Black like us? The Occupational Integration of Black Immigrants

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

Individual Wage and Employment Disparity

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

The labor market progress of African Americans men and women has been concentrated in the South: 1974–1989 was a period of weekly wage decline for males, especially African Americans. For men and women, racial wage and employment inequality increased consistently during 1974–1989 and 2008–2019.

Restatement and Discussion

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

This manuscript includes a historically complex economic analysis of structural racism and its transformations across alternative periods of US political economic development. Exclusion is a central quality of Black life in the US political economy. During the era of chattel capitalism, Africans were commodities, wholly excluded from ownership of their own life, time, and activities, standing before the law, representation in the political system, or ownership of productive assets. Under chattel capitalism, Africans were not citizens, workers, consumers, or even people; they were commodities, that is, fixed capital inputs into the production process whose utilization and mobility were wholly determined by capitalist agricultural producers. From 1619 to 1865, the wealth produced by African commodities was appropriated by Whites.

The Economics of Structural Racism

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06 · 16 citations

This extensive and comprehensive book tracks persistent racial disparities in the US across multiple regimes of structural racism. It begins with an examination of the economics of racial identity, mechanisms of stratification, and regimes of structural racism. It analyzes trends in racial inequality in education and changes in family structure since the demise of Jim Crow. The book also examines generational trends in income, wealth, and employment for families and individuals, by race, gender, and national region. It explores economic differences among African Americans, by region, ethnicity, nativity, gender, and racial identity. Finally, the book provides a theoretical analysis of structural racism, productivity, and wages, with a special focus on the role of managers and instrumental discrimination inside the firm. The book concludes with an investigation of instrumental discrimination, hate crimes, the criminal legal system, and the impact of mass incarceration on family structure and economic inequality.

Family Income Growth and Inequality

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

The recessions of 1974–1975, 1981–1982, and 2007–2009 were impediments to African American relative and absolute progress after the end of servitude capitalism. In the Non-South, median African American family income stagnated and declined during 1967–2018, and the poverty rate increased during 1967–2018, especially during 1967–1989. Within the South, median African American family income rose during 1967–2018, though median income stagnated during 1974–2000, and the poverty rate declined from 36 percent to 21 percent during 1967–2018, even if there was stagnation during 1974–1989.

African American Educational Progress and Transformations in Family Structure, 1965–Present

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

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RESEARCH NOTE: Citation Bias and the Economics of Race and Crime Literature

The Review of Black Political Economy · 2023-12-06 · 1 citations

This research note investigates citation bias using probabilities of zero citations, total citations, and citations per year since publication from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for all 759 articles on the economics of race and crime as extracted from EconLit for the period 1970–2020 and reported in previous work by Mason et al. Our citation analysis considers two main variables of interest: (a) whether the article was published in the Review of Black Political Economy and (b) whether one or more of an article's authors were Black. We report the results of linear probability models of zero citations and negative binomial models of total citations and citations per year since publication. We also estimate the average marginal effects for publication in the Review of Black Political Economy and Black-authored articles on racism or racial discrimination findings. The results of this research note validate and reconfirm the findings of Mason et al. We find evidence of systematically lower citations of articles published in the Review of Black Political Economy. In addition, we find that articles with Black authors are more likely to include findings of discrimination or racism. Articles published in the Review are also more likely to find racial discrimination, but these journal effects are not always statistically significant at the 5% level. These findings are consistent across citation engines, model specifications, and estimation techniques.

References

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

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Regimes of Racial Stratification

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

Africans were commodities during chattel capitalism, producing that was appropriated by Whites. This was instrumental discrimination: racially differential treatment because it was profitable. Chattel capitalism was ended by government policy, during the US civil war. White control of Black citizenship was the core element of structural racism during servitude capitalism. Instrumental discrimination included convict leasing, debt peonage, sharecropping, and the chain gang: policies that held down black wages and wealth accumulation, reduced public expenditure on services to the African American community, and public infrastructure that transferred wealth from Blacks to Whites. Lynching was used to enforce racial identity norms. Labor market discrimination increased during the Nadir, even as Blacks closed the skills gap with Whites. Black self-help was also expressed in The Great Migration and Urbanization (1914–1965). African American self-help, President Roosevelt’s New Deal, World War II era changes in federal hiring and the utilization of Black troops, and President Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to racialized managerial capitalism. Thereafter, exclusion is expressed as differential socioeconomic opportunities due to racial wealth disparity and identity norms governing access to resources, especially managerial power, along with relatively greater injustice in the criminal legal system and greater exposure to hate crimes.

Transformations in Family Structure

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-04-06

An important change occurred in African American family structure during the era of racialized managerial capitalism: a major increase in the fraction of men and women in the 20s and 30s who were never-married. A fall in marriage-eligible men is a major factor responsible for this change. As per the Darity-Myers index of African American male marginalization, there will be an increase in the fraction of marriage-eligible men (and, therefore, increased marriage) with an increase in their earnings and employment, reducing premature deaths and disability, increasing college enrollment, reducing contact with the criminal legal system and reducing incentives for criminal behavior, and reducing premarital births and dissolution of unions when children are present. This perspective suggests that it is changes in economic well-being that cause changes in family structure, not the reverse. Family functioning is different from family structure. The empirical data suggests that, on average, African American families have strong family functioning.