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The paper reviews sociological work dealing with American Blacks. In the past five decades three themes have largely dominated the work: (1) a description and documentation of Black disadvantage within American life; (2) an attack upon racist notions of Black biological inferiority; and (3) an interpretation of Black disadvantages as derived from White prejudice and discrimination. The work has been largely static and non-processual in character, derived largely from the structure-function model of society. The paper calls for the employment of multiple models and for emphasis upon a dynamic, processual model of social life. The concepts of network and field appear to offer much promise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most sociological studies of the police are of greater benefit to occupational sociologists, students of bureaucratic organization, or even psychologists than to those interested in the field of race relations. In spite of increased preoccupation with this subject generally, especially in the mass media, there is relatively little substantive material which attempts to explain why the police act as they do. This paper is concerned with the white urban patrolman as he interacts with the black citizen. No attempt was made to discuss the more sensational aspects of this relationship such as race riots or even to explore the situation from the point of view of the black. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative analysis of black sociology and phenomenological sociology and an attempt to show how phenomenology might be used to provide an epistemological foundation for black sociology. Attention is directed toward the writings of black and phenomenological sociologists. Arguments rest on appeals to authorities —quotations from and citations to influential writers. The specific points of comparison are the way the protagonists of the perspectives (1) define their activities, (2) criticize conventional sociology, and (3) investigate social reality. Epistemological issues are examined within a framework of the standard methodological problems of validity and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of identifying the environmental context in which organizations function. The relationship between an organization and those other groups and individuals constituting its environment is specified in terms of linkages. Two key dimensions of linkage are identified: strength and breadth. The former refers to how intimately the organization is connected with any other group while the latter refers to how extensive is the support. These linkages' dimensions are viewed from a "resource mobilization" perspective, i.e., as the means by which resources are brought into an organization. A study of linkages sustained by the NAACP during 1961-69 illustrates how the dimensions of linkage strength and breadth can be operationalized and applied. New avenues of research then are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic role of the black wife in contrast to her husband's weak economic position Is a key assumption in Moynihan's thesis of a black matriarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of women, aged 30 to 44, in 1967, this paper examines the factors affecting the wife's contribution to the family income for both black and white families where the husband's income is below the median of all male-headed families. The results suggest that black wives and white wives respond similarly with respect to their overall contribution, the demand for female labor, and the effect of children. There is no support, moreover, for Moynihan's assumption that black wives are compensating for their husband's weak economic position. It appears, however, that the definition of the provider may differ among black families and white families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exclusion and inclusion constitute the formation of social groups and their boundaries. Historically, middle- and upper-class African Americans formed social organizations to engage in racial uplift and status enhancement. Recent work suggests the purposes of such organizations have shifted from status enhancement toward preserving intra-racial ties. Drawing on nearly four years of participant observation and 29 in-depth interviews with members of a middle-class Black men's social club, this article analyzes the tensions imbued in maintaining solidarity amid class-based divisions. Beyond providing social respite from the white gaze, this Black space offers escape from the Black gaze, or the burdens of racial uplift. Studying Black social clubs and symbolic boundary formation is richly informative for understanding boundary maintenance and group solidarity within racialized organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, race and racism are woven into the very fabric of the welfare state. Racial antipathy has undermined public support for benefits perceived as favoring African Americans and has resulted in significant cuts in programs for the poor. Recently, some studies have found that public discussion on immigration has linked attitudes toward Hispanics and illegal immigrants with preferences toward programs once overwhelmingly influenced by racial attitudes. Building on this literature, the present study assesses the effect of racial and ethnic attitudes on state policy outcomes. Specifically, we examine Medicaid eligibility criteria for four categories of beneficiaries, ranked by level of perceived deservingness. We find that eligibility limits are most generous for children, followed by pregnant women and parents. Benefits for "other adults" (low-income non-parents aged 18–64) are subject to more stringent eligibility criteria or entirely unavailable. In contrast with the limits for other groups, the primary attitudinal predictors of Medicaid eligibility limits for the "other adults" category are antipathy toward Blacks, Hispanics, and illegal immigrants. These results confirm that perceptions of deservingness are a central component of U.S. social policy and demonstrate that material policy outcomes – not just policy preferences – are substantially shaped by attitudes toward Hispanics and immigrants as well as African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indicators of 29 of Oscar Lewis' poverty traits were examined to see if poor and nonpoor families differed significantly in frequency of demonstrating the traits. Families representing six ethnic/residence population types were considered: metropolitan white, nonmetropolitan white, metropolitan black, nonmetropolitan black, metropolitan Spanish speaking, and nonmetropolitan Spanish-speaking. Of the 29 traits investigated, for 24 traits a significant difference was found between poor and non-poor in at least one ethnic/residence group. Significant differences between poor and non-poor in the two Spanish-speaking groups existed on considerably fewer traits than in the case of the two black or the two white groups, suggesting that the traits examined may be more broadly based in Spanish culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the discourse on immigration found in Atlanta's African-American press ( Atlanta Daily World) to that found in Atlanta's mainstream press ( Atlanta Journal-Constitution). The Daily World's black counterdiscourse situates immigration within a racial frame, discussing Latinos and immigrants interchangeably and casting African Americans as deserving yet excluded citizens. Immigrants appear in the Daily World as either allies in the struggle for civil rights or as competitors for jobs. Although the Daily World crime frames focus on concerns about racial profiling, the Journal-Constitution often depicts immigrants as criminals or discusses immigration in terms of legal status and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial/ethnic residential segregation has been shown to contribute to violence and have harmful consequences for minority groups. However, research examining the segregation-crime relationship has focused almost exclusively on blacks and whites while largely ignoring Latinos and other race/ethnic groups and has rarely considered potential mediators (e.g., concentrated disadvantage) in segregation-violence relationships. This study uses year 2000 arrest data for California and New York census places to extend segregation-crime research by comparing the effects of racial/ethnic residential segregation from whites on black and Latino homicide. Results indicate that (1) racial/ethnic segregation contributes to both Latino and black homicide, and (2) the effects for both groups are mediated by concentrated disadvantage. Implications for segregation-violence relationships, the racial-invariance position, and the Latino paradox are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the sociological and historical literature, ignoring long-standing interclass disputes over integration, takes for granted that during the 1950s, all blacks, parents, and members of civil rights organizations included, sought desegregation. This article examines the interests of different segments of New York City's black community regarding the public schools during that era. I use contemporary newspaper accounts of protests and more recent theoretical insights to analyze and interpret differences in expressed goals and demands. This article not only documents considerable educationally oriented protest in a Northern city during a decade often overlooked by scholars, but highlights important class-based differences within a single city's black community regarding changes needed. Of particular interest to social movement scholars are findings that reveal a large disjuncture between the demands of the grassroots parents' organizations and established, elite civil rights organizations. While civil rights organizations sought abstract ideals of integration, parents demanded tangible improvements in their children's schools. Class-based cultures and experiences are posited as the root of this disjuncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we analyze African-American and white respondents' reports of the nature of their romantic experiences. We explore levels of companionate intimacy; including frequency of interaction and intimate self- disclosure, degree of romantic and sexual intimacy, as well as problem areas including relationship violence and non exclusivity. African-American respondents report relationships of longer average duration relative to white youths, but overall responses reflect a somewhat less intense or intimate relationship style. These observed differences were not completely attenuated once relevant controls are introduced. We connect these findings to prior research on African-American adolescent family and peer relations, and call for additional research that supplements the behavioral emphasis of Add Health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous scholarly research on selection bias in news about murder indicates that race and gender stereotypes and, to a much lesser extent, the relative frequency of particular murders explain why some homicides are made into news and others are not. However, previous research has directed nearly exclusive attention to white newspapers. The present research remedies this omission by directing attention to the factors that shape selection bias in news about murder in a big-city African American newspaper. The results indicate that the relative frequency dimension of newsworthiness is a weak and inconsistent explanation of selection bias in news about murder in the black newspaper examined. Race, however, has profoundly different effects in white and African American newspapers. Whereas white newspapers use long-standing race stereotypes to filter news about murder, the data from the African American newspaper signal a firm rejection of the black image in the white mind (Ent- man and Rojecki 2000). Newspaper images of women and men are another matter. In both black and white newspapers, gender stereotypes uniformly filter news about murder and fundamentally distort gender effects. The implications of these findings are discussed including the clear need and ample scholarly room for replicative analyses of news about murder in other African American newspapers, with a keen eye on both "raced ways of seeing" (Hunt 1999, pp. 181-215) and gendered ways of seeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA), this research examines three sets of hypotheses regarding the effects of religious commitment on life satisfaction. Further, given evidence of historical geographical differences in black culture and social structure, this study explores the regional specificity of religious influences on life satisfaction. Religious participation contributes to subjective wellbeing only among non-southern blacks, while private religiosity is unrelated to well-being in any analysis. There are also denominational effects: non-southern members of traditional black denominations (i.e., Baptists and Methodists) and southern Catholics report particularly high levels of life satisfaction. In addition, the effects of religion on life satisfaction are contingent upon age for non-southerners only. This study concludes with a discussion of directions for future research on religion and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the movement of blacks to the suburbs of American metropolitan areas, using the framework developed by Taeuber and Taeuber (1965) for the analysis of racial transition in inner city neighborhoods. The data are consistent with their model and suggest that the rate of black population growth is a function not only of the characteristics of individual suburbs themselves, but also of the central cities of the metropolitan areas within which they are located. The units of analysis are all suburbs with populations of 10,000 or more in 1960 and 1970. Suburban size is a key characteristic because the independent variables affect black population growth quite differently in different size categories. While there are clear differences between southern and nonsouthern suburbs in average levels of the push and pull variables, as well as the rate at which the black suburban population grew in the 1960s, the effects of these variables on black suburban growth were the same in both regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ethnic community and compensatory theories of Black social participation are compared by analyzing affective correlates (political efficacy and self-esteem) of participation for 712 residents of Nashville, Tennessee in 1969. The instrumental-expressive typology of participation is utilized in addition to total participation. Participation and the affective variables are significantly correlated for Blacks, but only weakly correlated for Anglos, lending support to both theories. The relationship between participation, the affective variables, and the controlled background factors is briefly discussed, and problems and directions for future research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From time immemorial Jewish tribal exclusiveness among dominant societal groups has resulted in various forms of conflict determined by the social situation. The critical force involved has been the group's peculiar resistance to social assimilation. Different social systems react differently to the persistence of this trait. The caste system of India, for example, would hardly notice it. But capitalist culture, which originated in the European medieval city, has constantly resisted it; that culture is basically assimilationist. American Negroes, in their opposition to racism, have relied mainly on the ideology of assimilation, These two divergent tendencies have come into collision recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the thesis that African Americans are effectively excluded from the decision making process in the community level. The study focuses on a research of black powerlessness in Chicago that evaluates the extent to which Blacks are excluded from positions of influence in major institutional sectors. Their findings indicated that Negroes occupied only 2.6 percent of the top making policy-making decisions in the Chicago area. Black representation in Chicago was greatest in the elected public sector, welfare and religious voluntary organization and industrial unions. There was a virtual absence of Black representation in the policy-making positions of the private institutions such as business corporations, banks, insurance companies and universities. The research tests the hypothesis by examining the degree to which Blacks are found in key policy-making positions in the Milwaukee and Wisconsin metropolitan areas. A total of 4.930 policy-making positions in the business, public government ,academic and voluntary sectors were identified including the number of blacks holding the policy-making positions.

This study examines attitudinal manifestations of anomia and militancy among the Negro populations of three lower-class neighborhoods. Translating these ideas into the present research context, the basic question asked is: What is the relative impact of ecological setting and of the social characteristics of persons (such as social participation and socioeconomic status) in predicting attitudes? The two attitudes studied are anomia, measured by the Stole Anomia Scale, and militancy, measured by a recently published Militancy Scale. The study focuses upon anomia and militancy at two levels of analysis—the neighborhood level and at the individual level. The neighborhood analysis is directed toward measuring the impact of a given ecological setting on the attitudes of those residing in the area. The individual analysis centers around the social attributes of the respondent (the standard socioeconomic indicators, as well as several social participation measures) and their association with militancy and anomia. While sociologists have examined the effect of social context, they have seldom separated the consequences of social conditions from those of a person's own attributes, principally because most sociological data furnish information about social aggregates rather than individuals, (Blau, 1960:179; Coleman, 1969:86-114). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years we have witnessed the emergence and widespread acceptance of a radical formulation of American racial problems—the Black power ideology. The ideology first emerged in the mid-sixties as little more than a slogan. At that point the concept of "Black power" was not clearly formulated and did not enjoy much support from Negroes. Yet, by the end of the decade a fairly coherent "Black power" ideology had developed and gained a substantial following. The late sixties also saw the implementation of the War on Poverty. The Black power movement and the anti-poverty program shared the same social space and developed a complex interactive relationship. Their association in time and social location led some observers to argue that a causal relationship existed, i.e., that the War on Poverty in some way caused the growth of the Black power movement and its increasing militancy. Yet, the exact nature of the relationship is not well understood. My purpose is to analyze the relationship between the War on Poverty and the emergence of the "Black power" ideology. It is my thesis that the War on Poverty provided a necessary organizational context within which the militant ideology was refined and rendered plausible. The War on Poverty, I will argue, generated a series of conflicts rooted in its organizational structure. These conflicts radicalized the perspectives of participants and sympathizers and made them more receptive to the Black power ideology. Furthermore, the conflicts generated by the War on Poverty produced evidence of basic contradictions in American social organization which was interpreted as confirmation of the ideology of "Black power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The College analyzed here is small—approximately 600 students and 50 faculty —rural, and prides itself on two things; its existence as an integrated community in the deep South, and its academic worth (unquestionably the best predominantly Negro college in the state). In its existence as a black community with a white minority, the College is a rather unique laboratory for our time. Although in 1966-68 approximately two-thirds of the faculty were white, blacks dominated the administration and positions of ultimate decision-making power; in a student body of nearly six hundred students, there were only 12 to 13 whites per semester. There was no question in anyone's mind but that this was a black community whose power it was to accept, reject, and judge the white minority. The main body of this study is the product of anonymous written responses to a series of questions on attitudes toward white students received from 58 percent of the students and 71 percent of the faculty. (The 343/595 or 58 percent student response represents 69 percent of the freshmen and sophomores and 37 percent of the juniors and seniors—a difference that reflects a change in the students' response to "compulsory activities" during their four years at the College, such as the College assembly at which the questionnaires were completed. By class the students responded as follows: freshmen, 174/234 or 74 percent; sophomores, 88/145 or 61 percent; juniors, 51/104 or 49 percent; seniors, 30/112 or 26 percent. Thirty-four out of 48 faculty members responded.) The study was begun formally in the Spring of 1967, in connection with an intensive "Self-Study' undertaken as part of the College's application for reaccreditation. It reflects aspects of black attitudes during a period of transition. At the start of the 1966-67 academic year, there were only the vaguest beginnings at the College of the upsurge of black separatism and anti-white nationalism which on the national level came to be loosely called "black power." By the end of the 1967-68 academic year, these feelings were the accepted litany among the students, although the number of those who had ever stood up for them as a principle of action was as yet small indeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]