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APPENDIX 2
A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE ON FACTS AND
VALUATIONS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
I. Biases in the Research on the American Negro Problem
The biases in popular beliefs about social reality and the deeper conflicts of
valuations rationalized by these popular theories can be made apparent through com-
parison with “objective” truth as this is revealed by scientific research.*^ But the
scientist himself is not necessarily immune to biases. In the light of the history of
scientific writings on the American Negro problem, the biased notions held in
previous times and the opportunistic tendencies steering them stand out in high
relief against the better controlled scientific views of today. Our steadily increasing
stock of observations and inferences is not merely subjected to continuous cross-
checking and critical discussion but is deliberately scrutinized to discover and correct
hidden preconceptions and biases. Full objectivity, however, is an ideal toward which
we are constantly striving, but which we can never reach. The social scientist, too,
is part of the culture in which he lives, and he never succeeds in freeing himself
entirely from dependence on the dominant preconceptions and biases of his environ-
ment.
Race problems, generally, and the Negro problem in America, particularly, are
to an extraordinary degree affected by conflicting valuations of high emotional tension.
Keeping in mind the actual power situation in the American nation and observing
the prevalent opinions in the dominant white group, we are led, even by a
superficial examination, to expect that even the scientific biases will run against the
Negroes most of the time. This expectation has been confirmed in the course of
our study
The underlying psychology of bias in science is simple. Every individual student
is himself more or less entangled, both as a private person and as a responsible citizen,
in the web of conflicting valuations, which we discussed in Appendix i. Like the
layman, though probably to a lesser extent, the scientist becomes influenced by the
need for rationali2:ation8. The same is true of every executive responsible for other
people’s research and of the popular and scientific public before which the scholar
performs, and whose reactions he must respect. Against the most honest determination
•See Appendix i, Section i.
**The fact that most of the literature on the Negro problem is biased one way or the
other is commonly understood in America and often stated; see, for example, E. B. Reuter,
The American Race Problem (19385 first edition, 1927), pp. 17 and 275 John Dollard,
Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1937), pp. 33-41.
.*03S
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