Norval D. Glenn

Negro Prestige Criteria: A Case Study in the Bases of Prestige

A survey of Negro stratification studies indicated that formal education has been the most important prestige criterion among American Negroes during recent decades and has been a more important basis of prestige among Negroes than among whites. The apparently greater importance of education as a basis of Negro than of white prestige can be accounted for by (1) greater differentiation of Negroes in educational attainment and (2) greater occupational utility to Negroes of additional education at some levels.

Book ReviewsPosterity Lost: Progress, Ideology, and the Decline of the American Family. By Richard T. Gill. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Pp. xvii+353.

The recent collapse, or near collapse, of the traditional family in the United States and other Western societies is well documented, though whether that change is decline or merely transformation to a viable postmodern family system is much debated. A less well documented but also apparently real change has been a weakening of the idea of progress (including confidence that life will be better for future generations than for present ones) and an increased reluctance to plan and make sacrifices for the long-term future. If recent family change is family decline, it seems almost obvious that it is closely related to any increase in preoccupation with the present as opposed to the future. It is through the family that the biological reproduction of populations and the cultural replication of societies has occurred; the family provides the primary linkage between generations. A number of authors have briefly discussed the relationship between family structure and concern about posterity, but the book reviewed here is, to my knowledge, the first elaboration and systematic development of the thesis that a decline in concern for the future is a major reason for recent family trends. In the two chapters following the introduction, Gill comes down strongly on the side of those who think that some of the recent changes constitute the breakdown of the family and that they have had distinctly adverse effects on children while often serving the short-term interests of adults. In the next chapter, however, he departs from conventional conservative and centrist wisdom and gives an explanation for family change that is at least superficially similar to that given by most liberals—one in which the primary generator of change is economic and technological development. This development, he argues, has led to such high societal complexity that the future has become unpredictable and change apparently indeterminant. In his words, the “process of progress” (essentially economic and technological change), which buttressed the idea of progress in the Western world during most of the past few centuries, has recently undermined it. Most of the rest of the book is an elaboration of this thesis and includes, among other things, a rather detailed description of the rise and fall of the idea of progress and a discussion of how in recent decades concerns about total annihilation through war, resource depletion, and environmental degradation have affected our orientation to the future.