world is sundered. Proponents held that the modern world was White dominated and defined; thus, Whites controlled public life (especially the legal system and business), the definition of rationality, and the community. The state should provide a good education for children and youth along with minimum housing, health care, and food, proponents said. In their view, Fabian socialism was an ideal format for developing a responsive public and eradicating the color line from all public policy.

The Hull House School saw women and African Americans as the primary sources for social change. These groups would become a fulcrum for redefining the larger social situation of the White world, proponents believed. The Hull House School felt that the ability to change society was based on a reflexive understanding of the unity of society. People can act to change public life by using their political commitment to law and the state, combined with their cooperative worldview, to implement the goals of democracy. In other words, people—especially women and African Americans—can take the role of the other as well as the role of the oppressed other, proponents said. Women and African Americans can understand being limited in public rights because they exist behind the “veil” of racial and gender discrimination and are limited both structurally and systematically, albeit in distinct historical and cultural ways.

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