A Study Of The Negro Policeman: Book Review

A Study of the Negro Policeman: Book Review

Nicholas Alex, assistant professor of sociology at The City University

of New York, holds a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research and a B.S.

from the Wharton School. He was formerly a research assistant with the Russell

Sage Foundation, an instructor at Adelphi University, and has had working

experience in his academic specialty-the sociology of professions and

occupations-while an industrial engineer in the aircraft industry, later as

business manager of the Walden School. This is his first book.

In this book Alex made an effort to examine the peculiar problems of

Negro policemen who live in an age which has not yet resolved to problem of

inequality in an assertedly democratic society. He drawn heavily on the

reflections of forty-one Negro policemen who made plain to me the difficulties

involved in being black in blue. Alex was concerned with the ways in which the

men were recruited into the police, the nature of their relations in regard to

their immediate clientele, their counterparts, and the rest of society. In the

broadest terms, the book examines the special problems that Negro policemen face

in their efforts to reconcile their race with their work in the present

framework of American values and beliefs.

The research for the study was based on intensive interviews collected

over a period of eleven months, from December 1964 to October 1965. During that

time the author talked with Negro police engaged in different types of police

specialties, and men of different rank and backgrounds. Alex was interested in

preserving their anonymity, and substituted code numbers for names. The

language in which their thoughts were expressed is unchanged.

Most of the interviews were obtained either at the policeman's home or

the authors. Some were held in parks, playgrounds, and luncheonettes. All of

the interviews were open-ended. All the policemen refused to have there

conversations taped. "I know too well what tapes can do to you," said one. "I

can refute what you write down on that pad, but I can't if it's taped. We use

tapes too, you know." The author was dealing with a highly expressive and

literate group of men who thought of the study as a way in which they could make

themselves heard.

This book is organized very well. It consist of eight chapters, and each

chapter is broken into subdivisions. The first chapter talks about the

policemen in the community. Within this chapter mainly describes the police as

and occupation, and states how the policemen's job is uncertain. The second

chapter deals with the recruitment of Negroes for police work.