negro job status and education

Negro Job Status and EducationAuthor(s): Ralph H. TurnerSource: Social Forces, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Oct., 1953), pp. 45-52Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2572857 .

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NEGRO JOB STATUS AND EDUCATION 45

and the ethnic community; (2) the accommodative motif is strengthened due to a long tradition of accommodative race leaders, yet (3) his technical

function is much more difficult than that of non-Negro leaders, while (4) his valuation of his job is likely to be even higher than theirs.

NEGRO JOB STATUS AND EDUCATION RALPH H. TURNER

University of California, Los Angeles

AMPLE evidence from a variety of sources demonstrates that the Negro in the United States is disadvantaged in occupa-

tion and employment. Further evidence indicates that the differential in educational qualification is insufficient to account for the Negro-white differential in job position.' With some special exceptions, the Negro who attains any given level of education is unable to convert his training into as high an occupational position as would a white person.

The present paper raises a question related to the preceding observations. We shall ask to what degree education is related to the occupational position and employment of the Negro. A correlation between education and job status among workers in general has been demonstrated by numerous investigators.2 But the comparative degrees of correlation for whites and Negroes have been less fully explored.

The broad purpose of this paper is to test two opposing hypotheses, both of which are logically defensible. On the one hand it may be supposed that in those populations with a relative shortage of a certain type of job qualification, the presence (or degree) of that qualification will count more heavily than where it is plentiful. With educational attainment generally lower among Negroes than among whites, it might be supposed that a greater premium would be placed on such education as there is. Consequently the data for Negroes

would show a higher correlation between education and job position than the data for whites.

On the other hand it may be contended that the limited range of occupations open to the Negro and general characteristics of the minority position render such qualifications as educational attainment less relevant to occupational placement than they would be for whites. According to the latter hypothesis, we should expect to find the correlation between education and occupation lower for Negroes than for whites.

The theoretical question may be formulated in another way. Every individual is identified in terms of several different statuses. The several statuses that any given individual occupies may be highly integrated, in the sense that they are mutually supportive functionally and equivalent in prestige rating, or they may be unintegrated, involving lack of functional relatedness and marked by disparate prestige ratings. Viewing educational attainment and occupation as two of the individual's statuses, we may ask whether minority position makes for a greater or lesser average degree of integration between these statuses.

To test the alternate hypotheses, coefficients of contingency will be computed between educational attainment and occupation and between educational attainment and employment, for native whites and Negroes separately. Data from the 1940 census, tabulated from a 5 percent sample of the population, will be used.

EDUCATION IN RELATION TO OCCUPATION AND

EMPLOYMENT: MALES

Findings concerning the relation between education and employment for male workers are presented in Table 1. Measures of relationship have been computed separately in three age- groups. For measuring the total relationship between the eight categories of educational

1 Cf. Ralph H. Turner, "Foci of Discrimination in the Employment of Nonwhites," American Journal of Sociology (November 1952), pp. 247-256.

2 Cf., for example, Leland C. DeVinney, The Rela- tion of Educational Status to Unemployment of Gain- ful Workers in the City of Chicago, 1934 (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, December 1941); Percy F. Davidson and H. Dewey Anderson, Occupational Mobility in an American Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1937).



46 SOCIAL FORCES

attainment drawn from the U. S. Census and the two categories of "employed" and "unemployed," the biserial "r" seemed to be the most useful coefficient. However, the required straight-line relationship was not approximated in the 18 to 24 age group. Consequently, the less satisfactory coefficient of contingency has been applied to all age groups. Since the upper limit of "C" is less than unity in the case of a two-by-eight table, the coefficients have meaning only in comparison with one another and not as measures of the total degree of association between the variables.

The biserial coefficients in Table 1 are all of low order, but are all significant above the .01 level, and each is significantly different from every other one beyond the .01 level. In the middle age bracket, amount of education bears markedly more relationship to employment for whites than it does for Negroes. In the older age group the difference is in the same direction, but is slight.

The coefficients of contingency between education and occupation supply additional information for the youngest age group, and indicate a slightly different finding for the oldest age bracket. The difference between coefficients at the 18 to 24 year level is small, with the white coefficient larger than that for Negroes. In the older age

group the difference in coefficients is also small, but favors the Negroes. The considerably greater coefficient for whites than Negroes in the middle age group agrees with the findings from biserial correlation.

Coefficients of contingency between education and occupation have been computed for the same three age groups. To eliminate cells with very small expected frequencies, the eleven original occupational categories have been consolidated into six, which will be used in all further age and regional analyses.3

As reported in Table 2, the relationship between education and occupation is consistently higher for native whites than for Negroes. The smallest difference between Negro and white relationships appears in the 25 to 44 age bracket and the

greatest difference appears in the 18 to 24 age bracket. The relationship for both white and Negro is least in the 18 to 24 age bracket. For Negroes the relationship is largest in the age group 25 to 44. The small difference between the two upper age groups for whites favors the men over 44.

These findings may be compared with those concerning employment in relation to education. In employment the difference between white and Negro was greatest for the middle age group, where it is least for occupation and education. Thus in the age category in which education bears least relationship to whether or not a Negro gets a job, it bears most relationship to the type of job he gets. Since these are not large differences, however, this is not a point to be overemphasized.

TABLE 1. TOTAL RELATION BETWEEN EDUCATIONAL

ATTAINMENT AND EMPLOYMENT, BY AGE, FOR NATIVE

WHITE AND NEGRO MALE WORKERS, UNITED STATES,

1940*

Coefficient of Biserial r Contingency

Years of Age

Native Negro White Negro

18-24 .114 .093 25-44 .139 .079 .226 .094 45-64 .120 .137 .191 .182

* Computed from data in U. S. Bureau of the Cen- sus, Population: Education. Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics and Marital Status, 1940 (hereafter referred to by the short title, Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics), pp. 75, 82. All coefficients of contingency are significant at the .001 level by the Chi-square test and all biserial cor- relations are significant at the .01 level according to the standard error formula found in Thomas C. Mc- Cormick, Elementary Social Statistics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1941), p. 217.

TABLE 2. CONTINGENCY BETWEEN EDUCATION AND OC-

CUPATION FOR NATIVE WRITE AND NEGRO EMPLOYED

MALES BY AGE, UNITED STATES, 1940*

Coefficient of Contingency Years of Age

Native White Negro

18-24 .485 .378 25-44 .558 .535 45-64 .562 .509

* Computed from data in Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics, pp. 103, 117.

3 The six occupational categories are as follows: Professionals, Proprietors and Farmers, Clerical and Sales Workers, Craftsmen and Foremen, Operatives, Unskilled Workers.




A summary of the analysis to this point would indicate support for the second hypothesis and rejection of the first. With reference to both occupation and employment, educational attainment appears to be of somewhat greater importance to the white than to the Negro.

ANALYSIS BY REGION AND COMMUNITY TYPE:

MALES

Since it is well known that the Negro's economic status varies considerably by region, and that occupational and employment patterns differ from urban to rural communities, the data for this paper have been further analyzed within three

combined region-community type categories. Data for the southern states are examined separately from the rest of the United States, and further subdivided into rural and urban communities. Since the rural Negro population outside of the South is quite small, only the data for urban communities have been examined in the North and West. In order to maintain some homogeneity with respect to age, while retaining the most important age group, only workers of ages 25 to 44 have been included.

Coefficients of contingency between education and employment are presented in Table 3. For both native whites and Negroes the relationship between the variables is least in the rural South. For native whites the relationship is greatest in the urban South, while for Negroes it is greatest in the urban North and West.

A comparison between native white and Negro coefficients of contingency offers further support for the second basic hypothesis of this paper. The relationship between education and employment

is consistently higher for the native white than for the Negro population, regardless of region and community type. However, the degree of difference varies. The greatest proportional difference in size of the coefficient between white and Negro is found in the rural South, while the least difference appears in the urban North and West.

As has been indicated elsewhere,4 employment patterns may be in part a function of occupational distribution. Consequently, interpretation of the preceding findings will be delayed until the variable of occupation has been examined. Co- efficients of contingency between occupation and

education, by region and community type, are presented in Table 4. The column listing "adjusted" coefficients should be disregarded for the present.

Table 4 reveals only minor differences by region and community type for native white workers, but is similar to Table 3 in revealing the greatest association in the urban South. Unlike the findings for employment, however, the least relationship for both whites and Negroes is found in the urban North and West and the greatest value of "C" for Negroes appears in the rural South. For Negroes, the difference between rural and urban South is negligible.

Supporting the second original hypothesis, the contingencies are consistently greater for native whites than for Negroes. Contrasting with the findings for employment, the greatest difference


ATTAINMENT AND EMPLOYMENT, FOR NATIVE WHITE

AND NEGRO MALE WORKERS, AGE 25 TO 44, UNITED

STATES, 1940*

Coefficient of Contingency

Region and Community Type

Native Negro White Ner

Urban North and West .......... . 158 .125 Urban South ................... .184 .098 Rural South .. ......... .117 .044

* Computed from data in Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics, pp. 83, 87, 91-93, 95, 100-102.

TABLE 4. CONTINGENCY BETWEEN OCCUPATION AND

EDUCATION FOR EMPLOYED NEGRO MALES, AGE

TWENTY-FIVE TO FORTY-FOUR, ADJUSTED FOR OCCU-

PATIONAL DISTRIBUTION, BY REGION AND COMMUNITY

TYPE, UNITED STATES, 1940*

Coefficient of Contingency

Region and Community Type Native Negro Negro

WhNtie Unad- Ad- Wiejusted justed

Urban North and West ........ .549 .443 .482 Urban South ................. .570 .536 .542 Rural South .................. .561 .527 .598

* Computed from data in Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics, pp. 118, 126, 130-132, 134, 142-144. The method of securing the adjusted Negro coefficients is explained in the text, pp. 48-49.

4Ralph H. Turner, "Foci of Discrimination in the Employment of Nonwhites," loc. cit.



48 SOCIAL FORCES

between whites and Negroes is in the urban North and West, while the South, both rural and urban, shows a consistently smaller difference.

In the occupation data, the principal differential seems to be region, rather than the rural-urban dichotomy. The occupational sorting of Negroes corresponds more closely to education in the South than in the rest of the nation. Thus there is a higher integration of statuses in this respect in the South. We may speculate that this differential is a function of the limited education of Negroes in the South, so that the supply of well-educated Negroes does not greatly exceed the positions available for them. The finding might also be attributed to northward migration of educated Negroes who cannot find appropriate positions in the South. Or such a finding might be attributable to a lesser degree of inter-status mobility during the life of the individual southern Negro, who does not have the opportunity to secure an education that he cannot use. The large difference in coefficients between native whites and Negroes outside the South may be a product of the mobility and impermanence of Negro workers and the large numbers with education beyond the occupational opportunities available for them. The weakening of traditional status systems in the Negro community in the North and the equating of social mobility with strictly short-range mone- tary measures by some may also reduce the correlation.

Toward securing employment, however, education appears to be relatively more significant in the North and West than in the South. This may reflect the relative absence of occupations in the North in which a completely uneducated person will be employed. The generally higher coefficients for both white and Negro in the urban areas would support this interpretation, while suggesting that the differential is a matter of community type as well as region. It is also possible that employability may be more a function of tangible evidences of qualification, such as education, in those areas in which the population is most transient and anonymous, as in the case of the northern urban Negro and in the case of the urban as contrasted to the rural Negro in the' South.

REFINEMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS

If the weight of evidence may be taken as supporting the second original hypothesis, that the

association between education and economic status is less in the case of a disadvantaged minority group than in the case of the majority group, it is now possible to refine this hypothesis further. Two alternative hypotheses may be presented as accounting for the observed relationship.

On the one hand, the limited association between education and economic status within the minority group may be attributed to occupation distribution. Each occupation may be regarded as being selective with respect to education, i.e., "selecting" those who follow it from persons within a given range of educational levels. Thus, medicine draws only from persons with postgraduate college educations and the skilled crafts seldom draw from persons with more than a high school education. Occupations may be further regarded as varying in the degree of their selectivitv with respect to education, some drawing from a wide range of educational levels and others drawing from a narrow range. Any group of persons who are located disproportionately in those occupations which are least selective with respect to education will reveal a low degree of over-all association between education and occupation. One hypothesis to account for the general findings of this paper would be that Negroes are found disproportionately in occupations which are not sharply selective with regard to education.

The alternative hypothesis is that such qualifications as education are of less importance in relation to other considerations in determining the type of job a Negro may secure. For members of a minority group such considerations as "proper" attitudes of subservience or sponsorship by a member of the majority group may tend to outweigh other types of job qualification.

One way to test these alternatives is to standard- ize the data for Negroes according to the occupational distribution of the whites, while leaving unchanged the within-occupation relationships with educational attainment. An adjusted contingency table has accordingly been secured by the following procedure. The Negro occupational frequencies (row totals) are first standardized to the white distribution. For each row (occupation) in the unadjusted Negro contingency table the percentage distribution by cells (education) is next computed. Cell values in the adjusted contingency table are then supplied by multiplying the standardized row totals by these cell per-




centages. Any increase in the size of coefficients of contingency created by this adjustment procedure can be taken as supporting the first of the above hypotheses.5 The adjusted coefficients are presented in the last column of Table 4. This operation has been performed only with regard to occupation.

In each instance, the result of standardizing the Negro occupational totals to the native white distribution is to increase the relationship between education and occupation. Support is thus provided for the hypothesis that the low relationship between education and occupation for Negroes is a function of the occupational distribution itself, apart from any differential evaluation of qualifications in providing employment.

However, the second hypothesis is not disproved unless it can be shown that no difference in the magnitude of the coefficients of contingency between native whites and Negroes remains after the above operation has been completed. At this point, the findings differ by region and community type. In the urban North and West about two- fifths of the white-Negro differential is eliminated by this operation and in the urban South a little less than one-fifth is eliminated. In urban communities of both regions the majority of the differential between whites and Negroes must be accounted for by the second hypothesis or other hypotheses not proposed here. Only in the rural South does the adjustment account for all of the difference, and here it is sufficient to account for about an equal difference in the opposite direction. Thus it may be hypothesized that in the rural South the Negro is disproportionately in occupations which are relatively non-selective with regard to education, and that when this fact is taken into account, differences in education are actually a more important factor in the distribution of occupations for the Negro than for the white.

The statement of the alternatives is, however, still in sufficiently broad terms that it may actually conceal important variations in the components of the total relationships. At best the answers

just supplied report a summation of Negro-white differences in within-occupation variability in education, some in one direction possibly can- celling out some in opposite directions. Hence, it should be fruitful to make a cell-by-cell comparison of degree of selectivity with respect to a given level of educational attainment exercised by each occupation.6

An Index of Concentration can be so computed as to provide a measure of the degree to which persons in a given occupation are disproportionately concentrated at a given education level, or are disproportionately absent from that level.7 Positive and negative values indicate relative concentration and absence, respectively, while the absolute value of the index, regardless of sign, indicates degree of relationship. Index values can range from -1.00 to +1.00. Such measures have been computed separately for whites and Negroes within the three region-community type categories used elsewhere in this paper. Thus it is possible to compare white and Negro indices of concentration within each specific combination of education and occupation.'

5 The result of the row standardization is to set up an adjusted contingency table with column totals (educational attainment frequencies) which are cor- rect for neither the white nor the Negro distributions. The table constitutes, then, an analytic fiction, and the resulting coefficient is not to be interpreted in any other sense than that of the analytic problem that prompted its formulation.

6 One obvious means of handling this problem would have been to compute the standard deviations of educational attainment within each occupation, the higher the S.D., the less selective the occupations with respect to education. However, this approach could not be used because of the considerable departures from nor- mal distribution.

I The formula, to be explained more fully in a subse- quent publication is as follows:

/a + c a-I l b

a+ (a + c) b

The following are the variables and their definitions: "a" refers to the cell frequency under examination; "b" refers to the total frequency in the occupation but not in the cell, a; "c" refers to the total frequency in the education category but not in the cell, a; and "d" refers to the total frequency not in the occupation or educational attainment category under consideration. As stated, the measure is one of concentration by ed- tucation, computed within each occupation separately. The computations, if made by occupation, within each educational attainment category taken separately, yield quite similar index values throughout, so that the ap- proaches may be used interchangeably on these data.

8 Because of space limitations, this table and the corresponding table for women have not been included



50 SOCIAL FORCES

Within each region-community type there are some cells (education-occupation combinations) which are more discriminating in the white data and some which are more discriminating in the Negro data. In keeping with the evidence already adduced, there is a considerable majority of cells in which the white index has a greater absolute value than the Negro in the two urban categories. In the rural South, however, the majority of differences and the largest differences give greater absolute index values to the Negro.

Comparisons of the degree to which specific occupations are selective with respect to education are afforded by examination of the total range from the highest positive to the lowest negative index value for each occupation. With degree of selectivity measured in this manner, the same comparative pattern emerges for both southern and non-southern urban areas. Four of the six occupational categories are more selective for whites than for Negroes, only the professionals and clerical workers showing approximately similar ranges for whites and Negroes. In the rural South, however, the difference in range is small for the craftsmen, there is no difference in the case of operatives, and the range is greater for Negroes in the proprietors and farmers category. As in the urban United States, the index range for whites and Negroes is fairly similar in the clerical workers bracket.

The preceding summary gives further support to the hypothesis that considerations other than education play a larger role in determining the Negro's occupational position than they do in determining the native white's position throughout the urban United States, in spite of regional variations. This does not appear to be true in the rural South, however.

An examination of some specific occupations will clarify interpretation further. The greater association between education and occupation for Negroes than whites in the rural South may be attributed to the considerable incompatibility between moderate or high education and farming, as indicated by the negative index values for the high school and college categories. This finding may, however, be spurious, due to the heterogeneity of the "farmer'? category. A dis- proportion of Negro "farmers" are tenants,

who do not have open to them upward mobility into farm ownership.

The category of clerical workers is the clearest instance of Negro indices showing higher absolute values than white indices in the urban areas. Even in the rural South the positive concentration is higher for Negroes than for whites at the high school level and above. This is consistent with the observed tendency for "white collar" positions to convey relatively higher prestige within the Negro than within the white community. The same observation applies also to professionals and proprietors and farmers at the college level, except for the latter in the rural South.

ANALYSIS FOR FEMALES

The same general analysis has been repeated for females, so that the applicability of the several hypotheses may be further tested. Between employment and education, only the coefficient of contingency has been computed because of the general non-linearity of relationships. The coefficients are higher for whites than for Negroes in the middle and upper age brackets (Table 5). The most striking difference between the white and Negro coefficients occurs in the group below 25 years of age, and reveals a higher relationship for Negroes than for whites. However, a percentage analysis reveals that for this youngest age group of Negro women the direction of correlation is negative.9 Hence, while the Negro relationship is higher at this level than the white relationship, the difference constitutes an enhancement of the disadvantage of successive increments of education.

Except for a different ordering by magnitude of the coefficients for native whites, the region- community type analysis for women produces similar findings to those for men. The coefficients for whites are consistently higher than those for Negroes, the Negro-white differential is greater in the South than in the North and West, and the highest coefficient for Negroes is found in the North and West.

Tabulations of data and smaller numbers of cases do not permit the same detailed breakdowns in computing coefficients of contingency between education and occupation in the case of women as in the case of men. However, it is possible to

in the article. Copies of the table may be secured by request to the author, at the University of California, Los Angeles 24.

9 Ralph H. Turner, Some Factors in the Differen- tial Position of Whites and Negroes in the Labor Force of the United States in 1940 (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1948), p. 177.




examine the South separately from the rest of the nation (Table 6). As with men, the higher coefficients are found for whites, and the discrepancy is greater in the North and West than in the South. Differential occupational distribution can account for a good part of the difference between the contingencies for whites and for Negroes outside the South, but not in the South. This is in dis- agreement with the findings for men. In the North and West the contribution of occupational distribution is more important than it was for men, accounting for approximately two-thirds of the total difference between whites and Negroes.

The indices of concentration'0 indicate relationships similar to those for men, and, with the exception of proprietors and farmers, show rather similar patterns for the two regions. The operatives and unskilled workers brackets in both regions are less selective with respect to education in the case of Negroes than in the case of whites. Among craftsmen the differences are variable, not fitting any clear pattern. For clerical workers, high positive indices for Negroes at the upper educational levels make a striking contrast with negative indices for white women. Outside of the South, differences in the proprietors and farmers category are variable, though Negro indices are higher and

positive at the college levels. In the South, however, the absolute values of the indices are higher for Negroes from seven to eight years of grade school up and are, as in the case of males, all negative. In the professions Negroes show higher absolute indices at both educational poles.

Thus, for females the differences between Negroes and whites in degree of relationship between education and occupation, examined by occupation, are less impressive and consistent than for males. The total difference in relationship is small in the South, and the majority of the difference in the North and West is attributable to occupational distribution.

INTERPRETATIONS

The findings of this paper have consistently supported the hypothesis that the minority status of the Negro leads to a lessened correlation between education and job position. They have further indicated that for men, but not for women, in the rural South this observation is fully accounted for by characteristics of the range of occupations available to the Negro. In urban areas, however, the Negro-white differential exists within occupations.

The analysis rests on certain assumptions, in addition to the usual assumptions of statistical technique and mass population data. It has been assumed that given levels of educational attainment and given occupational categories are equivalent for whites and Negroes. A clear exception to this assumption was pointed out with reference to the category of farmers. The analysis also assumes some homogeneity of the occupational categories employed, and it is possible that a different classification system might have yielded different results.

The significance of the present findings lies


ATTAINMENT AND EMPLOYMENT, BY AGE, REGION

AND COMMUNITY TYPE, FOR NATIVE WHITE AND

NEGRO FEMALE WORKERS, UNITED STATES, 1940*

Coefficient of

Years of Age, Region and Contingency Community Type Native

White Negro

United States by Age

18-24 .093 .270 25-44 .113 .051 45-64 .119 .063

Age 25 to 44, by Region and Community Type

Urban North and West ...... . . 097 .082 Urban South ..................... .147 .032 Rural South .................... .134 .024

* Computed from data in Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics, pp. 75, 82, 83, 87, 91-93, 95, 100-103.

TABLE 6. CONTINGENCY BETWEEN OCCUPATION AND

EDUCATION FOR EMPLOYED FEMALES, AGES TWENTY-

FIVE TO FORTY-FOUR, BY REGION, UNITED STATES,

1940*

Native Negro Negro Region WieUnad- Ad-

Wiejusted justed

North and West ....... .. .600 .510 .568 South ... ...... .629 .602 .599

* Computed from data in Educational Attainment by Economic Characteristics, pp. 137-9, 145-6. The method of adjustment is explained on pp. 48-49.

10 The table has not been reproduced here. See foot- note 8.



52 SOCIAL FORCES

chiefly in their possible extension beyond the data utilized here. If education is taken as an index of standard job qualifications in general, the following hypothesis emerges: Within a disadvantaged minority group, the relevance of standard occupational qualifications to socioeconomic status is reduced. If the relation between

educational and socioeconomic status is taken as an index of the type of relationship among other statuses, the following hypothesis emerges: Mem- bers of a disadvantaged minority group tend to be characterized by a lesser average degree of integration among their various statuses than are members of the majority group.

THE USE OF SOCIOLOGY IN AN INDUSTRIAL MEDICAL PROGRAM JANE S. WEEKS

Health Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

T IS fairly well established that the studies at the Hawthorne plant in 1924 spearheaded the move toward industrial sociology.' Arising

at a time when individualism was at its peak, this movement grew slowly, and it was not until the war years that industry and government awakened to the fact that social scientists could supply clues on how to increase production. Industrial sociology has since gained such significance that now one is no more than mildly surprised to find a series of articles dealing with the "social engineer" in the management-aimed Fortune magazine. Likewise, the title "The Use of Sociology in an Industrial Medical Program" should cause little surprise among social scientists.

The British have been active in the field of social medicine long enough to have established chairs for "Social and Industrial Medicine" at most of their universities. Some of the Baltic countries-Sweden, Norway and Denmark-also include social medicine in their curricula. Research in this field has been carried on in Africa, Mexico, and Peru, and there is some interest in Canada. But with the exception of a few statisticians in the larger medical organizations, the United States has produced very little in medical sociology. Perhaps it is prophetic that Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a research laboratory concentrating on the finite possibilities of atomic energy, should also lead in the inauguration of a socio-industrial medical program.

SOCIAL MEDICINE

The importance of social medicine lies in the recognition of the individual as a unit of society,

and not as a self-sufficing organism. Social medicine, as opposed to physical medicine, does not study the component parts of the individual but the person as a whole in relation to the environment. Perhaps it is best defined by W. Hobson, Professor of Social and Industrial Medicine, University of Sheffield, England, who wrote, "[Social medicine is the] study of those factors which affect health and the application of that study to the benefit, not only of the individual, but of the community as a whole."2

Plagues and epidemics long have illustrated the socio-biologic nature of disease, but only in recent years have medical scientists realized the more subtle effects of environment upon the human organism. Job worries, finances, marriage problems, and other fears or inadequacies result in peptic ulcer, headache, hypertension, injury, or emotional upheaval. These illnesses, though seemingly of a non-contagious etiology, may nevertheless have a socially influenced psycho- genesis.

Anthropologists and medical researchers now are aware of the age, sex, race, and time and space distribution of many of the less virulent diseases. Illustrative of this is the recent recognition that there has been a complete sexual reversal in the occurrence of peptic ulcer and diabetes in the Western world since 1900.3 Hypertension, or high blood pressure, takes its greatest toll in the Negro in the United States, Panama, and West Indies, but its occurrence in Africa is rare. Diseases

1 D. C. Miller and W. H. Form, Industrial Sociology (New York: Harper and Bros., 1951), chap. 1.

2 W. Hobson, "Social Medicine and Physical Fitness," British Journal of Physical Medicine, 13 (February 1950), p. 26.

3 J. L. Halliday, Psychosocial Medicine (New York: Norton & Co., 1948), p. 65.



negro job status and education

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