Black Women in America: Social Science Perspectives

This collection of 15 academic papers originally published between 1977 and 1989 in the journal Signs , where the editors are affiliated, is geared for use in the college classroom. The scholarship generally is first-rate, but lay readers looking for concrete solutions to black women's immediate problems may find these approaches frustrating. Walter R. Allen, for instance, justifies examining occupational status through census and survey data by stating that such research ``should contribute to the identification and eventual removal of barriers'' to equal opportunity. If we study the problem enough, he seems to say, it will go away. Other papers include Cheryl Townsend Gilke's work on the opportunities offered to women in the Sanctified Church, Sharon Harley on gender-related issues in slavery and sharecropping, Bonnie Thornton Dill's investigation of the nontraditional concept of womanhood developed by black women, and Diane K. Lewis's account of how, having come to identify their problems as partially rooted in sexism rather than racism, some black women are becoming more sympathetic to the goals of the women's movement. (July)