sorganized because of slavery and that particular unstable attributes notes including high levels of divorce had led to an increase in welfare dependency.
This perpetuated earlier patriarchal conclusions regarding Blacks coming from biased "research" designed to show that Blacks were somehow naturally inferior. Just recently, an article in the New Yorker discussing the state of minorities at the conclusion of the 1800's noted: "The wretched history of Indian life in nineteenth-century America had long been justified by the claims of anthropology, a field that originated during debates over slavery and the right of settlers to seize native's land, and patriotically embraced such practices as part of the natural orderàAnthropologists presented their findings as objective science: elaborative measuring techniques yielded columns of figures that inevitably placed white intelligence at the top of the scale, red and yellow capacities father down and blacks at the wholly uncivilizable bottomàThe effects of such studies were painfully real. At mid-century the anthropologist Samuel Morton asserted that whites and negroes belonged to different species àChief Justice Roger Taney resolved that 'The negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit'" (Pierpoint 50).
Staples notes that the studies that have done the most good for Blacks and that are the most objectives are those that are basically historical; historical studies have demonstrated that the Black family in the slavery and post-slavery days was a stable unit. The question would be what factors have influenced this stable unit to create an instability that became prevalent later. To determine this, it is necessary to look at socioeconomic forces, and this is Staples' aim in this compilation of research.
Davis' overview of historical studies notes that individuals who have researched these factors in order to identify them and in identification, to r...