The Sociological Tradition of E. Franklin Frazier: Implications for Black Studies

Abstract

The thesis of this paper is that the core of E. Franklin Frazier's empirical and theoretical work points to the issue of assimilation as a central problem facing Black Americans. As such, Frazier addresses the critical question of what Black Americans will become racially and culturally. This question is couched within what I argue to be the central focus of Black Studies as a field of study, i.e., the problem of cultural hegemony. By cultural hegemony I mean the systemic tendency of one culture to negate another.' Cultural hegemony, of course, is not limited to Black Studies as an object of intellectual inquiry. However, a focus on cultural hegemony is critical to Black Studies because the experience of structured inequality has had a profound tendency to distort intellectual inquiry and ideational processes among Afro-Americans and thus this group's capacity to transform its subordinate status in society.2 A growing Afro-American intellectual tradition continually points to the above dilemma. For example, W.E.B. DuBois spoke of a world that yields Afro-Americans no true self-consciousness, but only lets them see themselves through the revelations of a White world.3 Carter G. Woodson assailed this dilemma when he spoke of the mis-education of Afro-Americans. For Woodson, education