Book Reviews and Notices : The Negro in the United States. BY E. FRANKLIN FRAZIER. (New York: The Macmillan Company. 1949. Pp. xxxi, 767. $6.00.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591294900200458
• Author: Leon D. Epstein
• Published date: 01 December 1949
• Date: 01 December 1949
• Subject Matter: Articles

674
The chapter on public opinion polls is a little thin for the purpose
of giving the student a better understanding of the meaning of polling
public opinion in matters of elections. The authors seem to miss the one
fallacy of polls for determining election results. The sample is necessarily
of the general public, whereas elections are decided by those who vote.
Perhaps the results of the 1948 election polls were right concerning the
opinion of the general public (if such a thing there is), but everyone
is fully acquainted with the wrongness of the predictions in terms of ac-
tual ballots counted on election night. Statistically, sampling can be scien-
tifically proved to be an accurate determination of the opinion of the uni-
verse from which the sample was taken -
accurate, that is, within limits
of tolerance which do not affect the general conclusions of the study.
All one has to be sure of is that the sample is taken from the universe
being studied, the one that is to determine the final result. Because no
one knows before election day who the actual voters will be, no one can
take a scientific sample of them. The best that can be hoped for is a sam-
ple of the potential voters.
&dquo;The approach to the subject is the historical, the using of examples
of what has happened to explain and to formulate the rules of the game.
ELLSWORTH E. WEAVER.
University of Utah.
The Negro in the United States. BY E. FRANKLIN FRAZIER. (New York:
The Macmillan Company. 1949. Pp. xxxi, 767. $6.00.)
It is no small tribute to a new general work on the Negro to say that
it contributes additional information and insight to that already afforded
by Gunnar Myrdal’s monumental An American Dilemma. Actually
Dr. Frazier makes a very substantial contribution to an understanding of
the role of the Negro in American society. The author, who is a dis-
tinguished American scholar and the head of the sociology department
at Howard University, has not, like Myrdal, taken as his basic...