Industrialization and Dominant-Minority Relations · slavery. Industrialization’s impact on other minority groups will be considered in the case studies presented in Part III. The

72

One theme stated at the beginning ofChapter 3 was that a society’s subsis-tence technology profoundly affects

the nature of dominant-minority group rela-tions. A corollary of this theme, explored inthis chapter, is that dominant-minority grouprelations change as the subsistence technologychanges. As we saw in Chapter 3, agrariantechnology and the concern for control of landand labor profoundly shaped dominant-minority relations in the formative years of theUnited States. The agrarian era ended in the1800s, and since that time, the United Stateshas experienced two major transformations insubsistence technology, each of which has, in

turn, transformed the relationships betweenthe dominant group and minority groups.

The first transformation began in the early1800s as American society began to experi-ence the effects of the industrial revolution, orthe shift from agrarian technology tomachine-based, manufacturing technology. Inthe agrarian era, as we saw in Chapter 3,work was labor intensive: done by hand orwith the aid of draft animals. As industrializa-tion proceeded, work became capital intensiveas machines replaced people and animals.

The new industrial technology rapidlyincreased productivity and efficiency andquickly began to change every aspect of U.S.

4Industrialization andDominant-Minority RelationsFrom Slavery to Segregation andthe Coming of Postindustrial Society

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society, including the nature of work, politics,communication, transportation, family life,birth rates and death rates, the system of edu-cation, and, of course, dominant-minorityrelations. The groups that had become minori-ties during the agrarian era (AfricanAmericans, Native Americans, and MexicanAmericans) faced new possibilities and newdangers. Industrialization also created newminority groups, new forms of exploitationand oppression, and, for some, new opportu-nities to rise in the social structure and succeedin America. In this chapter, we will explorethis transformation in general terms and illus-trate its effects by analyzing the changing sta-tus of African Americans after the abolition ofslavery. Industrialization’s impact on otherminority groups will be considered in the casestudies presented in Part III.

The second transformation in subsistencetechnology brings us to more recent times.Industrialization is a continuous process, andbeginning in the mid-20th century, the UnitedStates entered a stage of late industrialization(also called deindustrialization or the postin-dustrial era). This shift in subsistence technol-ogy is marked by a decline in themanufacturing sector of the economy and adecrease in the supply of blue-collar, manuallabor jobs. At the same time, there was anexpansion in the service and information-based sectors of the economy and an increasein the proportion of white-collar and “high-tech” jobs. Like the 19th-century industrialrevolution, these 20th-century changes haveprofound implications not only for dominant-minority relations but for every aspect of mod-ern society. Work, family, politics, popularculture, and thousands of other characteristicsof American society are being transformed asthe subsistence technology continues todevelop and modernize. In the latter part ofthis chapter, we examine this most recenttransformation in general terms and point outsome of its implications for minority groups.We also present some new concepts and estab-lish some important groundwork for the casestudies in Part III, in which the effects of lateindustrialization on America’s minority groupswill be considered in detail.

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THESHIFT FROM PATERNALISTIC TORIGID COMPETITIVE GROUPRELATIONS

The industrial revolution began in England inthe mid-1700s and spread from there to therest of Europe, to the United States, and even-tually to the rest of the world. The key innova-tions associated with the industrial revolutionwere the application of machine power to pro-duction and the harnessing of inanimatesources of energy, such as steam and coal, tofuel the machines (Nolan & Lenski, 1999). Asmachines replaced humans and animals, workbecame many times more productive, the econ-omy grew, and the volume and variety ofgoods produced increased dramatically.

As the industrial economy grew, the close,paternalistic control of minority groupsfound in agrarian societies gradually becameirrelevant. Paternalistic relationships such asslavery are found in societies with labor-intensive technologies and are designed toorganize and control a large, involuntary,geographically immobile labor force. Anindustrial economy, in contrast, requires aworkforce that is geographically and sociallymobile, skilled, and literate. Furthermore,with industrialization comes urbanization,and close, paternalistic controls are difficultto maintain in a city.

Thus, as industrialization progresses, agrar-ian paternalism tends to give way to rigid com-petitive group relations. Under this system,minority group members are free to competefor jobs and other valued commodities withdominant group members, especially the lower-class segments of the dominant group. As com-petition increases, the threatened members ofthe dominant group become more hostile, andattacks on the minority groups tend to increase.Whereas paternalistic systems seek to directlydominate and control the minority group (andits labor), rigid competitive systems are moredefensive in nature. The threatened segments ofthe dominant group seek to minimize or elimi-nate minority group encroachment on jobs,housing, or other valuable goods or services(van den Berghe, 1967; Wilson, 1973).

Industrialization and Dominant-Minority Relations 73


Paternalistic systems such as slaveryrequired members of the minority group tobe active, if involuntary, participants. In rigidcompetitive systems, the dominant groupseeks to preserve its advantage by handicap-ping the minority group’s ability to competeeffectively or, in some cases, by eliminatingcompetition from the minority group alto-gether. For example, in a rigid competitivesystem, the dominant group might make theminority group politically powerless bydepriving it of (or never granting it) the rightto vote. The lower the power of the minoritygroup, the lower the threat to the interests ofthe dominant group.

THE IMPACT OFINDUSTRIALIZATION ONAFRICAN AMERICANS: FROMSLAVERY TO SEGREGATION

Industrial technology began to transformAmerican society in the early 1800s, but itseffects were not felt equally in all regions.The northern states industrialized first, whilethe South remained primarily agrarian. Thiseconomic diversity was one of the underlyingcauses of the regional conflict that led to theCivil War. Because of its more productivetechnology, the North had more resourcesand, in a bloody war of attrition, was able todefeat the Confederacy. Slavery was abol-ished, and black-white relations in the Southentered a new era when the Civil War endedin April of 1865.

The southern system of race relations thatultimately emerged after the Civil War wasdesigned in part to continue the control ofblack labor institutionalized under slavery. Italso was intended to eliminate any political oreconomic threat from the black community.This rigid competitive system grew to behighly elaborate and repressive, partly becauseof the high racial visibility and long history ofinferior status and powerlessness of AfricanAmericans in the South and partly because ofthe particular needs of southern agriculture. Inthis section, we look at black-white relationsfrom the end of the Civil War through theascendancy of segregation in the South and

the mass migration of African Americans tothe cities of the industrializing North.

Reconstruction

The period of Reconstruction, from 1865to the 1880s, was a brief respite in the longhistory of oppression and exploitation ofAfrican Americans. The Union army andother agencies of the federal governmentsuch as the Freedman’s Bureau were used toenforce racial freedom in the defeatedConfederacy. Black Southerners tookadvantage of the 15th Amendment to theConstitution, passed in 1870, which statesthat the right to vote cannot be denied on thegrounds of “race, color, or previous condi-tion of servitude.” They registered to vote inlarge numbers and turned out on electiondays, and some were elected to high politicaloffice. Schools for the former slaves wereopened, and African Americans purchasedland and houses and founded businesses.

The era of freedom was short, however,and Reconstruction began to end when thefederal government demobilized its armies ofoccupation and turned its attention to othermatters. By the 1880s, the federal govern-ment had withdrawn from the South,Reconstruction was over, and blackSoutherners began to fall rapidly into a newsystem of exploitation and inequality.

Reconstruction was too brief to changetwo of the most important legacies of slavery.First, the centuries of bondage left black South-erners impoverished, largely illiterate anduneducated, and with few power resources.When new threats of racial oppressionappeared, African Americans found it diffi-cult to defend their group interests.

These developments are, of course, highlyconsistent with the Blauner hypothesis.Because colonized minority groups confrontgreater inequalities and have fewer resourcesat their disposal, they will face greater difficul-ties in improving their disadvantaged status.

Second, slavery left a strong tradition ofracism in the white community. Anti-blackprejudice and racism originated as rationaliza-tions for slavery but had taken on lives of their

EVOLUTION OF DOMINANT-MINORITY RELATIONS IN THE U.S.74


own over the generations. After two centuriesof slavery, the heritage of prejudice and racismwas thoroughly ingrained in southern culture.White Southerners were predisposed by thiscultural legacy to see racial inequality andexploitation of African Americans as normaland desirable, and after Reconstruction endedand the federal government withdrew, theywere able to act on these assumptions.

De Jure Segregation

The system of race relations that replacedslavery in the South was de jure segregation,sometimes referred to as the Jim Crow sys-tem. Under segregation, the minority groupis physically and socially separated from thedominant group and consigned to an inferiorposition in virtually every area of social life.The phrase de jure (“by law”) means that thesystem is sanctioned and reinforced by thelegal code. In other words, the inferior statusof African Americans actually was mandatedor required by state and local laws. Forexample, southern cities passed laws requir-ing blacks to ride in the back of vehicles usedfor public transportation (horse-drawn streetcars at first, buses later). If an AfricanAmerican refused to comply with this seatingarrangement, he or she could be arrested.

De jure segregation came to encompass allaspects of southern life. Neighborhoods, jobs,stores, restaurants, and parks were segregated.When new social forms, such as movie the-aters, sports stadiums, and interstate busesappeared in the South, they were quicklysegregated.

The logic of segregation created anothervicious cycle (see Exhibits 1.3 and 3.3). Themore African Americans were excluded fromthe mainstream of society, the greater becametheir abject poverty and powerlessness. Themore inferior their status, the easier it was tomandate even more inequality. High levels ofinequality reinforced racial prejudice andmade it easy to use racism to justify furtherseparation. The system kept turning on itself,finding new social niches to segregate andreinforcing the inequality that was its startingpoint. For example, at the height of the Jim

Crow era in the mid-20th century, the systemhad evolved to the point that some court-rooms maintained separate bibles for blackwitnesses to swear on. Also, in Birmingham,Alabama, it was against the law for blacks andwhites to play checkers and dominoestogether (Woodward, 1974, p. 118).

What were the causes of this massive sep-aration of the races? Once again, the con-cepts of the Noel hypothesis prove useful.Because strong anti-black prejudice alreadyexisted when segregation began, we don’tneed to account for ethnocentrism. The post-Reconstruction competition between theracial groups was reminiscent of the originsof slavery in that black Southerners hadsomething that white Southerners wanted:labor. In addition, a free black electoratethreatened the political and economic domi-nance of the elite segments of the white com-munity. Finally, after the withdrawal offederal troops and the end of Reconstruction,white Southerners had sufficient powerresources to end the competition on theirown terms and construct repressive systemsof control over black Southerners.

The Origins of Jim Crow

Although the South lost the Civil War, itsbasic class structure and agrarian economyremained intact. The plantation elite, withtheir huge tracts of land, remained the dom-inant class, and cotton remained the primarycash crop. As was the case before the CivilWar, the landowners needed a workforce tofarm the land. Because of the depredationsand economic disruptions of the war, the oldplantation elite were short on cash and liquidcapital. Hiring workers on a wage systemwas not feasible for them. In fact, almost assoon as the war ended, southern legislaturesattempted to force African Americans backinto involuntary servitude by passing a seriesof laws known as the Black Codes. Only thebeginning of Reconstruction and the activeintervention of the federal government haltedthe implementation of this legislation(Geschwender, 1978, p. 158; Wilson, 1973,p. 99).



The plantation elite solved their manpowerproblem this time by developing a system ofsharecropping, or tenant farming. The share-croppers worked the land, which was ownedby the planters, in return for payment inshares of the profit when the crop was takento market. The landowner would supply aplace to live, along with food and clothing,on credit. After the harvest, tenant andlandowner would split the profits (sometimesvery unequally), and the tenant’s debtswould be deducted from his share. Theaccounts were kept by the landowner. Blacksharecroppers lacked political and civil rightsand found it difficult to keep unscrupulouswhite landowners honest. The landownercould inflate the indebtedness of the share-cropper and claim that he was still owedmoney even after profits had been split.Under this system, sharecroppers had fewopportunities to improve their situation andcould be bound to the land until their “debt”was paid off (Geschwender, 1978, p. 163).

By 1910, more than half of all employedAfrican Americans worked in agriculture, andmore than half of the remainder (25% ofthe total) worked in domestic occupationssuch as maid and janitor (Geschwender, 1978,p. 169). The manpower shortage in southernagriculture was solved, and the AfricanAmerican community once again found itselfin a subservient status. At the same time, thewhite southern working class was protectedfrom direct job competition with AfricanAmericans. As the South began to industrial-ize, white workers were able to monopolizethe better-paying jobs. With a combination ofdirect discrimination by whites-only laborunions and strong anti-black laws and cus-toms, white workers erected barriers thatexcluded black workers and reserved thebetter industrial jobs in cities and mill townsfor themselves. White workers took advantageof the new jobs brought by industrialization,while black Southerners remained a ruralpeasantry, excluded from participation in thisprocess of modernization.

In some sectors of the changing southerneconomy, the status of African Americansactually fell lower than it had been during

slavery. For example, in 1865, 83% of theartisans in the South were African Americans;by 1900, this percentage had fallen to 5%(Geschwender, 1978, p. 170). By the earlyyears of the 20th century, the Jim Crow sys-tem of legally sanctioned segregation con-fined African Americans to the agrarian anddomestic sectors of the labor force, deniedthem the opportunity for a decent education,and excluded them from politics. The systemwas reinforced by still more laws and customsthat drastically limited the options and lifecourses available to black Southerners.

A final force behind the creation of de juresegregation was more political than economic.As the 19th century drew to a close, a wave ofagrarian radicalism known as populism spreadacross the country. This anti-elitist movementwas a reaction to changes in agriculture causedby industrialization. The movement attemptedto unite poor whites and blacks in the ruralSouth against the traditional elite classes. Theeconomic elite was frightened by the possibilityof a loss of power, and it split the incipientcoalition between poor whites and blacks byfanning the flames of racial hatred. The strat-egy of “divide and conquer” proved to beeffective (as it often has both before and sincethat time), and states throughout the Southeliminated the possibility of future threats bydepriving African Americans of the right tovote (Woodward, 1974).

The disenfranchisement of the black com-munity was accomplished by measures suchas literacy tests, poll taxes, and propertyrequirements. The literacy tests were officiallyjustified as promoting a better-informed elec-torate but were shamelessly rigged to favorwhite voters. The requirement that voters paya tax or prove ownership of a certain amountof property could also disenfranchise poorwhites, but again, the implementation ofthese policies was racially biased.

The policies were extremely effective, andby the early 20th century, the southern blackcommunity was virtually powerless politically.For example, as late as 1896 in Louisiana,there had been more than 100,000 registeredblack voters, and black voters were a majorityin 26 parishes (counties). In 1898, the state



adopted a new constitution containing stiffeducational and property requirements for vot-ing unless the voter’s father or grandfather hadbeen eligible to vote as of January 1, 1867. Atthat time, the 14th and 15th Amendments,which guaranteed suffrage for black males,had not yet been passed. Such “grandfatherclauses” made it easy for white males to regis-ter while disenfranchising blacks. By 1900,only about 5,000 African Americans were reg-istered to vote in Louisiana, and black voterswere not a majority in any parish. A similardecline occurred in Alabama, where an elec-torate of more than 180,000 black males wasreduced to 3,000 by a provision within thenew state constitution. This story repeateditself throughout the South, and black politicalpowerlessness had become a reality by 1905(Franklin & Moss, 1994, p. 261).

This system of legally mandated racial priv-ilege was approved by the U.S. SupremeCourt, which ruled in the case of Plessy v.Ferguson (1896) that it was constitutional forstates to require separate facilities (schools,parks, etc.) for African Americans as long asthe separate facilities were fully equal. Thesouthern states paid close attention to separatebut ignored equal.

Reinforcing the System

Under de jure segregation, as under slavery,the subordination of the African Americancommunity was reinforced and supplementedby an elaborate system of racial etiquette.Everyday interactions between blacks andwhites proceeded according to highly stylizedand rigidly followed codes of conduct intendedto underscore the inferior status of the AfricanAmerican community. Whites were addressedas “Mister” or “Ma’am,” whereas blacks werecalled by their first names or perhaps by anhonorific title such as Aunt, Uncle, orProfessor. Blacks were expected to assume ahumble and deferential manner, remove theirhats, cast their eyes downward, and enact therole of the subordinate in all interactions withwhites. If an African American had reason tocall on anyone in the white community, he orshe was expected to go to the back door.

These expectations and “good manners”for black Southerners were systematicallyenforced. Anyone who ignored them ran therisk of reprisal, physical attacks, and evendeath by lynching. During the decades inwhich the Jim Crow system was imposed,there were thousands of lynchings in theSouth. From 1884 until the end of the 19thcentury, lynchings averaged almost one everyother day (Franklin & Moss, 1994, p. 312).The bulk of this violent terrorism was racialand intended to reinforce the system of racialadvantage or punish real or imagined trans-gressors. In addition, various secret organiza-tions, such as the Ku Klux Klan, engaged interrorist attacks against the African Americancommunity and anyone else who failed toconform to the dictates of the system.

Increases in Prejudice and Racism

As the system of racial advantage formedand solidified, levels of prejudice and racismincreased (Wilson, 1973, p. 101). The new sys-tem needed justification and rationalization,just as slavery did, and anti-black sentiment,stereotypes, and ideologies of racial inferioritygrew stronger. At the start of the 20th century,American society in general—not just theSouth—was highly racist and intolerant. Thisspirit of rejection and scorn for all out-groupscoalesced with the need for justification of theJim Crow system and created an especiallynegative brand of racism in the South.

THE “GREAT MIGRATION”

Although African Americans lacked thepower resources to withstand the resurrectionof southern racism and oppression, they didhave one option that had not been availableunder slavery: freedom of movement. AfricanAmericans were no longer legally tied to a spe-cific master or to a certain plot of land, and inthe early 20th century, a massive populationmovement out of the South began. Slowly atfirst, African Americans began to move toother regions of the nation and from the coun-tryside to the city. The movement increasedwhen hard times hit southern agriculture and



slowed down during better times. It has beensaid that African Americans voted againstsouthern segregation with their feet.

As Exhibit 4.1 shows, an urban blackpopulation living outside the South is a 20th-century phenomenon. A slight majority ofAfrican Americans continue to live in theSouth, but the group is more evenly dis-tributed across the nation and much moreurbanized than a century ago. The signifi-cance of this population redistribution ismanifold. Most important, perhaps, is thefact that by moving out of the South andfrom rural to urban areas, African Americansmoved from areas of great resistance to racialchange to areas of lower resistance. In thenorthern cities, for example, it was far easierto register and to vote. Black political powerbegan to grow and eventually provided manyof the crucial resources that fueled the CivilRights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Life in the North

What did African American migrants findwhen they got to the industrializing cities ofthe North? There is no doubt that life in theNorth was better for the vast majority ofblack migrants. The growing northern blackcommunities relished the absence of Jim Crowlaws and oppressive racial etiquette, the rela-tive freedom to pursue jobs, and the greater

opportunities to educate their children.Inevitably, however, life in the North fell shortof utopia. Many aspects of African Americanculture—literature, poetry, music—flourishedin the heady new atmosphere of freedom, buton other fronts, Northern black communitiesfaced discrimination in housing, schools, andthe job market. Along with freedom and suchcultural flowerings as the Harlem Renaissancecame the first black ghettoes and new forms ofoppression that, although different from andsubtler than those of the South, were still dev-astating in their impact.

CompetitionWith White Ethnic Groups

It is useful to see this population movementof African Americans in terms of their relation-ship with other groups. Southern blacks beganto migrate to the North at about the same timethat a huge, century-long wave of immigrationfrom Europe came to an end. By the time sub-stantial numbers of black Southerners beganarriving in the North, European immigrantsand their descendants had had decades andgenerations to establish themselves in the jobmarkets, political systems, labor unions, andneighborhoods of the North. Many of theEuropean ethnic groups also had been the vic-tims of discrimination and rejection in America,and their hold on economic security and status


Exhibit 4.1 Population Characteristics of African Americans (percentages)

Regional Distribution Percentage Urban

North North UnitedSouth East Central West States South Non-South

1890 90 4 6 <1 20 15 621920 85 7 8 <1 34 25 851940 77 11 11 1 50 36 891960 60 16 18 6 73 58 951990 53 19 19 9 84 NA NA2000 55 18 19 9 82 NA NA

SOURCE: 1890–1960: Geschwender (1978, p. 173); 1990 (Regional Distribution): U.S. Bureau of the Census(1997, p. 31); 1990 (urbanization): O’Hare, Pollard, Mann, & Kent (1991, p. 9); 2000 (Regional Distribution):U.S. Bureau of the Census (2002, p. 24); 1990 (Urbanization): U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000q).


was tenuous for much of the 20th century.They saw the newly arriving black migrants asa threat to their status, a perception that wasreinforced by the fact that industrialists and fac-tory owners often used blacks as strikebreakersand “scabs” during strikes. The white ethnicgroups responded by developing defensivestrategies to limit the dangers presented bythese migrants from the South. They tried toexclude blacks from their labor unions andother associations and to limit their impact onthe political system. They also attempted, oftensuccessfully, to maintain segregated neighbor-hoods and schools (although the legal systemoutside the South did not sanction de juresegregation).

This competition led to hostile relationsbetween black southern migrants and whiteethnic groups, especially the lower- andworking-class segments of those groups. Ironi-cally, however, the newly arriving AfricanAmericans helped white ethnic groups tobecome upwardly mobile. Sociologist StanleyLieberson (1980) compared black migrantsfrom the South with immigrants from south-ern and Eastern Europe in the early 20th cen-tury, focusing especially on the relatively fasterrise of white ethnic groups. He concludedthat the arrival of African Americans from theSouth actually aided the European immigrantsand their descendants in their rise up the socialclass structure. Whites in the dominant groupbecame less vocal about their contempt forthe white ethnic groups as their alarm over thepresence of blacks increased. The greaterantipathy of the white community towardAfrican Americans made the immigrants lessundesirable and thus hastened their admit-tance to the institutions of the larger society.For many white ethnic groups, the increasedtolerance of the larger society coincided hap-pily with the coming of age of the more edu-cated and skilled descendants of the originalimmigrants.

For more than a century, each newlyarrived European immigrant group hadhelped to push previous groups up the ladderof socioeconomic success and out of the old,ghettoized neighborhoods. The Irish pushedthe Germans up and were, in turn, pushed up

by Italians and Poles. However, blackSoutherners got to the cities last, after immi-gration from Europe had been curtailed.Large-scale immigration did not resume untilthe mid-1960s, and no newly arrived immi-grants appeared to continue the pattern ofsuccession. Instead, American cities devel-oped a concentration of low-income blackswho were economically vulnerable andpolitically weak, and whose position wasfurther solidified by anti-black prejudice anddiscrimination (Wilson, 1987, p. 34).

THE ORIGINS OF BLACK PROTEST

As we pointed out in Chapter 3, AfricanAmericans have always resisted their oppres-sion and protested their situation. Underslavery, however, the inequalities they facedwere so vast and their resources so meagerthat their protests were ineffective. With theincreased freedom that followed slavery, anational black leadership developed andbegan to speak out against oppression. Theyhelped to found the organizations that even-tually led the fight for freedom and equality.Even at its birth, the black protest movementwas diverse and incorporated a variety ofviewpoints and leaders.

Booker T. Washington was the mostprominent African American leader prior toWorld War I. Washington had been born inslavery and was the founder and president ofTuskegee Institute, a college in Alabama dedi-cated to educating African Americans. Hispublic advice to African Americans in theSouth was to be patient, to accommodate tothe Jim Crow system for now, to raise theirlevels of education and job skills, and to takefull advantage of whatever opportunitiesbecame available. This nonconfrontationalstance earned Washington praise and supportfrom the white community and widespreadpopularity in the nation. Privately, he workedbehind the scenes to end discrimination andimplement full racial integration and equality(Franklin & Moss, 1994, pp. 272–274;Hawkins, 1962; Washington, 1965).

Washington’s most vocal opponent wasW. E. B. Du Bois, a black intellectual and activist



who was born in the North and educated atsome of the leading universities of the day.Among his many other accomplishments, DuBois was part of a coalition of blacks andwhite liberals that founded the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois rejectedWashington’s accommodationist stance andadvocated immediate pursuit of racial equalityand a direct assault on de jure segregation.Almost from the beginning of its existence, theNAACP filed lawsuits that challenged thelegal foundations of Jim Crow segregation(Du Bois, 1961). As we shall see in Chapter 5,this legal strategy eventually succeeded andwas instrumental in the demise of the JimCrow system.

Washington and Du Bois may have dif-fered on matters of strategy and tactics, butthey agreed that the only acceptable ultimategoal for African Americans was an integrated,racially equal United States. A third leaderwho emerged early in the 20th century calledfor a very different approach to the problemsof U.S. race relations. Marcus Garvey wasborn in Jamaica and immigrated to theUnited States during World War I. He arguedthat the white-dominated U.S. society washopelessly racist and would never truly sup-port integration and racial equality. He advo-cated separatist goals, including a return toAfrica. Garvey founded the Universal NegroImprovement Association (UNIA) in 1914 inhis native Jamaica and founded the first U.S.branch in 1916. Garvey’s organization wasvery popular for a time in African Americancommunities outside the South, and he helpedto establish some of the themes and ideas ofblack nationalism and pride in African her-itage that would become prominent again inthe pluralistic 1960s (Essien-Udom, 1962;Garvey, 1969, 1977; Vincent, 1976).

These early leaders and organizations estab-lished some of the foundations for later protestmovements, but prior to midcentury, theymade few actual improvements in the situationof black Americans in the North or the South.Jim Crow was a formidable opponent, and theblack community lacked the resources tosuccessfully challenge the status quo until the

century was well along and some basic structuralfeatures of American society had changed.

APPLYING CONCEPTS

Acculturation and Integration

During this era of southern segregationand migration to the North, assimilation wasnot a major factor in the African Americanexperience. Rather, black-white relations arebetter described as a system of structural plu-ralism combined with great inequality.Excluded from the mainstream but freedfrom the limitations of slavery, AfricanAmericans constructed a separate subsocietyand subculture. In all regions of the nation,black Americans built an institutional lifearound family, the neighborhood, church,schools, businesses, and other organizationsof all types. Like immigrants from Europe inthe same era, they organized their communi-ties to cater to their own needs and problemsand to pursue their agenda as a group.

During the era of segregation, a small,black middle class emerged based on leader-ship roles in the church, education, andbusiness. A network of black colleges and uni-versities was constructed to educate the chil-dren of the growing middle class as well asother classes. Through this infrastructure,African Americans began to develop theresources and leadership that, in the decadesahead, would attack, head-on, the structuresof racial inequality.

Gender and Race

For African American men and women, thechanges wrought by industrialization and thepopulation movement to the North creatednew possibilities and new roles. However, asAfrican Americans continued to be the victimsof exploitation and exclusion in both theNorth and the South, black women continuedto be among the most vulnerable groupsin society.

Following Emancipation, there was aflurry of marriages and weddings amongAfrican Americans as they were finally able to



legitimate their family relationships (Staples,1988, p. 306). African American womencontinued to have primary responsibility forhome and children. Historian HerbertGutman (1976) reported that it was commonfor married women to drop out of the laborforce and attend solely to household andfamily duties because being a working wifewas too reminiscent of a slave role. This pat-tern became so widespread that it created seri-ous labor shortages in many areas (Gutman,1976; see also Staples, 1988, p. 307).

The former slaves were hardly affluent,however, and as sharecropping and segrega-tion began to shape race relations in the South,women often had to return to the fields or todomestic work in order for their families tosurvive. One former slave woman noted thatwomen “do double duty, a man’s share in thefield and a woman’s part at home” (Evans,1989, p. 121). During the bleak decades fol-lowing the end of Reconstruction, southernblack families and black women in particularlived “close to the bone” (Evans, 1989,p. 121).

In the cities and in the growing blackneighborhoods in the North, AfricanAmerican women played a role that in someways paralleled the role of immigrant womenfrom Europe. The men often moved northfirst and sent for the women after they hadattained some level of financial stability orafter the pain of separation became too great(Almquist, 1979, p. 434). In other cases,black women by the thousands left the Southto work as domestic servants; they oftenreplaced European immigrant women whohad moved up in the job structure (Amott &Matthaei, 1991, p. 168).

In the North, discrimination and racismcreated constant problems of unemploymentfor black men, and families often relied on theincome supplied by the women to make endsmeet. It was comparatively easy for women tofind work, but only in the low-paying, lessdesirable areas, such as domestic work. Inboth the South and the North, AfricanAmerican women worked outside the homein larger proportions than did white women.For example, in 1900, 41% of black women

were employed, compared with only 16% ofwhite women (Staples, 1988, p. 307).

In 1890, more than a generation after theend of slavery, 85% of all black men and96% of black women were employed in justtwo occupational categories: agriculture anddomestic or personal service. By 1930, 90%of employed black women were still in thesesame two categories, whereas the correspond-ing proportion for employed black maleshad dropped to 54% (although nearly all theremaining 46% were unskilled workers)(Steinberg, 1981, pp. 206–207). Since theinception of segregation, African Americanwomen have had consistently higher unem-ployment rates and lower incomes than blackmen and white women (Almquist, 1979,p. 437). These gaps, as we shall see inChapter 5, persist to the present day.

During the years following Emancipation,some issues did split men and women, withinboth the black community and the largersociety. Prominent among these was suf-frage, or the right to vote, which was stilllimited to men only. The abolitionist move-ment, which had been so instrumental inending slavery, also supported universal suf-frage. Efforts to enfranchise women, though,were abandoned by the Republican Partyand large parts of the abolitionist movement,which turned their attention to efforts tosecure the vote for black males in the South.Ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870extended the vote, in principle, to AfricanAmerican men, but the 19th Amendment,enfranchising women, would not be passedfor another 50 years (Almquist, 1979,pp. 433–434; Evans, 1989, pp. 121–124).

INDUSTRIALIZATION,THE SHIFT TOPOSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, ANDDOMINANT-MINORITY GROUPRELATIONS: GENERAL TRENDS

The process of industrialization that began inthe 19th century continued to shape thelarger society and dominant-minority rela-tions throughout the 20th century. At the



start of the 21st century, the United Statesbears little resemblance to the society it wasa century ago. The population has more thantripled in size and has urbanized even morerapidly than it has grown. New organiza-tional forms (bureaucracies, corporations,multinational businesses) and new technolo-gies (nuclear power, computers) dominateeveryday life. Levels of education have risen,and public schools have produced one of themost literate populations and best-trainedworkforces in the history of the world.

Minority groups also grew in size, andmost became even more urbanized than thegeneral population. Minority group membershave come to participate in an increasingarray of occupations, and their average levelsof education have also risen. Despite thesereal improvements, however, virtually all U.S.minority groups continue to face racism,poverty, discrimination, and exclusion. In thissection, we outline the ways in which indus-trialization has changed American society andexamine some of the implications for minor-ity groups in general. We also note some ofthe ways in which industrialization has aidedminority groups and address some of the bar-riers to full participation in the larger societythat continue to operate in the present era.The impact of industrialization and the com-ing of postindustrial society will be consid-ered in detail in the case studies thatconstitute Part III of this text.

Urbanization

We already have noted that urbanizationmade close, paternalistic controls of minoritygroups irrelevant. For example, the racial eti-quette required by southern de jure segrega-tion, such as African Americans deferring towhites on crowded sidewalks, tends to disap-pear in the chaos of an urban rush hour.Besides weakening dominant group controls,urbanization also created the potential forminority groups to mobilize and organizelarge numbers of people. As stated inChapter 1, the sheer size of a group is a sourceof power. Without the freedom to organize,however, size means little, and urbanization

increased both the concentration of populationsand the freedom to organize.

Occupational Specialization

One of the first and most importantresults of industrialization, even in its earliestdays, were increases in occupational special-ization and in the variety of jobs available inthe workforce. The growing needs of anurbanizing population increased the numberof jobs available in the production, trans-port, and sale of goods and services.Occupational specialization also was stimu-lated by the very nature of industrial produc-tion. Complex manufacturing processescould be performed more efficiently if theywere broken down into narrower componenttasks. It was easier and more efficient to trainthe workforce in the simpler, specializedjobs. Assembly lines were invented, the workwas subdivided, the division of labor becameincreasingly complex, and the number of dif-ferent occupations continued to grow.

The sheer complexity of the industrial jobstructure made it difficult to maintain rigid,caste-like divisions of labor between domi-nant and minority groups. Rigid competitiveforms of group relations, such as Jim Crowsegregation, became less viable as the jobmarket became more diversified and change-able. Simple, clear rules about which groupscould do which jobs disappeared. As themore repressive systems of control weak-ened, job opportunities for minority groupmembers sometimes increased.

As the relationships between group mem-berships and positions in the job marketbecame more blurred, conflict betweengroups also increased. For example, as wehave noted, African Americans moving fromthe South often found themselves in competi-tion for jobs with white ethnic groups, laborunions, and elements of the dominant group.

Bureaucracy and Rationality

As industrialization continued, privatelyowned corporations and businesses came tohave workforces numbering in the hundreds



of thousands. Gigantic factories employingthousands of workers became common. Tocoordinate the efforts of these huge work-forces, bureaucracy became the dominantform of organization in the economy and,indeed, throughout the society. Bureaucraciesare large-scale, impersonal, formal organiza-tions that run “by the book.” They are gov-erned by rules and regulations (i.e., “redtape”) and are “rational” in that they attemptto find the most efficient ways to accomplishtheir tasks. Although they typically fail toattain the ideal of fully rational efficiency,bureaucracies tend to recruit, reward, andpromote employees on the basis of compe-tence and performance (Gerth & Mills, 1946).

An emphasis on rationality and objectivitycan counteract the more blatant forms ofracism and increase the array of opportuni-ties available to members of minority groups.Although they are often nullified by otherforces (see Blumer, 1965), these antiprejudi-cial tendencies do not exist at all or are muchweaker in preindustrial economies.

The history of the concept of race illus-trates the effect of rationality and scientificways of thinking. Today, virtually the entirescientific community regards race as a bio-logical triviality, a conclusion based ondecades of research. This scientific findingundermined and contributed to the destruc-tion of the formal systems of privilege basedsolely on race (e.g., segregated school sys-tems) and individual perceptual systems (e.g.,traditional prejudice), which themselves werebased on the assumption that race was a cru-cial personal characteristic.

Growth of White-CollarJobs and the Service Sector

Industrialization changed the compositionof the labor force. As work became more com-plex and specialized, the need to coordinateand regulate the production process increased,and as a result, bureaucracies and other orga-nizations grew larger still. Within these orga-nizations, white-collar occupations—thosethat coordinate, manage, and deal with theflow of paperwork—continued to expand. As

industrialization progressed, mechanizationand automation reduced the number of man-ual or blue-collar workers, and white-collaroccupations became the dominant sector ofthe job market in the United States.

The changing nature of the workforce canbe illustrated by looking at the proportionalrepresentation of three different types of jobs:

1. Extractive (or primary) occupationsare those that produce raw materials, such asfood and agricultural products, minerals,and lumber. The jobs in this sector ofteninvolve unskilled manual labor, require littleformal education, and generally offer lowcompensation.

2. Manufacturing (or secondary) occupa-tions transform raw materials into finishedproducts ready for sale in the marketplace.Like jobs in the extractive sector, these blue-collar jobs involve manual labor, but theytend to require higher levels of skill and aremore highly rewarded. Examples of occupa-tions in this sector include the assembly linejobs that transform steel, rubber, plastic, andother materials into finished automobiles.

3. Service (or tertiary) occupations don’tproduce “things,” but, rather, provide ser-vices. As urbanization increased and self-sufficiency decreased, opportunities for workin this sector grew. Examples of tertiary occu-pations include police officer, clerk, waiter,teacher, nurse, doctor, and cab driver.

The course of industrialization is traced inthe changing structure of the labor marketdepicted in Exhibit 4.2. In 1840, when indus-trialization was just beginning in the UnitedStates, most of the workforce was in theextractive sector, with agriculture being thedominant occupation. As industrializationprogressed, the manufacturing, or secondary,sector grew, reaching a peak after WorldWar II. Today, the large majority of jobs arein the service, or tertiary, sector.

This shift away from blue-collar jobs andmanufacturing is sometimes referred to asdeindustrialization or discussed in terms ofthe emergence of postindustrial society. The



0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1840 1870 1900 1930 1960 2000

Per

cen

ts

Service

Manufacturing

Extractive

Exhibit 4.2 The Changing Job Market in the United States, 1840–2000

SOURCE: 1840–1990: Adapted from Lenski, Nolan, & Lenski (1995); 2000 calculated from U.S. Bureau of theCensus (2002, p. 384). Adaptation is with permission.

U.S. economy has lost millions of unionized,high-paying factory jobs over the past severaldecades, and the downward trend will con-tinue. The industrial jobs that sustained somany generations of American workers havemoved to other nations where wages are con-siderably lower than in the United States orhave been eliminated by robots or otherautomated manufacturing processes (seeRifkin, 1996).

The changing structure of the job markethelps to clarify the nature of intergroup com-petition and the sources of wealth and powerin society. Job growth in the United Statestoday is largely in the service sector, in whichoccupations are highly variable. At one endare low-paying jobs with few, if any, benefitsor chances for advancement (e.g., washingdishes in a restaurant). At the upper endare high-prestige, lucrative positions, suchas Supreme Court justice, scientist, and

financial analyst. The new service sector jobsare either highly desirable technical, profes-sional, or administrative jobs with demand-ing entry requirements (e.g., physician ornurse) or low-paid, low-skilled jobs with fewbenefits and little security (e.g., receptionist,nurse’s aide). For the last half century, jobgrowth in the United States has been either inareas in which educationally deprived minor-ity group members find it difficult to competeor in areas that offer little compensation,upward mobility, or security. As we will seein Part III, the economic situation of contempo-rary minority groups reflects these fundamentaltrends.

The GrowingImportance of Education

Education has become an increasinglyimportant prerequisite for employability as



American society moves into the postindus-trial era. A high school or, increasingly, acollege degree has become the minimumentry-level requirement for employment.However, opportunities for high-quality edu-cation are not distributed equally across thepopulation. Some minority groups, especiallythose created by conquest or colonization,have been systematically excluded from theschools of the dominant society. Today, theyare less likely to have the educational back-grounds needed to compete for better jobs.Access to education is a key issue for almostall U.S. minority groups, and the averageeducational levels of these groups have beenrising since World War II. Still, minoritychildren continue to be much more likely toattend segregated, underfunded, deterioratedschools and to receive an inferior education(see Orfield, 2001).

A Dual Labor Market

The changing composition of the laborforce and increasing importance of educa-tional credentials has split the U.S. labormarket into two segments or types of jobs.The primary labor market includes jobs usu-ally located in large, bureaucratic organiza-tions. These positions offer higher pay, moresecurity, better opportunities for advance-ment, health and retirement benefits, andother amenities. Entry requirements ofteninclude college degrees, even when peoplewith fewer years of schooling could compe-tently perform the work.

The secondary labor market, sometimescalled the competitive market, includes low-paid, low-skilled, insecure jobs. Many ofthese jobs are in the service sector. They donot represent a career and offer little oppor-tunity for promotion or upward mobility.Very often, they do not offer health or retire-ment benefits, have high rates of turnover,and are part-time, seasonal, or temporary.

Many American minority groups are con-centrated in the secondary job market. Theirexclusion from better jobs is perpetuated notso much by direct or obvious discriminationas by educational and other credentials

required to enter the primary sector. Thedifferential distribution of educational oppor-tunities, in the past as well as in the present,effectively protects workers in the primarysector from competition from minoritygroups.

Globalization

Over the past century, the United Statesbecame an economic, political, and militaryworld power with interests around the globe.These worldwide ties have created newminority groups through population move-ment and have changed the status of existingminority groups. Immigration to this countryhas been considerable for the past threedecades. The American economy is one ofthe most productive in the world, and jobs,even those in the low-paid secondary sector,are the primary goals for millions of new-comers. For other immigrants, this countrycontinues to play its historic role as a refugefrom political and religious persecution.

Many of the wars, conflicts, and other dis-putes in which the United States has beeninvolved have had consequences forAmerican minority groups. For example,both Puerto Ricans and Cuban Americansbecame U.S. minority groups as the result ofprocesses set in motion during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Both World War Iand World War II created new job opportu-nities for many minority groups, includingAfrican Americans and Mexican Americans.After the Korean War, international ties wereforged between the United States and SouthKorea, and this led to an increase in immi-gration from that nation. In the 1960s and1970s, the military involvement of theUnited States in Southeast Asia led to thearrival of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and otherimmigrants from Southeast Asia.

Dominant-minority relations in theUnited States increasingly have been playedout on an international stage as the worldhas effectively “shrunk” in size and becomemore interconnected by international organi-zations such as the United Nations, by ties oftrade and commerce, and by modern means



of transportation and communication. In aworld in which two thirds of the populationis nonwhite and many important nations(such as China, India, and Nigeria) representpeoples of color, the treatment of racialminorities by the U.S. dominant group hascome under increased scrutiny. It is difficultto preach principles of fairness, equality, andjustice—which the United States claims as itsown—when domestic realities suggest anembarrassing failure to fully implement thesestandards. Part of the pressure for the UnitedStates to end blatant systems of discrimina-tion such as de jure segregation came fromthe desire to maintain a leading position inthe world.

THE SHIFT FROM RIGID TO FLUIDCOMPETITIVE RELATIONSHIPS

The recent changes in the structure ofAmerican society are so fundamental andprofound that they are often described interms of a revolution in subsistence technol-ogy: from an industrial society, based on man-ufacturing, to a postindustrial society, basedon information processing and computer-related or other new technologies.

As the subsistence technology has evolvedand changed, so have American dominant-minority relations. The rigid competitive sys-tems (such as Jim Crow) associated withearlier phases of industrialization have givenway to fluid competitive systems of grouprelations. In fluid competitive relations, thereare no formal or legal barriers to competitionsuch as Jim Crow laws. Both geographic andsocial mobility are greater, and the limita-tions imposed by minority group status areless restrictive and burdensome. Rigid castesystems of stratification, in which groupmembership determines opportunities, adultstatuses, and jobs, are replaced by more openclass systems, in which there are weaker rela-tionships between group membership andwealth, prestige, and power. Because fluidcompetitive systems are more open and theposition of the minority group is less fixed,the fear of competition from minority groupsbecomes more widespread for the dominant

group, and intergroup conflict increases.Exhibit 4.3 compares the characteristics ofthe three systems of group relations.

Compared with previous systems, thefluid competitive system is closer to theAmerican ideal of an open, fair system ofstratification in which effort and competenceare rewarded and race, ethnicity, gender, reli-gion, and other “birthmarks” are irrelevant.However, as we will see in chapters to come,race and ethnicity continue to affect lifechances and limit opportunities for minoritygroup members even in fluid competitive sys-tems. As suggested by the Noel hypothesis,people continue to identify themselves withparticular groups (ethnocentrism), and com-petition for resources continues to play outalong group lines. Consistent with theBlauner hypothesis, the minority groups thatwere formed by colonization remain at a dis-advantage in the pursuit of opportunities,education, prestige, and other resources.

ModernInstitutional Discrimination

Virtually all American minority groupscontinue to lag behind national averages inincome, employment, and other measures ofequality despite the greater fluidity of grouprelations, the greater openness in the U.S.stratification system, dramatic declines inovert, traditional prejudice, and the introduc-tion of numerous laws designed to ensure thatall people are treated without regard to race,gender, or ethnicity. After all this change,shouldn’t there be less minority groupinequality? In fact, many Americans attributethe persisting patterns of inequality to theminority groups’ lack of willpower or moti-vation to get ahead. In the remaining chaptersof this text, however, I argue that the majorbarrier facing minority groups in late indus-trial, post–Jim Crow America is a more sub-tle but still powerful form of discrimination:modern institutional discrimination.

As you recall from Chapter 1, institutionaldiscrimination is built into the everyday oper-ation of the social structure of society. Theroutine procedures and policies of institutions



and organizations are arranged so that minoritygroup members are automatically put at adisadvantage. In the Jim Crow era in theSouth, for example, African Americans weredeprived of the right to vote by overt institu-tional discrimination and could acquire littlein the way of political power.

The forms of institutional discriminationthat persist in the present are more subtle andless overt than those that defined the Jim Crowsystem. In fact, they are often unintentional orunconscious and exist more in the results forminority groups than in the intentions or pre-judices of dominant group members. Moderninstitutional discrimination is not necessarilylinked to prejudice, and the decision makerswho implement it may sincerely think of them-selves as behaving rationally and in the bestinterests of their organizations.

When employers make hiring decisionsbased solely on educational criteria, theymay be putting minority group members at a

disadvantage. When banks use strictlyeconomic criteria to deny money for homemortgages or home improvement loans in cer-tain “rundown” neighborhoods, they may behandicapping the efforts of minority groups tocope with the results of the blatant, legal hous-ing segregation of the past. When businesspeo-ple decide to reduce their overhead by movingtheir operations away from center cities, theymay be reducing the ability of America’s highlyurbanized minority groups to earn a living andeducate their children. When educators relysolely on standardized tests of ability that havebeen developed from white, middle-class expe-riences to decide who will be placed in collegepreparatory courses, they may be limiting theability of minority group children to competefor jobs in the primary sector.

Any and all of these decisions can and dohave devastating consequences for minorityindividuals, even though decision makers maybe entirely unaware of the discriminatory


Fluid

Advanced industrial

Variable. Class moreimportant. Groupstrongly affects statusbut inequality varieswithin groups.

Group moderately relatedto job. Complexspecialization. Greatvariation within groups.

Higher rates of contact,more often betweenstatus equals. Conflictcommon.

Least. Minority group hasmore ability to pursueself-interest.

Rigid

Early industrial

Mixed. Elements ofcaste and class.Group determinesstatus.

Mostly by group.Some sharing of jobsby different groups.

Lower rates of contact,mostly unequal andoften conflictual.

Less. Minority grouphas some ability topursue self interest.

Paternalistic

Agrarian

Caste. Groupdetermines status.

By group. Simpledivision of labor.

High rates butcontact is unequal.

Maximum. Minoritygroup has little orno ability to pursueself-interest.

Subsistencetechnology

Stratification

Division of labor

Contact betweengroups

Power differential

Exhibit 4.3 Characteristics of Three Systems of Group Relations

Competitive

SOURCE: Based on Farley (1995, p. 81).


effects. Employers, bankers, and educatorsdo not have to be personally prejudiced fortheir actions to have negative consequencesfor minority groups. Modern institutionaldiscrimination helps to perpetuate systems ofinequality that can be just as pervasive andstifling as those of the past.

To illustrate, consider the effects of past-in-present institutional discrimination, whichinvolves practices in the present that havediscriminatory consequences because ofsome pattern of discrimination or exclusionin the past (Feagin & Feagin, 1986, p. 32).One form of this discrimination is found inworkforces organized around the principle ofseniority. In these systems, which are quitecommon, workers who have been on the joblonger have higher incomes, more privileges,and other benefits, such as longer vacations.The “old-timers” often have more job secu-rity and are designated in official, writtenpolicy as the last to be fired or laid off in theevent of hard times. Workers and employersalike may think of the privileges of seniorityas just rewards for long years of service,familiarity with the job, and so forth.

Personnel policies based on seniority mayseem perfectly reasonable, neutral, and fair.However, they can have discriminatory resultsin the present, because in the past, members ofminority groups and women were excludedfrom specific occupations by racist or sexistlabor unions, discriminatory employers, orboth. As a result, minority group workers andwomen may have fewer years of experiencethan dominant group workers and may be thefirst to go when layoffs are necessary. Theadage “last hired, first fired” describes the sit-uation of minority group and female employ-ees who are more vulnerable not because ofsome overtly racist or sexist policy but becauseof the routine operation of the seemingly neu-tral principle of seniority.

It is much more difficult to identify, mea-sure, and eliminate this more subtle form ofinstitutional discrimination, and some of themost heated disputes in recent group relationshave concerned public policy and law in thisarea. Among the most controversial issues areaffirmative action programs that attempt to

ameliorate the legacy of past discrimination orincrease diversity in the workplace or inschools. In many cases, the Supreme Court hasfound that programs designed to favor minor-ity employees as a strategy for overcomingovert discrimination in the past are constitu-tional (e.g., Firefighters Local Union No.1784 v. Stotts, 1984; Sheet Metal Workers v.EEOC, 1986; United Steelworkers ofAmerica, AFL-CIO-CLC v. Weber, 1979).Virtually all these decisions, however, werebased on narrow margins (votes of 5 to 4) andfeatured acrimonious and bitter debates.More recently, the Court narrowed thegrounds on which such past grievances couldbe redressed and, in the eyes of manyobservers, dealt serious blows to affirmativeaction programs (e.g., Adarand ConstructorsInc. v. Pena, 1995).

One of the more prominent battlegroundsfor affirmative action programs has been inhigher education. Since the 1960s, it hasbeen common for colleges and universities toimplement programs to increase the numberof minority students on campus at both theundergraduate and graduate levels, some-times admitting minority students who hadlower GPAs or test scores than dominantgroup students who were turned away. Ingeneral, these programs have been justifiedin terms of redressing the discriminatorypractices of the past or increasing diversityon campus and making the student body amore faithful representation of the sur-rounding society. To say the least, these pro-grams have been highly controversial andthe targets of frequent lawsuits, some ofwhich have found their way to the highestcourts in the land.

The future of these programs remainsunclear. At present, a number of states havebanned affirmative action programs in theiruniversities and colleges, but the legality ofthese outright bans remains in some doubt.For example, in 1996, voters in Californiapassed an amendment to the state constitu-tion that banned all use of racial, ethnic, orgender preferences in education, in hiring, andin the conduct of state business. In the springof 2001, after years of protest and pressure by



a variety of groups, the governing body of theCalifornia system of higher education endedthe ban on affirmative action. This decisionwas mainly symbolic, however, because theuniversity system cannot exempt itself fromthe state constitution.

The future of affirmative action will bedetermined by a number of lawsuits cur-rently working their way through the system.No one can say for sure what the future willbring, but affirmative action appears to bevery much in danger, and there is very littlesocial support for these programs. Accordingto a public opinion survey conducted in2000, affirmative action was supported byonly 13% of white respondents. More sur-prising, perhaps, it was supported by less

than a majority of black respondents (44%)and only 20% of female respondents(National Opinion Research Council, 2000).At the highest levels of society, support islikewise scarce. The administration ofPresident George W. Bush has registered itsopposition to affirmative action in docu-ments related to a Supreme Court caseinvolving the University of Michigan (Lewis,2003), and many assume that his administra-tion will appoint judges to the bench whowill be unsympathetic to affirmative action.It would not be surprising to see all affirma-tive action programs end in the next 5 to 10years, and if they do, one of the few toolsavailable to combat modern institutional dis-crimination will be eliminated.


GENDER INEQUALITY IN A GLOBALIZING, POSTINDUSTRIAL WORLD

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Exhibit 4.5 Selected Occupations With High Concentrations of Females, 1983 and 2000

Percentage Female

Occupation 1983 2000

Registered nurse 96% 93%(Physician) (16%) (28%)

Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teacher 98% 99%Elementary school teacher 83% 83%(College and university teacher) (36%) (44%)

Dental hygienist 99% 99%(Dentist) (7%) (19%)

Legal assistant 74% 84%(Lawyer) (15%) (30%)

Secretary 99% 99%

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census (2002, pp. 380–382).

NOTE: Occupations in italics and parentheses are comparable but higher-status occupations.

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CONCLUSION

This chapter has focused on the continuingindustrial revolution and its impact on minor-ity groups in general and black-white relationsin particular. For the most part, changes ingroup relations have been presented as theresults of the fundamental transformation ofthe U.S. economic institution from agrarian toindustrial to late industrial (or postindustrial).However, the changes in the situation of blackAmericans and other minority groups didn’t

“just happen” as society modernized.Although the opportunity to pursue favorablechange was the result of broad structuralchanges in American society, the realization ofthese opportunities came from the efforts ofthe many who gave their time, their voices,their resources, and sometimes their lives inpursuit of racial justice in America. SinceWorld War II, African Americans often havebeen in the vanguard of protest activity, andwe focus on the contemporary situation of thisgroup in the next chapter.


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• Group relations change as the subsistence technology and the level of development of thelarger society change. As nations industrialize and urbanize, dominant-minority relationschange from paternalistic to rigid competitive forms.

• In the South, slavery was replaced by de jure segregation, a system that combined racial sep-aration with great inequality. The Jim Crow system was motivated by a need to control laborand was reinforced by coercion and intense racism and prejudice.

• Black Southerners responded to segregation in part by moving to northern urban areas. Thenorthern black population enjoyed greater freedom and developed some political and eco-nomic resources, but a large concentration of low-income, relatively powerless AfricanAmericans developed in the ghetto neighborhoods.


• In response to segregation, the African American community developed a separateinstitutional life centered on family, church, and community. A black middle class emerged,as well as a protest movement.

• African American women remain one of the most exploited groups. Combining work withfamily roles, black females were employed mostly in agriculture and domestic service duringthe era of segregation.

• Industrialization continued throughout the 20th century and has profoundly affecteddominant-minority relations. Urbanization, specialization, bureaucratization, and othertrends have changed the shape of race relations, as have the changing structure of the occu-pational sector and the growing importance of education. Group relations have shifted fromrigid competitive to fluid competitive. Modern institutional discrimination is one of themajor challenges facing minority groups.

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1. A corollary to two themes from Chapter 3 is presented at the beginning of Chapter 4.How exactly does the material in the chapter illustrate the usefulness of this corollary?

2. Explain paternalistic and rigid competitive relations and link them to industrialization.How does the shift from slavery to de jure segregation illustrate the dynamics of these twosystems?

3. What was the “Great Migration” to the North? How did it change American race relations?4. Explain the transition from rigid competitive to fluid competitive relations and explain

how this transition is related to the coming of postindustrial society. Explain the roles ofurbanization, bureaucracy, the service sector of the job market, and education in thistransition.

5. What is modern institutional discrimination? How does it differ from “traditional” insti-tutional discrimination? Explain the role of affirmative action in combating each.

6. Explain the impact of industrialization and globalization on gender relations. Compareand contrast these changes with the changes that occurred for racial and ethnic minoritygroups.

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A. Everyday Life Under Jim Crow

The daily workings of the Jim Crow system of segregation are analyzed and described in acollection of interviews and memories archived at www.americanradioworks.org/features/remembering/. Listen to the clips and analyze them in terms of the concepts introduced in thischapter.

B. The Debate Over Affirmative Action

Update and supplement the debate over affirmative action. Start with the newspaper Web sitesincluding the New York Times (www.nytimes.com), the Washington Post (www.washington-post.com), and the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) and search for recent news items oropinion pieces on the issue. Search the Internet for other viewpoints and perspectives from othergroups and positions on the political spectrum. One place you might start is www.aad.english.ucsb.edu/, a Web site that presents diverse opinions on the topic and brings many different voicesto the debates. Analyze events and opinions in terms of the concepts introduced in this chapter,especially modern institutional discrimination.



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Bluestone, Barry, & Harrison, Bennett. 1982. The Deindustrialization of America. New York: BasicBooks.

An important analysis of the shift from a manufacturing to a service-based, informationsociety.

Feagin, Joe R., & Feagin, Clairece Booher. 1986. Discrimination American Style: Institutional Racismand Sexism. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger.

A comprehensive and provocative look at modern institutional discrimination.

Geschwender, James A. 1978. Racial Stratification in America. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown.Wilson, William J. 1973. Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical

Perspectives. New York: Free Press.Woodward, C. Vann. 1974. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed.). New York: Oxford

University Press.

Three outstanding analyses of black-white relations in the United States, with a majorfocus on the historical periods covered in this chapter.



Documents

Industrialization and Dominant-Minority Relations · slavery. Industrialization’s impact on other minority groups will be considered in the case studies presented in Part III. The