Black Children, Cottle's Dreams

THE DIALOGUE IN Thomas J. Cottle's new book, Black Children, White Dreams often reads like a script from the television show Room 222. The scenes depicted are not unrealistic, but the sugar-sweet conversation which the author continuously passes off as the "native tongue" of two 11-year-old ghetto children is very annoying. Cottle--a sociologist and psychotherapist from MIT--says in his introduction that his intention is to observe and describe the children because he believes in having their words heard by those who live in other parts of America. Although he "constantly fears the predisposition to overromanticize" the children's conversation, he claims he avoids this pitfall by paying close attention to what they say, do and feel.

But Cottle did not use a tape recorder or take notes when he spoke with the children. So his professed awareness only reinforces one's doubts that much of his "verbatim" recollection of extended narratives accurately captures the children's voices. Much of the talk is just too smooth, subtle and script-like. Eleven year-olds can be very insightful (as Cottle concludes), but it is still hard to imagine many of them launching into a cogent polemic such as:

You know what they do, the mayors and those people? They say the cities are dying. Then they go and ask the main government in Washington for money. So they get the money and what do they do? They fix up the cities where they live, not where we live. Any minute we can get a letter that says we have to move too. So we'd have to go. Maybe to a project or to some other place. That's what you call urban renewal. I think it's a crime what they do to families. It's like murder. I couldn't believe it, but when I tried to think what I might do if they made us move like that, it made sense to me. I think I'd go crazy too if they did it to us.

Cottle spent long hours over a year's time "rapping" with the two children from Roxbury about their perceptions of their lives, families, social environment, and political milieu. He developed a very close relationship with his subjects and their families and the compassion that he felt is evident in his descriptions. Yet, Cottle strangely insists that he didn't want to allow strong friendship to develop between himself and his subjects. He claims that he realizes his study is by nature subjective, and therefore only "encounters people, listens to them speak about what matters to them, hears the attitudes and opinions they only naturally cultivate, and then records what they say."

Cottle thus completely ignores that element which could have atoned for his unconvincing recollection of what the children did say: An analysis and exploration of the "white dreams" that place these poor black children in the roles they must assume and rule their expectations. The book sadly lacks any effort to define and remedy the injustice which the children talk about and which Cottle feels. Certainly after such extensive contacts with these children and their families, Cottle must be able to offer many insights into their lives and their outlooks which simply cannot come out in their own words.

Cottle's decision to play tape recorder--and a faulty one at that--is a serious violation of the burden which rests upon the social scientist. Poor people of this country do not need scientists who only wish to study and profit from them, but writers and concerned individuals willing to understand and support them as well. Cottle says he wrote Black Children, White Dreams with the hope that it would "in some way make a difference." Unfortunately, that difference will be in Cottle's lifestyle and not that of the poor.