SOME READJUSTMENTS OF THE NEGRO FAMILY IN 1944 AND 1970.

The article presents a comment of the author on his paper related to some readjustments of the Negro family in 1944 and 1970. The nature of the reconsideration is obviously based upon the changes that have occurred in American race relations since the work was first published. The passage of time has not only allowed for a change of mind, but has compelled it. Therefore, his purpose here is to state succinctly how he viewed Negro family readjustment in the first instance and how he views it now. The advantage that he has in taking this approach is that an occasion for readjustment, as it existed then, also exists now. In 1944, his general concern was with the degree and manner in which an institution accommodates to new circumstances imposed upon it by the external environment in which it is enmeshed. Somehow he had the feeling that the methodological implications of the Spencerian organismic analogy could not be absolutely ignored. He felt that, like forms of organic life, an institution has a vital quality that facilitates its structural rearrangements when faced by an external condition that threatens its internal stability.