Toward a Study of Black America

Any attempt to study black Americans immediately confronts a number of stubborn theoretical issues, compounded by a great deal of moral and political controversy. The most fundamental of these is the explanatory significance of cultural factors. Up to the sixties it was quite acceptable to at least partially account for aspects of black society in cultural terms. Then came a massive swing against such explanations in the late sixties and early seventies, focusing on the “culture of pove...