Sociology Commons^™

Black Underrepresentation In Science And Technology, Robert C. Johnson

Trotter Review

The United States is experiencing a crisis in the training of scientific and technical personnel. A recent report from the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicates that the number of U.S. citizens earning science and engineering doctorates has decreased nearly 5% since 1980. The National Research Council's study of the adequacy of research support for the mathematical sciences in the United States reveals that not only has the production of Ph.D.s in mathematics declined since 1969-70, but the percentage of U.S. citizens receiving those degrees fell during the last decade from 78% of all mathematics Ph.D.s to only 61% of all …

The School Choice Issue: Remarks Made At The U.S. Department Of Education's Regional Strategy Meeting On Choice In Education, Phyllis Mcclure

Trotter Review

The term choice as it is used by the current administration with regard to education is a cosmetic, simplistic response to the failure of American schools. Choice has become a catch-all term for a whole variety of programs, plans, and theories. We should not let this meeting or the Department of Education delude us into believing that parental choice holds the promise for poor and minority children. The term is being used to describe not only what is happening in District 4 [public school district in New York City], but a plethora of ideas based on the free market. I …

Blacks In Golf, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

From 1961 until the mid-1980s a weekend ritual was repeated by many African Americans who follow golf. For these individuals, each weekend morning included a peek at the standings of the weekly Professional Golf Association (PGA) tournament printed in the newspaper to see how the black golfers were doing and whether any one of them was the tournament leader or was close enough to the lead to win the tournament. As the 1980s came to an end anyone still practicing the old ritual was doing so in vain. No blacks were winning tournaments on the regular PGA Tour, nor were …

The Foundation Of American Racism: Defining Bigotry, Racism, And Racial Hierarchy, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Despite the fact that current surveys reveal a decline in the level of white prejudice towards blacks, however, the number of hate groups and incidents of racial harassment and violence is rapidly increasing. In addition, while black and white Americans seem to be interacting more in the work place, residential segregation continues to be a major problem. Furthermore, there are indications that the political attitudes of blacks and whites are not only different on many philosophical and economic issues, but are becoming increasingly divergent.

Recent Changes In The Structure And Value Of African-American Male Occupations, Jeremiah P. Cotton

Trotter Review

The occupational structure of black men has undergone major changes in recent years, shifting from largely blue-collar to white-collar and service occupations. At the same time there has been a decline in both the relative and absolute value of black male occupations. Moreover, it appears that labor-market discrimination still plays a significant role in the disparity between black and white male occupational earnings.

The Presidential Primary: A Faulty Process, Douglas A. Fraser, Irving Bluestone

New England Journal of Public Policy

The system of presidential primary elections has in effect created a nonsystem for selecting party candidates for the highest office in the nation. Personality has become the substitute for program content, and campaign spending coupled with the influence of the media counts for more than the candidates' experience, knowledge, expertise, administrative ability, and attachment to the policies and programs of their respective political party. In large measure the current presidential primary system has failed in its objective to advance the democratic process within the political parties while undermining the effectiveness of the parties and the importance of activists, the party …

Sports Notes: Blacks And Private Golf Clubs, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

This past summer racial progress in the United States ran head first into the issue of "freedom of association" in the form of private clubs that prohibit membership to "other" folk, i.e., blacks and women. The specific issue in the case of the Shoal Creek Country Club of Alabama was the appropriateness of holding a Professional Golf Association (PGA) tournament at a club that did not accept blacks as members and was so bold as to say so to the press.

The Faculty Of The Sixties: A Reappraisal, Monroe H. Little

Trotter Review

Between 1967 and 1969 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education initiated and substantially funded several national surveys of U.S. higher education. One such study of faculty employed a questionnaire that was mailed to approximately 100,000 full-time college and university faculty at 303 schools nationwide. The results of this survey, which solicited more than 300 items of information from each respondent and enjoyed an unusually high response rate of over 60%, contain a wealth of data on a variety of political and social issues that has rarely been subjected to careful analysis by scholars.

This is especially unfortunate in retrospect. The …

Book Review Essay: Brazilian Race Relations In Hemispheric Perspective, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

The late Oliver C. Cox, one of the most insightful black Americans from the leftist tradition, was not often fooled. In his classic 1948 work, Caste, Class, and Race, Cox, a long-time professor of sociology at Lincoln University in Missouri, revealed the nonsensical underpinnings of what then passed for the serious study of comparative race relations among sociologists in the United States. So successful was Cox that his book was thoroughly and deeply buried by the sociological establishment. When Pierre L. van den Berghe published Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective in 1967, sociologists hailed his work as the …

Stratification And Subordination: Change And Continuity In Race Relations, E. Yvonne Moss, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

One of the measures used to gauge progress made by African-Americans in gaining equal opportunity has been to compare and contrast the status of black Americans to that of white Americans using various social indices. Historically, the status of blacks relative to whites has been one of subordination; race has been a primary factor in determining social stratification and political status. Relations between white and black Americans were established during slavery and the Jim Crow era of segregation. In the infamous Dred Scott (1856) decison, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney articulated the fundamental nature of this system of racial …

Long-Term Care Policy: Where Are We Going?, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Omb Watch

Gerontology Institute Publications

Millions of Americans suffer from physical or mental conditions that make it difficult for them to live fully independent lives. These are the frail elderly, disabled and chronically ill persons of all ages, and many mentally ill or mentally retarded persons. They need help to manage daily activities, whether they live in their own homes or in nursing homes.

Such care can be extremely expensive, since it often must be provided for many years, even a lifetime. Today, those costs are met largely by the individuals themselves or by their families and by public programs for low-income persons.

For many …

A Feminized Work Force, A Humanized Workplace, Evelyn Murphy

New England Journal of Public Policy

Enhancing the opportunities for women in the workplace in the next decade will become an economic imperative, not just an issue of social justice. In this article Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy sets forth recommendations for policymakers in both the public and private sector that begin to change our notions of what constitutes a humanized workplace. If the economy is to remain strong, these initiatives will be required to improve business productivity as well as the life of all family members.

Reaching Tomorrow's Hispanic Leaders, Sister Thérèse Higgins

New England Journal of Public Policy

High school-age Hispanics have a 50 percent drop-out rate. College-age Hispanic youth account for only 3.9 percent of the United States college population. A report of the Commission on Minority Participation in Education and American Life challenged college planners to do something about the neglect of young minority students. However, Regis College had already developed a four-week residential summer program to enable Hispanic ninth-graders to complete high school and prepare for college. The anticipated outcome of this College Awareness Program is that the dream of higher education and empowerment for two hundred gifted young Hispanics will be realized.

Protest And Thrive: The Relationship Between Global Responsibility And Personal Empowerment, Sarah A. Conn

New England Journal of Public Policy

Economic empowerment is intricately linked to personal empowerment, which for many women starts with notions of caring and responsibility. When we care about ourselves, our family, our neighborhood, our community, and our world, we are often moved to action. Examples of women activists abound. This article examines the psychological forces that lead to individual empowerment and social change and warns us that to ignore our reactions to the world around us is to limit our own possibilities for personal growth. Personal power comes from taking responsibility for ourselves in a context of interconnectedness and interdependence. Awareness, understanding, direct experience, and …

Commonwealth's Choice: Results From The Massachusetts Public Opinion Survey, Barry Bluestone, Mary Ellen Colten, Thomas Ferguson

McCormack Graduate School General Publications (active until 2013)

From November 11 through December 4, 1989, the Center for Survey Research of the University of Massachusetts at Boston conducted a random digit dial survey of adults aged 18 and over in Massachusetts. A total of 423 individuals were interviewed in a sampling procedure that yielded a 63 percent response rate. In contrast to most media polls, this survey was carried out over a period of four weeks permitting extensive efforts at locating and interviewing difficult-to-reach, reluctant, or less interested respondents. This survey is likely to be more representative of the true population of Massachusetts than most state polls.

The Hand That Pushes The Rock, Paula Rothenberg

Trotter Review

Only a very few schools in this country actually require all students to spend an entire semester thinking about issues of race and gender. Many more have found a way to incorporate these issues in required courses in “social problems” where racism and sexism get their two weeks along with environmental pollution and other current issues. I think this approach is dead wrong. Racism and sexism are not “problems” or “topics.” They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us have learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from …

Sports Notes, Wornie L. Reed, Louis A. Ferleger

Trotter Review

The Boston Celtics do it again: The Boston Celtics continue to go out of their way to have a disproportionate number of white players on their team.

Race And Excellence In American Higher Education, James Jennings

Trotter Review

W,E.B. DuBois’ assessment of American higher education’s posture toward black students in 1926 — “The attitude of the northern institution toward the Negro student is one which varies from tolerance to active hostility” — could have been written today based on several investigations. The American Council on Education reported recently that “the higher education community must continue to address the issues of losses in participation at all levels for blacks; the segregation of Hispanics; the retention and graduation of minority students, both undergraduate and graduate; the lack of growth for minorities in faculty and staff ranks.” The College Board reports …

Book Review: The Arrogance Of Race: Historical Perspectives On Slavery, Racism, And Social Inequality, Vernon J. Williams Jr.

Trotter Review

The Arrogance of Race is George M. Fredrick son’s latest work, and it is a profound one. This series of articles, many of which have been published previously, was written over a span of some 20 years and represents the mature reflections of one of this country’s leading intellectual historians. The work should be read by all serious students of race and racism.

African-Americans And Social Policy In The 1990'S, Wornie L. Reed

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The basic social policy issue for African-Americans in the next decade will be a perennial objective - to have policies instituted that will bring them into the economic and social mainstreams of America. The main problems currently faced by blacks are quite familiar: inequalities in economic and social conditions. The new wrinkle in the 1980s is a downturn in racial progress, a downturn that is seen whether one is examining attitudes or specific social policies.

Racial divisions have increased sharply. The Reagan Administration's war against affirmative action, its refusal to allow access to decision-making by minorities, its fight against civil …

Miscegenation And Acculturation In The Narragansett Country Of Rhode Island, 1710-1790, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

The histories of most New England states view blacks as a strange, foreign people enslaved in southern states, whom New Englanders rescued first by forming colonization and abolitionist societies and later by fighting a Civil War to free them. The existence of a black population in New England as early as the seventeenth century has been pretty much ignored. Indeed Anderson and Marten, of the Parting Ways Museum of Afro-American Ethnohistory, touched off a furor with their discovery that Abraham Pearse, one of the early residents of Plymouth Colony, was black.

The long neglect of New England’s black history has …

Sports Notes, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Another racial myth came tumbling down in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. Blacks had never before been prominent in swimming competitions at the national level in the United States or at the international level. Several theories about the bone structure and body mass of black people have been offered to explain the absence of blacks on the victory stands at these top competitive levels. But at the 1988 Olympics Anthony Nesty, a black man from Surinam (South America), bested Matt Biondi, swimming’s golden boy in those Olympics, to win the 100-meter butterfly.

The Gerontology Institute: The First Years, 1984-1987, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

During the first years of its existence, the Gerontology Institute has worked with older people to convert "retirement years" into opportunities for continuous growth and learning, while simultaneously seeking to re-examine social, political, and economic roles for elders in society. It is hoped that through such engagement of older individuals, the Institute has inspired a more positive attitude in society towards its aging population.

Blacks And Latinos In Boston: A Community Profile, James Jennings, A. Jean Burnette

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

The purpose of this Report is to provide a socio-economic and demographic overview of predominantly black and Latino geographic areas in the City of Boston. This Report is primarily in response to a request for assistance from several community-based groups and organizations, including Project FATE, the Center for Community Action, the Urban League, and the Bank of Commerce.

Based on specific requests and feedback from several individuals representing the organizations mentioned, it was decided that a "Community Profile" based on electoral districts in Boston would be useful. The request from the community organizations listed several possible items for inclusion in …

Scientific Racism: Persistence And Change, William Edwards

Trotter Review

In the United States, World War II was hailed as the “war to end all wars.” The war itself was considered a classic confrontation between the forces of liberal democracy and those of German fascism. Inherent in the ideology of nazism was Adolf Hitler’s “final solution,” the specter of rule by a nation committed to genocide. The Third Reich was dedicated to the proposition of “Aryan superiority.” The Allied Forces, dedicated to the principles of democracy and freedom (though there were inconsistencies between principle and practice), vigorously opposed the geopolitical intentions of Hitler’s regime and its pronounced policy of racial …

Commentary: The "Negro" Problem In The 1980s, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Since 1984 the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Science has been conducting a study on the status of black Americans. And since 1986 the William Monroe Trotter Institute has been conducting a similar study. The Trotter Institute study was developed because we wanted to have the widest possible discussion of the present condition of blacks and the social policy implications of that condition.

Book Review: The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, And Public Policy By William Julius Wilson, James Jennings

Trotter Review

William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged represents the debate of the last 10 to 20 years about race, poverty, and public policy. Part of Wilson’s rationale for the book is the belief that conservative policy analysts and ideologues have gained the upper hand in presenting their case about black urban poverty. He hopes to provide a framework of liberal analysis that will allow a better understanding of the causes of the intensifying black poverty.

Dynamics Of Minority Education: An Index To The Status Of Race And Ethnic Relations In The United States, James E. Blackwell

Trotter Review

Throughout this century scholars and legal experts have devoted special attention to the issue of race and ethnicity as a determinant of life chances in the United States. Some of the more influential treatises in the social and behavioral sciences, many of which have become classics, addressed fundamental, derivative (and often more compelling) extensions of race and ethnicity. They focused on such topics as race-based group dominance, ethnic stratification, structural inequality based upon racial or ethnic identification, beliefs in inherent racial superiority and status privilege, class exploitation, the nature of prejudice, and the maintenance of power over groups defined as …

Racial Insularity At The Core: Contemporary American Racial Attitudes, A. Wade Smith

Trotter Review

Survey research scientists have been interested in American racial attitudes ever since the craft has achieved a reasonable degree of precision. White attitudes toward blacks constitute the longest running topic in survey research. However, as a result of dramatic and systematic changes in racial attitudes and because of the changing nature of race relations per se, there may be less agreement now about the structure of American racial values than at any time since World War II. This paper will provide a capsule presentation of the major findings of recent research on racial attitudes and a brief summary of the …

Lead Poisoning: A Health Epidemic In The Black Community, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Lead poisoning in humans has been identified as a cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, birth defects, complications in pregnancies and developmental problems in infants. It is a health problem of epidemic dimensions in the black community. This serious health problem is yet another example of the production of “illth” in the modern society. As the means of production create wealth for some sectors of society they also create illth.