Reflections on the New Black Sociology: The Cost of Improper Preoccupations in Theorizing.

As a result of the emphasis given to the "black perspective" since the late 1960s, there has been a proliferation of research and writing on the black experience by black social scientists. However, a coherent and integrated body of knowledge on the nature of the black experience has yet to be established. There has been no attempt to develop a cumulative body of knowledge that would clearly establish the direction for a new black sociology. Until black social scientists begin to shift their attention and energies from the relabeling of words and the use of imprecisely defined and non-operationalized concepts, they will reinforce the non-cumulative path which presently characterizes their efforts. Avant garde black social scientists must test and verify propositions. It is their task to convert those elements of reality with which blacks are concerned into intellectually insightful propositions. It is the resulting "unified body of verified principles" that will lead to a black radical paradigm of American society with appropriate and pro-black models and theories of black life and culture. (Author/RLV)