Abstract
Rosenblatt’s book, The Impact of Racism on African American Families: Literature as Social Science, defends the use of fictional works in social science research. In doing so, he uses 27 novels published between the 1930s and early 2000s by 20 prominent African American authors to propose various topical areas on the effects of racism on African American families. Throughout the book, Rosenblatt summarizes the ways that racism influences African American family life by providing and analyzing passages from novels by authors including Bernice L. McFadden, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker. His thematic analysis is framed within family systems theory and critical race theory. While the topics are at times redundant, the book is largely well written and well organized, and is a worthwhile read for any scholar interested in innovative social science methodology or research on race and family life. Furthermore, this book would be a valuable addition as a supplementary reader in various undergraduate or graduate sociology courses.
Since much of the research on the effects of racism focuses on the collective effects, the first chapter calls attention to the lack of understanding of how racism influences everyday life for African American families and provides justification for why analyzing novels is an appropriate method for understanding this topic. For example, Rosenblatt explains how social science research is often biased and explains how it is not uncommon for fictional accounts to have autobiographical elements or to be accurate representations of real life. Chapter 2 outlines Rosenblatt’s methods for choosing and writing about the novels he analyzed, provides broad descriptions of the types of novels included, addresses how the racialized structure of society influences what books are published, and even acknowledges his limits of understanding African American family life as a white author. In this chapter, Rosenblatt clarifies,
I read and reread the novels with a great deal of openness to what the novelists had to say about racism affecting African American families. As my reading progressed, I developed thematic conceptual categories for the material, and some of these grew, as the material accumulated, to become chapter titles and headings within chapters. (P. 17)
Thus, for the remainder of the book, he considers how racism influences life for African American families by dissecting excerpts from the novels he read.
The third chapter utilizes the novels Rosenblatt read to outline examples of how racism can separate family members (physically and emotionally) due to racist violence, labor migration, incarceration, and civil rights work. For example, Rosenblatt explains,
In several novels, a key element of the story is the way that joblessness and job denial affect a character, particularly a man. Men lose or are turned down for jobs that they could do well. For the African American families in the novels who are on the edge of survival economically, if an adult does not have a job, that can be very difficult for the family. (P. 30)
The author presents excerpts from Langston Hughes’s book Not Without Laughter and Sarah Wright’s book The Child’s Gonna Live to exemplify how some characters in the novels have to leave their families to search for work in another area and how family members left behind are affected by the separation. Chapter 4 outlines various ways in which novels by authors such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ann Petry illustrate how racism can influence relationship commitment through a cascade of problems that can lead to relationship issues, such as work–family conflict and infidelity.
In the next chapter, the author provides examples of how the novels illustrate how racism can cause negative emotions, including grief, rage, and humiliation. Rosenblatt writes, “Being a target of racism . . . can be very upsetting. The novels are collectively rich in the complex and nuanced accounts of the emotional impacts of racism and how these emotional impacts show up in family life” (p. 53). Using quotes from novels by, for example, Ernest Gaines, Paule Marshall, and Gwendolyn Brooks, the author illustrates how characters in numerous novels experience negative emotions because of racism. Chapter 6 summarizes how some of the novels, such as Dorothy West’s book The Living Is Easy and Kristin Hunter’s book God Bless the Child reveal the economic costs of racism (through experiences such as poverty, poor physical health, and involvement in the criminal justice system). Chapter 7 uses novels by, for example, Wallace Thurman, John Oliver Killens, and Zora Neale Hurston to explain how racism relates to family issues through skin color and other physical features.
In chapter 8, Rosenblatt notes that “one way that racism affects everyday family life in a number of the novels is that white people and the racial system are topics of conversation” (p. 93). He then utilizes novels such as Bebe Moore Campbell’s book Your Blue Eyes Ain’t Like Mine and Marita Golden’s book Long Distance Life to demonstrate how African American families address topics within the racial system, including how to navigate the racialized structure of society, in family conversations. Both chapters 9 and 10 focus on topics of parenting in novels by numerous authors, including Terry McMillan and John Edgar Wideman. Passages from the novels in these chapters outline how African American families utilize various strategies to teach children about racism (as well as how to deal with it) and how racism can undermine parenting strategies by making it difficult for parents to be there for their children physically or emotionally. In the final chapter, Rosenblatt summarizes the ways in which he conceptualizes how racism influences African American families, proposes how family systems theory and critical race theory help to enhance the understanding of these influences, and provides a handful of ideas for future research.
A major strength of The Impact of Racism on African American Families: Literature as Social Science is that it could be integrated into undergraduate or graduate sociology courses. Although the topic may be too narrow for use in an introductory sociology class, this could be a strong addition to an advanced undergraduate sociology course geared toward topics on family or race because it gives a broad overview of important topics of study within these disciplines. Since the book revolves around a sensitive topic for discussion, I suggest that instructors incorporate the text by assigning the reading in sections throughout the semester (as it aligns with other material) and periodically beginning classes with low-stakes writing assignments to gauge students’ reactions and thoughts on the book and its contents.
However, while this book would be appropriate for undergraduate students, it might be too superficial of an investigation for a graduate seminar on family or race. For example, the text only briefly addresses intersections of race, gender, and class. Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile to integrate the methodological chapters of this book into an undergraduate or graduate methods course because Rosenblatt’s thematic analysis is arguably one of the key contributions of his work to research on the effects of racism. Using this book as a supplementary reader in an undergraduate methods course would be ideal for exposing students to a unique method used by a social scientist. Moreover, the methods in this book could easily generate discussion in a graduate methods seminar on the process, as well as advantages and disadvantages, of utilizing thematic analysis as a method in social science research. As mentioned previously, since it is controversial to operationalize the struggles that African American families face from racism using fictional accounts, Rosenblatt provided various arguments for the use of novels in social science research. Consequently, his points could be used to spark a debate in a graduate methods class on the validity and reliability of using novels as a source of social science data.
While this book is worthy of inclusion in a variety of classes, it is not without limitations. For example, it is notable that the text lacks any descriptive statistics on the various themes proposed in the book. The text could have been improved, for example, with statistics on the percentage of African American families that experience poverty compared to the percentage of white families that experience poverty (e.g., Macartney, Bishaw, and Fontenot 2013), which would further enhance the reader’s understanding of the effects of racism on African American families. Although Rosenblatt provides a strong argument for the use of novels in social science research, providing descriptive statistics on the topics in each chapter would have further illustrated how fictional accounts can be indicative of real-life experiences. Since the text did not present statistics on racial inequalities between African American and white families, I suggest pairing this text with background statistics on racial differences in household wealth (e.g., Kochhar and Fry 2014), neighborhood characteristics (e.g., Peterson and Krivo 2010), or parental incarceration (e.g., Wildeman 2009) to give undergraduate students a better grasp of the racial inequality that exists in the United States today. Or, to incorporate this into a more student-centered classroom, instructors could assign sections of the text to groups of students to have each group research, gather, and present descriptive statistics on the topics covered in the book.
Moreover, almost completely absent from the book is a discussion of incarceration, which is notable due to its prevalence in the United States today, especially among African American men (Pettit and Western 2004; Tonry 2011). As Alexander (2011) highlights how the current U.S. criminal justice system acts as a system of racial control, Rosenblatt should have included a more in-depth analysis of how fictional material presents the ways in which the criminal justice system, and incarceration in particular, affects African American families. While he does briefly present excerpts from some novels on how incarceration separates families and how the criminal justice system costs African American families economically while perpetuating white racial advantage, I do not believe this adequately illustrates the extent of the effects of the present racial system on African American families.
Overall, although this text does not provide descriptive statistics on the various themes in the book and provides a limited discussion on the effects of incarceration on African American families, it does help to enhance understanding of the effects of racism on African American families, as opposed to the common focus on the effects of racism on individuals. The broad thematic analysis of the impact of racism on African American families and their relationships, emotional well-being, and economic stability, for example, makes for an excellent text that uses a unique method of investigation. Thus, I highly recommend incorporating The Impact of Racism on African American Families: Literature as Social Science into both undergraduate and graduate sociology courses.