The Socialization of the American Negro Child and Adolescent

Abstract

In our society the socialization of human beings is chiefly the result of the specific methods of training to which they are subjected by their families. The orientation of an individual may therefore be looked upon as the habitual responses which he has learned through a long sequence of training situations. Learning takes place in human, as in other animals,2 by the offering of rewards for desired modes of behavior and the imposition of punishments on those not desired. The nature of the responses which are desired and condemned is determined in turn by the segment of the social structure in which the individual is trained. When one looks at a large group of people in our society, such as the Negro group, and discovers that there are certain gross differences between the degree to which its members and those of other ethnic divisions (let us say Southern white people) conform to the general American norms of behavior, the initial assumption, in the present state of our knowledge of behavior, is that these differences are not related to hereditary, biological, or racial factors. The next step in scientific learning is then to find out whether the social training of most members of this aberrant group takes place under