Conclusion
Wilson’s statement that exploitation in America cannot rely solely on a racial explanation is correct. But the evidence which he presents to write, that race is not significant in job market discrimination, is not adequate. In addition to this, and perhaps more serious, is the conceptual weakness of his argument. His thesis may even be somewhat illogical in its attempt to separate class and race in present day American society. As Blalock has stated earlier: “As long as minority membership remains among the defining criteria of class position it will indeed be difficult to separate the two phenomena emperically”.
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Notes
Nathan Glazer,Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1975).
Edward Banfield,The Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1974).
Thomas Sowell,Race and Economics (New York: David McKay Co., 1975).
Recently theNew York Times devoted a series of articles to an examination of the apparent social and economic gulf between the black poor and black middle class. February 20, 21, 22, 1978.
Two recent studies which present evidence showing this are “Social Indicators of Equality for Minorities and Women—August 1978.”Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and Bradley R. Schiller “Equality, Opportunity, and The Good Job”The Public Interest, Spring 1976. The first study shows that race is still a salient feature of the American economy. It also shows how the gap of inequality between minorities and majority white males is increasing in the areas of housing, income, poverty, education, and job opportunities. In the second study Schiller found that the American economy was characterized by “a very high degree of individual income mobility” between 1957 and 1971. But adds the author, “There are important exceptions to this generalization—the most important of which concerns blacks (and presumably some other minorities as well). Black workers are much less likely to move up the earnings distribution and more likely to fall once they do reach the top of the distribution. As a consequence, black members who were in the labor force in 1957 have achieved virtually no gain in relative economic status since then despite a flurry of legislative and judicial efforts on their behalf. Thus, for blacks, the inequalities observed at any moment tend to be permanent rather than transitory. The conclusion is that there continues to exist signifi-cant stratification of opportunities across racial lines.” And in an earlier study Otis D. Duncan constructed a statistical model which utilized path analysis and multiple regressions to equate various socioeconomic variables for Blacks and whites in order to determine the relative beta weight between poverty and race as factors explaining the black-white income gap. He found that “the correlations and regressions tell us that the (relatively few) Negroes who do have favorable social origins cannot, as readily as whites, convert this advantage into occupational achievement and monetary returns thereto in the course of their own careers. The Negro family, in other words, is relatively less able than the white to pass on to the next generation any advantage that may accrue to substantial status achievement in the present generation. . . . The Negro handicap, therefore, as suggested elsewhere is a double handicap: First, the Negro begins the life cycle (typically) with characteristics that would be a disadvantage to anyone, white or Negro—specifically, in the present model, low levels of parental socio-economic status. Second, achievements at subsequent stages of the life cycle, already lowered by the initial handicap, are further reduced when favorable circumstances (to the extent that they exist) cannot be capitalized on as readily.” See “Inheritance of Poverty or Inheritance of Race?” inOn Understanding Poverty, Daniel P. Moynihan (New York: Basic Books, 1969).
Caroline H. Persell,Education and Inequality (New York: The Free Press, 1976).
For a presentation of this dynamic in education, see Caroline H. Persell’s work. Also see Samuel Bowles, “Getting Nowhere: Programmed Class Stagnation”Society, (June 1972). Related to this Wilson has argued that “access to the means of production is increasingly based on educational criteria (a situation which distinguishes the modern industrial from the earlier industrial system of production)....” But Jencks et al. have presented evidence which tends to question this assumption. If Jencks’s data and analysis are accurate, then the existence of a black middle class may not be due to educational skills as argued say Wilson, but rather a consequence of the dynamic suggested by Persell and others. See Christopher Jencks et al.,On Equality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York: Basic Books, 1972).
See Kenneth Meier, “Representative Bureaucracy: An Analysis”American Political Science Review (June 1975); also, James Long, “Employment Discrimination in the Federal Sector”Journal of Human Resources (Winter 1976).
Herbert Blalock,Towards a Theory of Minority Group Relations (New York: Capricorn Books, 1967).
In addition to this, the basic constitutional framework of the United States may not allow policymakers to adopt class-conscious public policies in some social arenas. This is suggested by the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision,San Antonio Independent School District v.Rodriquez. The Court seems to sanction public policies which ignore the impact they may have on different classes.
Richard Freeman, “Black Economic Progress Since 1964”The Public Interest (Spring 1976).
There is considerable evidence that ethnicity is still an important force in group mobilization in the political arena. The following works present this idea in different ways: Michael Novak,The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnic (New York: Macmillan Co., 1971), Mark Levy and Michael Kramer,The Ethnic Factor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), Raymond Wolfinger,The Politics of Progress (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974), David Greenstone and Paul Peterson,Race and Authority In Urban America (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973). I have argued that the arrival of new immigrant groups such as West Indians, Haitians, Dominicans, and others from South America will revitalize the ethnization of American local politics. SeePuerto Rican Politics In New York City (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1977).
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Jenings, J. The declining significance of race in America. Rev Black Polit Econ 9, 452–459 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02891734
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02891734