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During the pre–civil rights era, women, blacks, and immigrants were uniformly subjected to oppressive conditions so that class differences within each of these groups were of minor importance. Civil rights legislation aided white women and black college graduates to gain entry to managerial and professional occupations. This legislation, however, has not been as helpful for white women and blacks with anything less than a college degree. As a result, there has been growing income inequality among workers in these two groups. In contrast, during the most recent economic expansion, income inequality among white men has declined.
The efforts of white men themselves contribute to the fact that discrimination has been most persistent in blue-collar occupations. In the better-paying jobs, including the construction and the building trades, white men have been active initiators of discriminatory policies rather than pawns manipulated by capitalists. A wide spectrum of leftists, including Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy and Ray Franklin and Solomon Resnik, have argued, even when capitalists have no personal animus toward women or nonwhites, racist and sexist labor market policies persist because of their inability to change the behavior of supervisory personnel.15 These lower levels of management are often populated by white men imbued with racist and patriarchal values that distort their judgments on the capabilities of individual workers. However, even when these managers are able to focus on corporate profitability, they must take into account the potential hostility of white male line workers to female and nonwhite workers. Often these managers conclude that the disruption to the production process that integrating their work force might cause would be more costly than any benefits from hiring qualified black or female workers. The privileged position of white male workers in the job queue is further enhanced by the widespread hiring procedure of relying on the recommendations from current employees when job openings occur.
Discriminatory hiring practices often put blacks at the end of the hiring queue. When the number of job seekers is greater than the number of jobs available, black workers will be disproportionately unemployed. In some parts of the country, where employment trends have created a surplus of noncollege graduates, racial queuing has created a large racial employment gap. This is most apparent in the Midwest where a substantial amount of blue-collar jobs were lost, particularly in the automobile and steel industries. Typical of the region is Illinois where, in 1995, 75.2 percent of all white men over sixteen years old were employed while the black male employment rate was only 56.6 percent.16 Despite these disparities, the severe employment difficulties experienced by adult black men can be substantially overcome if the economy runs tight labor markets. When national unemployment rates fell below 5 percent, employers could no longer indulge their own racist and sexist attitudes or those of their white male workers. Due to labor shortages, firms were forced to hire welfare recipients and lesseducated black men from poor neighborhoods. As a result, the black unemployment rate fell from 10.2 to 7.2 percent between 1997 and March 2000. Tight labor markets have also enabled low-wage workers to experience real earnings growth for the first time in over two decades. Between 1986 and 1996, the typical low-wage worker saw the purchasing power of hourly earnings drop more than 6 percent— from $7.11 to $6.66 when measured in 1998 dollars. By the spring of 1999, however, wage growth raised hourly wages to $7.19.
Tight labor markets alone, however, will not eliminate black employment problems. A substantial reason for the decline in the unemployment rate of black men has been their decision to abandon active job searches, leaving them uncounted as part of the active labor force, and hence not included in official unemployment statistics. As will be documented more fully later, the 1997 unemployment rate of adult black men, aged twenty to sixty-four years old, would have been as high as 18 percent if adjustments were made for these labor force withdrawals. This indicates that discriminatory practices are widespread and that vigorous enforcement and expansion of affirmative action in blue-collar occupations is quite necessary.17
Unfortunately, there has been little effort to correct race and gender inequality outside of professional labor markets. According to conservatives, a culture of poverty has created dysfunctional behavioral traits among a large share of black youths, making them unemployable. Additionally, conservatives contend that women are often more motivated by familial goals of marriage and motherhood than by their careers. As a result, many choose occupations which complement their personal lives even though these choices have limited earnings potential. While not embracing these stereotypes, liberals also ignore race and gender inequities within blue-collar occupations. While admitting that these inequities exist, for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, any focus on the plight of the working poor and lower middle class would be difficult to accept. “It would constitute an implicit confession that Democrats are paying less attention to the nonworking poor.”18
This unwillingness of liberals to confront discrimination in workingclass occupations was most evident in the 1980s, when feminists were focusing on pay-equity issues. They found that invariably those job categories that were male dominated were assigned a higher pay scale within corporations than those that were female dominated. Feminists documented that these pay-scale patterns persisted even when companies determined that the skill requirements and job responsibilities in the male-dominated job categories were the same as in the femaledominated job categories. In response, feminists mobilized and united around demands for the government to institute comparable work regulations that would force corporations to pay female and male workers equally if they were found to have comparable skills and responsibilities. Similar policies had been successfully implemented in Australia and Canada, but, unfortunately, after some initial success, the U.S. comparable-worth movement died because liberals where unwilling to support it.19
Even among some left-leaning critics of unregulated capitalism, there has been a reluctance to focus on the plight of blue-collar black and female workers who have stable employment but, due to discriminatory practices, earn less than their male counterparts. Instead of highlighting the general injustices these workers face, these critics have emphasized the maltreatment of a subsection of this labor force: immigrant workers who are employed in the most unstable and unsafe jobs. In August 1997, newspapers reported an example of the inhumanity experienced by workers on the periphery of the labor market when the government freed thirty deaf Mexican women who had been working in virtual slavery in New York City. This story complemented a growing literature on the abuse of illegal workers.
These examples provide a strong moral indictment of capitalism: the ability of the powerful to exploit the powerless. Critics often use them as a springboard to make generalizations concerning the indifference of capitalist societies to basic human needs. How can a capitalist society call itself humane, they argue, when it allows millions of children to grow up in poverty with deficient housing, medical care, and/or sustenance? These critics claim that capitalism may work in a nondiscriminatory manner for those who can fully participate in the system, but those who cannot are treated horribly.
Capitalism is culpable for much inhumanity visited on the defenseless. However, this is an overly pessimistic viewpoint that understates the willingness and capacity of the capitalist system to absorb those who are on the margins. Since the middle of 1997, the national unemployment rate has remained below 5 percent, the best the economy has done in a generation. In many regions the unemployment rate became so low that employers had to recruit individuals from outside their local labor markets to meet demands. After an initial reluctance to hire welfare recipients, firms realized that many of their stereotypical fears were unfounded. Some companies are even focusing on employment possibilities for prisoners.
Social critics often fail to fully analyze the impact of capitalism on those who are initially on the periphery of the economy. It may be that capitalism is liberating them from even worse alternatives. Moreover, it is possible that many workers are employed temporarily by firms which offer unfair wages and unsafe working conditions. Once they’ve gained experience, workers may be able to find better jobs. In addition the most exploitative companies, because of their small size and outdated technology, may be driven out of business by the forces of competition, enabling capitalism to cleanse itself of these reprehensible employment situations. Finally, benefits often accrue to consumers not corporate shareholders. For these reasons, the plight of exploited workers is complicated and an unqualified condemnation of their employers and/or the capitalist system may be misguided. Most important, focusing on workers on the periphery can deflect much-needed attention away from the continued discrimination experienced by the vast majority of black and female workers without a college degree, especially when political and legislative battles must be prioritized.
Another example of how critics of unregulated markets have placed working-class disparities on the back burner is their decision to make the defense of special admissions programs a priority. These programs have increased the access of blacks and white women to elite U.S. universities, postgraduate professional schools, and corporate boardrooms. Nationally, there has been significant mobilization against the ending of race-based affirmative action at the University of California’s elite Berkeley campus but silence about the many years of reduced funding of the state’s university system that educates the majority of blacks and other students. Downplaying K–12 education and the inadequacies of working-class colleges, the focus remains on giving a select few a break at elite institutions.20
In defense of these efforts, Robin Kelley rejects any notion that middle-class blacks no longer are victimized by racism: While corporate boardrooms and the halls of government might appear more integrated, racism continues to cut across class lines. From Texaco to Denny’s, from the New Jersey Turnpike to the groves of academe, middle-class blacks face discrimination every day. We constantly hear stories of so-called minorities and women experiencing glass ceilings in the world of business, of talented black professionals second-guessed because of affirmative action, of black executives having to endure racial slurs at work or harassment from those who police the exclusive clubs of the bourgeoisie.21
Kelley has contempt for those who oppose continuing emphasis on the remaining discrimination faced by the black elite. He believes that they ignore the continued power of white-skin privilege and wrongly presume that race and class are in competition.22 Kelley’s arguments would support set-aside programs that allocate a specified percentage of government contracts to businesses owned by underrepresented groups. Interestingly, set-aside policies originated with President Richard Nixon, who wished to promote black capitalism as a solution to inner-city problems. These policies are quite problematic, however, not only because they are subject to abuse and institutionalize racial preferences, but also because they have had little impact on the growth of black business ownership.