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From International Socialism (1st series), No.28, Spring 1967, p.32.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Marriage and Family Among Negroes
Jessie Barnard
Spectrum, $1.95
This study shows that a great number of American Negroes – a greater number than in the white population – have rejected the norm of monogamous and stable family relationships.
After the Civil War the proportion of ‘normal’ white middle class marriage and procreation patterns rose as far as the records show until the 1940s and then they appear to have declined. The parallel that occurs to the reviewer is the way in which some working-class people accept a middle-class view of the world; while others reject it and cling to or erect a view of their own. She traces the relationship between class, urbanisation and the acceptance or rejection of officially approved marriage norms.
The American Negro is, of course, for the vast majority, in an inferior class as well as racial position. The links between these dual aspects of subordination could have been more closely examined. This is an interesting if unduly statistical account for my liking and deserves to be read as an introduction to the better type of American orthodox sociology as well as in its own right.
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