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This issue of Psychiatry is devoted exclusively to a consideration of changes in the attitudes and behavior of black Americans in recent times. A number of interesting and useful concepts are elaborated; for example, that blacks are interested in making the political system more responsive to their needs, in contrast to the white college population which would revolutionize the existing political system. All the contributions are by white authors, more or less youthful,
and the tone throughout is: look what we (you?) bad guys have done. The findings rest entirely on one-shot responses to questionnaire items such as, 'How well do you think the Black Muslims are doing?', with the researcher and reader left to guess what the response means. Researcher biases are unmentioned.
There is disappointingly little in this issue that relates to psychiatry regarding either content or methodology. If this is because the authors/editors believe nothing is known from such a vantage point, their efforts might have been spent looking into that. As it is, they have produced a 'social issues' work of some merit for general reading.