The Ashgate Research Companion to Black Sociology

Earl Wright II, Edward V. Wallace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317044017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Hispanic American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Ashgate Research Companion to Black Sociology provides the most up to date exploration and analysis of research focused on Blacks in America. Beginning with an examination of the project of Black Sociology, it offers studies of recent events, including the 'Stand Your Ground' killing of Trayvon Martin, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on emerging adults, and efforts to change voting requirements that overwhelmingly affect Blacks, whilst engaging with questions of sexuality and family life, incarceration, health, educational outcomes and racial wage disparities.

Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois's charge of engaging in objective research that has a positive impact on society, and organised around the themes of Social Inequities, Blacks and Education, Blacks and Health and Future Directions, this timely volume brings together the latest interdisciplinary research to offer a broad overview of the issues currently faced by Blacks in United States.

A timely, significant research guide that informs readers on the social, economic and physical condition of Blacks in America, and proposes directions for important future research. The Ashgate Research Companion will appeal to policy makers and scholars of Africana Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology and Politics, with interests in questions of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, social inequalities, health and education.

Part I
Black Sociology: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

1
Black Sociology: Continuing the Agenda

Earl Wright II and Edward V. Wallace

The primary objective of this edited volume is to present to the reader some of the most up-to-date research in the substantive area known as “Black sociology.” However, it is anticipated that some may have misconceptions about what Black sociology actually is. While some believe it is simply the ghettoization into a collective all research conducted by all Blacks, others suggest it is simply regular sociology in blackface. Neither of these characterizations is accurate. In addition to these misconstructions, some have questions about what Black sociology is. Some of the questions include “what is Black sociology,” “where did it come from,” “isn’t Black sociology just mainstream (White) sociology in Blackface” and “do we need Black sociology in the twenty-first century?’ In this chapter, we address these topics and questions and briefly outline how the essays in this volume contribute to the Black sociology tradition.

The Origin of Black Sociology

The most commonly accepted narrative on the origin of Black sociology is that it was birthed during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras of the mid-twentieth century by young African American college students seeking greater representations of themselves in institutions of higher education, largely predominately White, throughout the United States (Ladner [1973] 1998). While it is true that academic courses, programs (e.g., Black Studies) and an increase in Black faculty at predominately White institutions were byproducts of the direct activities of those involved in the movements cited above, it is also true that the intellectual foundation for Black sociology was established more than fifty years earlier in response to biased and unscientific studies on Blacks in America after emancipation.

Prior to the twentieth century, the existing scholarly literature in medicine and the social sciences largely excluded objective scientific inquiries into the status and condition of Blacks in America. When the medical community did conduct research on Blacks, the findings largely supported the preexisting belief that biological differences existed between Blacks and Whites. These biological differences were believed to be so extreme that a superior/inferior dichotomy emerged to validate the differential treatment between, for example, free Whites and enslaved Blacks and, post-emancipation, White American citizens and America’s second-class Black citizens. Belief in the biological differences between Blacks and Whites led the medical community to engage in one of the most infamous research studies conducted in the United States, the Tuskegee syphilis study. Grounded in an existing literature supportive of the idea of biological difference between the races, this study was conceptualized to objectively test the theory on racial difference and was guided by the question, “Does syphilis affect Blacks and Whites similarly?” This question was apropos since the medical community was advancing the notion that some diseases were less harmful to Blacks than Whites. It only took six months of investigation for the medical community to ascertain that syphilis impacted both races the same. It was at this point that the medical community possessed data challenging its preconceived notions on racial difference(s). Unfortunately, the Tuskegee syphilis study on Black men did not end after the research question guiding the study was answered. Instead, at this point, the study was altered from its emphasis on assessing whether or not the disease impacted Blacks and Whites similarly to an open-ended investigation on the long-term implications of untreated syphilis in Black males, who were unknowing and unwitting subjects in a program that lasted from 1932 to 1972 (Jones 1981). While support for the idea of biological difference by race was beginning to crumble in the medical community in the early 1900s, the social sciences remained firmly entrenched in its belief of racial difference.

Many founding and prominent early sociologists promoted theories of Negro inferiority and biological difference between the races in their scholarly works. Pioneering early Black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, via contextualization by Elliott Rudwick, offers an overview of sociology’s scientific analysis of the status and condition of Blacks in America at the turn of the twentieth century:

… the general “point of view” of the first sociologists to study the Black man was that “the Negro is an inferior race because of either biological or social hereditary or both” … These conclusions were generally supported by the marshalling of a vast amount of statistical data on the pathological aspects of Negro life. In short, “The sociological theories which were implicit in the writings on the Negro problem were merely rationalizations of the existing racial situation.” (Rudwick 1974: 48)

Elliott Rudwick (1974: 48) offers an equally profound assessment of the profession’s scientific posture concerning the status and condition of Blacks in America and the type of scholarship contained in the discipline’s leading journal, the American Journal of Sociology:

It is true that the Journal did carry articles by a man like W. I. Thomas, who criticized racist theories, but other items displayed the racial biases of their authors. The September 1903 issue included an article by H. E. Berlin entitled “The Civil War as Seen through Southern Glasses,” in which the author described slavery as “the humane and the most practical method ever devised for bearing the White man’s burden.” (Ibid., emphasis added)

Commenting on the thoughts and writings of the American Sociological Association’s “Big 5” presidents from 1905 to 1914, Green and Driver (1976: 331) state:

[R. Charles] Key’s analysis of the writings of Sumner, Giddings, Small, Ward and Ross leads him to conclude [that] … The racism of the pioneering sociologists and the incidents of racism found in their works seems to range from unashamed bigotry to tacit acceptance. Their racism can be understood in the same manner by which their theories and prophecies can be understood; with reference to the socio-culture in which they took meaning and shape; their opportunity structures; “styles of life;” and world views.

Scientific theories on the biological and intellectual inferiority of Blacks was evidence to many that not only were ordinary Black and White citizens different, but that Black and White sociologists were different also, and the two could not be considered professional equals or employed as colleagues even if both were credentialed from the same highly prestigious White institutions. Even attempting to meet as equals at Black institutions also proved problematic. W.E.B. Du Bois’s recounting of the difficulty a White colleague from Mississippi had simply trying to meet with him as an equal on the campus of Atlanta University is insightful. Du Bois (1980: 163) said:

We had absolutely no social contact with white Atlanta. Once in a while a white person would call on me—I remember one professor of sociology from Mississippi, who slipped up on the campus at dusk and came to my office. He said, “You’re the first person I’ve visited in Atlanta, and I wouldn’t want people to know it.” He didn’t dare come up to call on me in broad daylight.

Prodded by the interviewer to comment further on this experience, Du Bois replied:

I had no simple response. I mean, the way he said it, you knew he was perfectly honest. Here was a situation which I understood as well as he did: a professor from a white Mississippi college couldn’t come and visit as a social equal with a Negro professor. He simply couldn’t do it. I knew it as well as he did, of course. Of course, on the other hand he knew perfectly well that I wasn’t going to call on him no matter where he was; that the next time we meet, on the street or anything of that sort, I was going to fail to see him. I always had difficulties of that sort. (Ibid.: 163–4)

It is within the problem of the color line that Du Bois successfully spearheaded a program of sociological research that surpassed any similar institutional effort, before or since. But for race, the accomplishments of this group would be as revered and canonized as the vaunted Chicago School. It is, perhaps, this racial quandary that inspired Du Bois (1968: 228) to write: “So far as the American world of science and letters as concerned, we never ‘belonged’; we remained unrecognized in learned societies and academic groups. We rated merely as Negroes studying Negroes, and after all, what had Negroes to do with America or science.”

This is the sociological and societal environment that Du Bois faced as he began his quest to objectively and scientifically study “the Negro problem” in the United States. In a milieu where, taken as a collective, it was believed that Blacks were inferior and did not possess the intellectual acuity or biological sameness of Whites, the study of Blacks, at least by many White sociologists, was of little to no concern since the science was clear: Blacks were unequal. The time, energy and attention of White sociologists, they believed, was better expended on studying social problems more directly connected with the condition and well-being of Whites, particularly those arriving as immigrants from Europe. When some White sociologists did engage in research on Blacks, the product was often biased and unscientific. Du Bois notes this concern in his classic book, The Souls of Black Folk. Here Du Bois identifies a void in the existing literature on race caused by the preconceived notions of his group’s biological and intellectual inferiority. Instead of engaging in objective and scientific inquiries into Black life, Du Bois charges that some White sociologists haphazardly conduct research in a manner that validates their existing belief in the inferiority of Blacks. This position is captured in his description of the “car window sociologist.” According to Du Bois ([1903] 1969: 94) the car window sociologist is “the man who seeks to understand and know the South by devoting the few leisure hours of a holiday trip to unraveling the snarl of centuries.” Whether through benign ignorance or malicious intent, early White car window sociologists contributed to the existing literature many inaccurate and false accounts of the status and condition of Blacks in the United States. It is this void that necessitated a program of scholarly inquiry that would objectively and scientifically analyze the social, economic and physical condition of Blacks. The seeds of Black sociology were now planted, as it was at this time that Du Bois desired to develop a research program on Blacks in the United States and at a location where this new perspective would thrive.

Toward a Definition and Principles of Black Sociology

After Du Bois completed the first urban sociological study conducted in the United States, The Philadelphia Negro, he wanted to establish a research program on Blacks to counter that of mainstream (White) (car window) sociologists. He initially wanted to establish this program within a consortium of Ivy League schools that possessed the physical resources and financial backing for him to successfully accomplish his ambitious idea. In a recorded 1961 interview, Du Bois says “What we needed was an academic study of the Negro. I wanted the universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard and Yale and so forth to go into a sort of partnership by which this kind of study could be forwarded” (Asch 1961: 3). Despite his impressive scholarly record, being the first African American to take the Ph.D. at Harvard and his peripheral status as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania while collecting data for The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois’s idea was not acted upon; in his own words, “But of course they didn’t do anything at all” (ibid.). It is provident that Atlanta University was simultaneously initiating a program of research on Blacks and was seeking a qualified researcher to lead their effort. According to Du Bois, “Atlanta University … asked me to come down there and teach and take charge of some such study” (ibid.).

The Atlanta University Study of the Negro Problems was established at Atlanta University in 1895 by trustee George Bradford and President Horace Bumstead. This program of research into the social, economic and physical condition of Blacks in the United States emanated from correspondence from school graduates to their former teachers and administrators. Atlanta University graduates asked that investigations into the transitions of Blacks moving from slavery to freedom and from rural to urban life be investigated as the peculiar institution of slavery had only been eliminated a mere thirty years prior and because they had identified many social problems that needed social science answers. The Atlanta University Studies were loosely modeled after existing research programs and conferences at Hampton University, which centered on Blacks in the industrial profession, and the Tuskegee Institute, which emphasized Blacks in agriculture. Atlanta University’s primary, but not exclusive, emphasis on urban issues not only served as a point of departure from the existing programs, it set the stage for this school to make substantive contributions to sociology and the social sciences.

W.E.B. Du Bois was not the founder of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. As indicated earlier, George Bradford and Horace Bumstead are responsible for establishing the research program in 1895. However, it was Du Bois’s groundbreaking scientific rigor that provided a blueprint for how research is conducted today. It is coincidental that the establishment of the Atlanta University Studies and Du Bois’s desire to spearhead a program of research into the social, economic and physical condition of Blacks were nearly simultaneous. Upon his arrival in 1897, Du Bois provided the leadership, vision and academic training in the social sciences that was badly needed and sought by Atlanta University officials. One of his first goals upon assuming leadership of the program was to make the annual investigations more scientific. Du Bois (1968: 214) criticized the two studies published prior to his arrival as not being important since they “followed the Hampton and Tuskegee model of being primarily meetings of inspiration, directed toward specific efforts at social reform and aimed at propaganda for social uplift in certain preconceived lines.” With his rigorous standard for scientific investigations in place, Du Bois carried out a 13-year objective and scientific research program on Blacks in the United States. Some of the results of Du Bois’s efforts include conducting the first American sociological study on the family and the first American sociological study on religion, the institutionalization of method triangulation, the institutionalization of the insider researcher, and the institutionalization of the acknowledgement of the limitations of one’s research (Wright 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2006, 2009, 2012). In addition to these accomplishments, Du Bois’s research program countered much of the existing and biased scholarship of many White sociologists and now serves as the foundation for the substantive area called “Black sociology.”

In 2006, the lead author of this chapter and Thomas C. Calhoun published an article titled “Jim Crow Sociology,” that examined the nearly thirty-year life span of the Du Bois-led Atlanta University Study of the Negro Problems. In this effort, Thomas and I were interested in identifying the unique way(s) the sociological investigations conducted at Atlanta University compared and contrasted with those conducted by mainstream (White) sociologists. We discovered that, while mainstream (White) sociology largely focused on positivism and attempts to validate the discipline’s very existence, Du Bois and the emerging Black sociology agenda at Atlanta University placed its efforts on engaging in scientific and objective investigations on Blacks that should, when applicable, result in social policy directives. Mainstream (White) sociology, again attempting to legitimate itself as a real science, largely resisted this and similar agendas (e.g., the social gospel movement). It was quite apparent to us that, because of 1) the lack of attention/desire by Whites to conduct research on Blacks, 2) the biased and un-objective research on Blacks when conducted, and 3) the discipline’s lack of an emphasis on impacting social/public policy, the type of sociology practiced by Du Bois at Atlanta differed from that of most mainstream (White) sociologists. Consequently, we identified the parallel area as Black sociology. We defined Black sociology as

… an area of research, which may be performed by Black or White scholars, that is focused on eliminating Blacks from social oppression through objective scientific investigations into their social, economic and physical condition for the express purpose of obtaining data aimed at understanding, explaining and ameliorating the problems discovered in the Black American community in a manner that could have social policy implications. (Wright and Calhoun 2006: 16)

In addition to offering a definition of Black sociology, we identify five principles. The principles of Black sociology are that

… 1) the research be conducted primarily by Black American scholars; 2) the focus of research center on the experiences of Black Americans; 3) the research efforts of Black sociology be interdisciplinary; 4) the findings, whenever possible, be generalizable beyond Black Americans; and 5) the findings, whenever possible, produce data that could have social policy implications. (Ibid.: 16)

All of the principles of Black sociology were gleaned through the nearly thirty-year sociological research program at Atlanta University. While we remain committed to our original conception of Black sociology, there is one part that requires additional explanation, since we did not clearly or fully articulate our true meaning.

In our original articulation we argued “This conceptualization of Black sociology is important insomuch as it does not suggest a difference in … theoretical assumptions between Black sociology and mainstream sociology” (ibid.: 16). This statement is incorrect and was poorly worded. We do believe there is a difference in the theoretical assumptions between Black sociology and mainstream sociology. Black sociology operates within a theoretical frame that is objective and does not prejudge its subjects as deficient actors with pathological tendencies. Some early sociology and social science theories were, and some remain, influenced by their authors’ belief in the biological and intellectual inferiority of non-White actors, and their theories reflect as much. Black sociological analysis does not begin or end with the position that Blacks, or any other group for that matter, suffer from pathologies that are immutable, unchangeable and engrained by heredity. Nor does Black sociology support race-based macro-level theories that support the idea that groups of people, whether by race, class gender, etc., share common biological and/or intellectual traits that render them inferior. The argument that we failed to make in the original article is that som...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• PART I BLACK SOCIOLOGY: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
• PART II BLACK YOUTH, EMERGING ADULTS AND THE FAMILY
• PART III EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY
• PART IV HEALTH WELLNESS
• PART V HEALTH DISPARITY SOLUTIONS
• PART VI AGENCY AND THE BLACK COMMUNITY
• Index