Negro Adoptions: A Comparative Study of Some Cultural, Economic, and Emotional Factors in Twenty Families in Two Departments of the Spence-Chapin Adoption Service, New York, 1954–1963
Abstract
Background of the Study. Like many well-meaning people, my attitude toward disadvantaged groups has long been sympathetic, indignant, and productive of little action. In a growing awareness of my responsibility, I have searched for the causes of the denial of rights, personal dignity and humanity to the American Negro and the American Indian. The main cause appears to be inner attitudes which are a product of our incompleteness as human beings. The fear and guilt and hate which exist in the world and therefore in all of us, with the potentiality of expression, the terrible drive to be superior and the greed for power which exist in man and which contrive to put and keep somebody in a lower position (and if we can believe he is inferior and also make him believe it, so much the easier for us) - all these unacceptable portions of ourselves are rejected, repressed, and then projected upon a distinguishable group. This is seen in apartheid in South Africa, the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and the current restrictions in education, occupation, place of residence, and general denial of first class citizenship to Negroes and Indians and members of other nonwhite populations in America. For the Negro, grave injustices persist in both North and South to tragic and dangerous proportions. Some of the factors which make life so difficult for the Negro are:the stress laid upon succès in terms of money and the accumulation of possessions - to which he has little access since he bears the main burden of unemployment, ever increasing with automation; the rigidity of our social class system although we are an avowedly classless, democratic society; and our economy where, although we can produce an abundance due to advanced technology, not all are sharing as we continue to operate on principles of scarcity. Over thirty million Americans are living below the poverty line, which includes sixty percent of nonwhite families who live in poverty.
Subject Area
Social research|Individual & family studies|Social work|African American Studies
Recommended Citation
Lake, Laura Barrett, "Negro Adoptions: A Comparative Study of Some Cultural, Economic, and Emotional Factors in Twenty Families in Two Departments of the Spence-Chapin Adoption Service, New York, 1954–1963" (1963). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30670842.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30670842
