In 1961, President John F. Kennedy used the term “Affirmative Action” for the first time. He instructed federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin” (Executive Order 10925). Two and a half years later President Kennedy would be assassinated. Continuing President Kennedy’s Executive Order, President Lyndon B. Johnson implemented the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the landmark legislation that outlawed discrimination in employment and public places (Katznelson Reference Katznelson2005, Reference Katznelson2006). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared its purposes as follows:
“To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.”
In many respects, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was implemented with the aim to ensure that minorities and women were treated with the dignity, rights, and privileges that many White male citizens enjoyed; that they could live as “normal” human beings.
In 1965, President Johnson issued a related Executive Order requiring all government contractors and subcontractors to take “affirmative action” to expand job opportunities for minorities (Executive Order 11246). Most of the favorable forms of Affirmative Action initiatives originally included goals and timetables and/or a points system. Collectively, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson sought to ensure that individuals had equal opportunity without regard to their race, ethnicity, or gender; in other words, a just society that does not include being exposed to racial/ethnic or gender discrimination.
Although Affirmative Action includes a focus on gender, nationality, and mental and physical disability in addition to race, the public discourse has mostly centered on the experience of Blacks, particularly as it relates to educational and labor market outcomes. Affirmative Action is defined as the policies and/or programs that seek to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity (Ira Katznelson Reference Katznelson2006). According to Katznelson, “Affirmative Action performs acts of corrective justice. Public policy is used to compensate members of a deprived group for prior losses and for gains unfairly achieved by others that resulted from prior government action” (p. 556). Corrective justice “identifies interventions that remedy previously unjust decisions that made existing patterns of distribution even more unfair than they otherwise would have been” (p. 556).
Because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the policy and social change that followed, the 1960s is usually where scholars begin their discussion regarding Affirmative Action. Yet, it is important to chronicle policies from the early twentieth century that helped to reinforce the racial divide in America and led to the need for this act. In his book When Affirmative Action was White, Katznelson (Reference Katznelson2005) provides a historical account of policies that expanded the White middle class. He notes that President Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, including Social Security and the GI Bill, allowed Whites to build wealth by obtaining higher-paying jobs than they would have been able to obtain without the policies. Also, these policies and laws assisted these same White workers to establish retirement income and enabled them to build and transmit wealth to their children. Considering that these policies commenced under the aegis of Jim Crow—a legally racially-segregated environment—interracial marriages and some business relationships were illegal. In these ways and others, White wealth was kept out of the hands of Blacks. In addition, legislation that created Social Security, set minimum wages, regulated work hours, and established unions did not include occupations where Blacks were highly concentrated, such as farm labor and domestic work. As a result, over 60% of the Black labor force in the 1930s, and nearly 75% of Black workers in the South, were excluded from the benefits of Social Security and unionization. Similarly, while the GI Bill allowed millions of White veterans from WWII to purchase homes, start business ventures, and send themselves and their children to college (Katznelson Reference Katznelson2005; Woods Reference Woods2013), for Black veterans, it was a different story. The GI Bill was distributed federally but controlled locally. As a result, many Black veterans, particularly in the South, were not allocated GI Bill funds in the same way as Whites (Woods Reference Woods2013).
Studying the impact of these policies in the twenty-first century is critical because they influenced the degree to which Black and White Americans could establish wealth and realize the “American Dream.” For example, eight out of ten men born during the 1920s were impacted by the GI Bill (Katznelson Reference Katznelson2005). This means that roughly 80% of men who were in their thirties with families in the 1950s and 1960s were affected by one of the largest federal government funding initiatives in U.S. history, even by today’s standards. These policies helped set the stage for the wealth capacity of those in the Post-Civil Rights Era via the opportunities afforded, or, in the case of Blacks, not afforded to previous generations (Woods Reference Woods2013). While handicapping Black families and subsequent generations in reaching a stable middle-class status, New Deal policies provided White families with advantages then and into the future.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 employed corrective justice with the intention of equalizing labor market experiences across racial and gender groups and eliminating discrimination in the labor market, education, and public spaces. Two books recently took up the charge to provide information on the impact and meaning of this policy on the life outcomes of Black women, White women, Black men, and White men (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012), as well as report how Whites make sense of their work-related lives in the twenty-first century (DiTomaso 2013).
Documenting Desegregation
In Documenting Desegregation, Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) examine desegregation in the U.S. labor market since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Using U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) data on more than 5 million private-sector workplaces from 1966-2005, they ask how much progress has occurred since the mid-1960s, which racial and gender groups have benefited from the policy change, and which groups seem to have benefited the least. Indeed, a strength of this study is the breadth of Employer Information Reports (EEO-1) analyzed over time. They provide specific information about the work sectors riven with discrimination as well as those where discrimination seems to be less prevalent. Documenting Desegregation challenges what Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey call “erroneous beliefs” and “naïve in the extreme” views that discrimination was eliminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2012, p. xxii). According to those who embody this so-called “naïve” perspective, not only did racial and gender discrimination get eliminated, but it somehow reversed to unfairly disadvantage White men (Norton and Sommers, Reference Norton and Sommers2011). This narrative about reverse discrimination is acutely linked to views about Affirmative Action and attitudes about quotas and race-based policies (Bobo Reference Bobo1988; Bobo and Kluegel, Reference Bobo and Kluegel1993; Duster Reference Duster, Pescosolido and Aminzade1999).
Counter to mainstream narratives about Affirmative Action eliminating discrimination in the labor market, Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) find that racial desegregation in the labor market stalled in the 1980s through the 2000s. The authors note the dismantling of Affirmative Action policies in Congress and through the courts as a main reason for this stalling. However, not only has desegregation stalled, it has actually seen a form of resegregation in some sectors. More than 40% of industries have seen increases in segregation between Black women and White women since the 1990s. Black men and White men have seen an increase in segregation in nearly 20% of industries.
Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) argue that a set of interactions and decisions by supervisors, managers, and administrators have maintained racial and gender inequality in the workplace by allowing individual bias and prejudice to manifest in discriminatory behavior related to hires and promotions. Interestingly, however, Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey believe that because racial and gender biases “are so widespread,” changes in organizational behavior rather than changes in individual-level bias are the key to restarting desegregation in the workplace (p. 19). The authors assert that reducing workplace uncertainty related to “dynamic shifts in organizational expectations or resources” will enhance egalitarian work practices (p. 10). They conclude by stating, “Fifty years after Kennedy’s executive order, the federal government still lacks the organizational capacity to develop measurement tools to identify organizational variation in discrimination or equal opportunity” (p. 319).
Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey conclude with a pessimistic view, but note that some progress has been made since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1966, over 50% of occupational sectors had no Black men employed, while over 60% had no Black women employed. The percentages were considerably smaller for Whites with 11% of occupational sectors having no White women employed and about 8% having no White men employed. The period from 1966 through 1972 saw considerable racial and gender progress; White women, Black men, and Black women, in that order, all gained jobs during that period. As a result, the proportion of employed White men decreased. Even though this finding would seem to support the narrative related to “reverse discrimination,” the authors note the drastic changes in the racial and gender composition in the type and level of jobs. Whereas White women saw the largest gains in service work (primarily clerical and sales jobs) and Black men saw the largest gains in labor jobs (primarily skilled craft occupations), White men saw the largest gains in managerial, professional, and technical occupations. So although all groups saw relative gains, the finding “that white women did not reap similar benefits suggests that it was the intersection of racial and gender privilege, not race alone, that was preserved in the face of black gains” (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012, p. 115).
Because of a series of Supreme Court rulings, the strengthening of civil rights organizations, and a huge increase in the number of feminist social movement organizations and women’s rights protests, the 1970s, which Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey call “the short regulatory decade,” saw a strengthening in anti-discriminatory law (p. 210). Although much progress was seen in the 1960s and 1970s, stalled desegregation commenced in the 1980s. During this period, White men saw even larger gains in managerial positions than other racial and gender groups. For example, “the worst sector for white male managerial representation (social services) was still better than any other sector for black women’s access to managerial jobs” (p. 222). The 1980s also saw a “demise in southern exceptionalism” (p. 183). Moreover, Southern states no longer dominated segregated workplaces. In fact, the New England area showed some of the highest levels of segregation between White women, Black women, and Black men relative to White men.
In spite of an increased focus on anti-discrimination law in the 1980s, a compelling piece of data from Documenting Desegregation shows the costs of filing a discrimination lawsuit. The rise in EEOC complaints and discriminatory lawsuits, as well as diversity training, actually led to a decrease in the representation of Black and White women in managerial positions in non-government contract jobs (Kalev et al., Reference Kalev, Dobbin and Kelly2006). In other words, diversity training, which is supposed to lead to more equality, is actually operating to work against women in the labor market. Yet, diversity training in sectors linked to government contracts actually has the intended benefit of expanding managerial opportunities for Black women, White women, and Black men (Embrick Reference Embrick2011; Kalev et al., Reference Kalev, Dobbin and Kelly2006). There is an added twist. Diversity training that mentions the legal consequences of discrimination leads to a decreased representation of managerial positions for women and minorities and increases the representation of White men (Dobbin et al., Reference Dobbin, Koo and Kalev2011). Still, Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey suggest that the industries with the highest levels of racial and gender segregation as well as the under-representation of minority and female managers should be the focus of policy change and class-action lawsuits.
Another compelling part of the book is that “the more workplaces select on merit-linked criteria, the lower the racial and gender inequalities” (p. xxiii). In other words, the more “formalized organizational practices” related to education and credentials are used as hiring criteria, the more equitable the job opportunities (p. 15). Consequently, the findings in Documenting Desegregation link to social policy. In particular, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 asserted that jobs need to have “clear skill requirements” related to formalized training, credentials, and education (p. 15). When hiring processes follow this instruction, discrimination is less likely to occur. This finding is particularly important considering that Black women saw the least gains from equal employment policies. In fact, Black women’s managerial representation relative to their percentage in the labor market has stayed roughly the same since 1966.
In conclusion, Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey document that “high-wage industries are the most likely to show patterns of resegregation” (p. xxiii). Correspondingly, Blacks who do make it to managerial status primarily supervise other Blacks. Two implications from these findings are: (1) the labor market has become similar to racially-segregated neighborhoods and schools in the United States, and (2) the most contact across racial and gender groups is more likely to occur in low-wage occupations. This contact may trigger a unique form of “group threat” and lead to working-class Whites exhibiting social closure, capital hoarding, and a racist and reactionary backlash toward policies and/or people they perceive as a menace to their tenuous claim to a higher position in the socioeconomic hierarchy (Lewis-McCoy Reference Lewis-McCoy2014; Quillian Reference Quillian1996; Rushing, forthcoming).
The American Non-Dilemma
In The American Non-Dilemma, Nancy DiTomaso (2013) aims to understand why Whites do not view racial inequality as the moral dilemma that Gunnar Myrdal (Reference Myrdal1944) expected. Her goal is to understand how racial inequality is continuously reproduced in the labor market and how attitudes about opportunity structure, race, and work align with the current political landscape in America. To answer these questions, DiTomaso decides to focus exclusively on Whites aiming to complicate contemporary narratives about Whiteness as well as revitalize research on the working class. Accordingly, DiTomaso interviews nearly 250 Whites living in Tennessee, Ohio, and New Jersey between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five. She finds that a majority of Whites believe three primary narratives about opportunity structure and race: (1) racial discrimination no longer exists with the exception of a few individual racists; (2) Black behavior is the reason for their current position; and/or (3) Blacks actually receive more social benefits than Whites. Potentially more importantly, DiTomaso (2013) finds that most Whites say they are committed to color-blindness and believe their work effort is the reason for their current socioeconomic status.
DiTomaso, however, asserts that these explanations are used by Whites to justify and maintain their racial advantage. The interview data show that the life chances of Whites across the social class gradient “were substantially improved because of their access to social resources from family, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and other social institutions” (DiTomaso 2013, p. xxiii). DiTomaso argues that “much of the ‘action’ in reproducing racial inequality comes in the form of advantages, that is, in the positive things that whites do for each other” (p. xxiii). Her analysis shows that there are hidden social processes rooted in segregated neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces that lead to a series of unearned benefits for Whites.
Indeed, an important contribution of this work is that it complicates our racialized views of “oppositional culture” and “acting White” (Carter Reference Carter2005; Harris Reference Harris2011; Lewis and Pattison, Reference Lewis, Pattison and Ray2010; Lewis-McCoy Reference Lewis-McCoy2014; Ogbu Reference Ogbu1978; Tyson Reference Tyson2011) by showing how White youth and young adults embody oppositional culture. Moreover, “acting White” may actually mean being excused for missteps and given second chances to proceed in life with few consequences for individual action. DiTomaso reports many stories of “irresponsibility, inattention, and screwing up” that were covered by social resources (p. xxiv). She argues that “growing up in America takes different pathways for white versus black youths (or others) because the greater social resources available to whites make it easier to provide second chances, extra options, and the means to recover from unfortunate decisions” (p. xxiv). Respondents frequently justified this social process as “a ‘hand-up,’ not a ‘hand out’” (p. 25).
The American Non-Dilemma highlights the prevalence of social capital and opportunity hoarding and an acute form of White favoritism that permeates predominately White spaces. DiTomaso asserts that opportunity:
“does not accrue to those who demonstrate merit—many people gain access to advantages before they do so—but instead is the outcome of unequal opportunities that have been reserved for family members, friends, or acquaintances. These opportunities are passed along whether deserved or not and are often expropriated from companies that tout their commitment to being ‘an equal opportunity employer… Opportunity hoarding and access to social capital provide their beneficiaries with an inside edge—the edge of whiteness” (p. 10)
More importantly, the social and financial resources that Whites draw upon in the twenty-first century stem from accumulated resources from previous generations that accrued mostly from New Deal policies (Katznelson Reference Katznelson2006) and housing discrimination (Massey and Denton, Reference Massey and Denton1993; Woods Reference Woods2012). DiTomaso’s results parallel Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) by finding that the jobs most vulnerable to social capital hoarding are those that are not directly tied to a college degree or formalized skills.
One of the major contributions of The American Non-Dilemma is the way it complicates our views of sociopolitical Whiteness by highlighting how politicians focus on religious, racial, social class, and family issues to lure voters. DiTomaso delineates seven sociopolitical groups of Whites—religious conservatives (19%), working-class racists (12%), middle-class conservatives (4.5%), apolitical majority group members (37%), religious nonconservatives (4.5%), working-class liberals (6%), and rich White liberals (17%). These groups are in order from most to least racial resentment toward Blacks. In some regards, these groups follow a similar pattern in terms of their contact with non-Whites. For example, rich White liberals expressed the least form of racial resentment and group threat toward Blacks. In fact, they were quite supportive of structural changes. They were also the least likely group to interact with non-Whites, and when they did there was frequently a status differential. Rich White liberals, then, are also the group that provides some of the most support for group threat theory. Their attitudes changed when discussing Asians because Asians, who are more likely to be highly educated (Hsin and Xie, Reference Hsin and Xie2014; Xu et al. Reference Xu, Veloski, Hojat, Gonnella and Bacharach1993), posed the biggest threat to their status.
In conclusion, The American Non-Dilemma found that Myrdal’s (Reference Myrdal1944) statement regarding the “social paradox” of America, which is a form of cognitive dissonance between Whites saying they favor equal opportunity but actually working hard to provide special favoritism to similar others (Festinger and Kelley, Reference Festinger and Kelley1951), negates the narrative about work effort leading to upward mobility. DiTomaso argues that favoritism, rather than discrimination, is the main reason for the continued racial divide in the United States.
There may be two main critiques of this conclusion. First, some scholars, including Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey (2012), may take issue with the implication that if Blacks simply interact more with Whites, Whites might actually provide similar opportunities to Blacks (see DiTomaso 2013, p.10). Second, some race scholars who focus on discrimination may find fault with this conclusion by asserting that what DiTomaso calls favoritism is actually a nice way of describing modern discrimination and racism (Bertrand and Mullainathan, Reference Bertrand and Mullainathan2004; Bobo and Smith, Reference Bobo, Smith, Katkin, Landsman and Tyree1998; Pager Reference Pager2007; Royster Reference Royster2003; Thomas Reference Thomas1993). Rushing (Forthcoming) states, “Affirmation of the status quo means reproducing privileges, including networking and social closure; and legitimating inequities as a by-product of individual lifestyles, abilities, and choices. Categories such as race, class, and residence allow the mechanisms of closure and exclusion to operate in an environment of laissez-faire discrimination” (pp. 25-26). Considering that DiTomaso (2013) did not report respondents mentioning assisting even the few Blacks they knew in the way they helped other Whites, favoritism may indeed need to be categorized as a contemporary form of discrimination and racism based not only on White inclusion but on non-White exclusion.
Theoretical Connections and Omissions
Besides focusing on aspects of the U.S. labor market, these books have implications for scholars interested in Whiteness and social-class hoarding practices, intersectionality and normative institutional arrangements, contact and group threat theories, as well as social psychological processes, social class identification, and the growing social class divide. First, both books illuminate how social class and status operate through the continued significance of hegemonic Whiteness (Hughey Reference Hughey2010, Reference Hughey2012; Lewis Reference Lewis2004; Milkie et al., Reference Milkie, Warner, Ray, McLeod, Lawler and Schwalbe2013; Ray and Rosow, Reference Ray and Rosow2012). Absent from both books, however, is any formal connection to contemporary theories on Whiteness (Hughey Reference Hughey2010, Reference Hughey2012; Lewis Reference Lewis2004). The power of Whiteness is maintained through a set of ideologies and practices that manifest either consciously or unconsciously to structure a set of privileges, advantages, and preferences that intuitively discriminate against those who do not embody an ideal White racial identity (Hughey Reference Hughey2010, Reference Hughey2012; Ray and Rosow, Reference Ray and Rosow2012). Whites seem to justify their success through a colorblind lens (Bobo and Smith, Reference Bobo, Smith, Katkin, Landsman and Tyree1998; Hunt Reference Hunt2007). Leo Festinger and Harold Kelley (Reference Festinger and Kelley1951) assert that individuals aim to hold their beliefs in alignment to avoid disharmony, even if that means attributing stereotypes to outgroup members who do not align with the established script for their group. In the case of The American Non-Dilemma, we see that Whites not only think Blacks are less worthy (aligning with cognitive dissonance theory), they simultaneously think they are more worthy of a “hand-up” (extending the literature on cognitive dissonance theory). That is, Whites see themselves as both superior to, and paternalistic saviors of, people of color. Simply put, DiTomaso employs the technique of explaining inequality with “anything but racism” (Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi, Reference Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi2001). Rather, her findings seem to speak to a unique form of “racialized White favoritism.”
Second, a glaring omission from both books, Documenting Desegregation in particular, is the lack of attention to the intersectionality framework as a means to explain the presented findings. Although Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey (2012) cite Kimberlé Crenshaw (Reference Crenshaw1989) (see page 267), they never mention the word “intersectionality” despite explicitly saying that “the central goal of this book is to describe the trajectories of U.S. private-sector employment opportunities for white men, black men, white women, and black women” (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012, p. 3). The intersectionality framework (Chafetz Reference Chafetz1997; Choo and Ferree, Reference Choo and Ferree2010; Collins 2004; Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989; McCall Reference McCall2005; Ray Reference Ray2014) can be a useful theoretical and methodological tool for broadening the breadth of research on labor market outcomes. As Documenting Desegregation shows, lumping Black men and Black women together, or White men and White women together, does not allow for the divergent patterns across racial and gender groups to be ascertained. Given the lower rate of marriage among Black women (Banks Reference Banks2011), the intersectionality framework becomes even more vital for understanding the racialized, gendered, and classed differences among Black women (Ray Reference Ray2014), particularly since Black women saw the least gains during the Post-Civil Rights Era.
These books also draw attention to the role of racial and gender composition as an important normative institutional arrangement where inequality manifests differently for racial and gender groups. Normative institutional arrangements are boundaries that shape social interactions and establish control over social environments (Britton Reference Britton2003; Gerson and Peiss, Reference Gerson and Peiss1985; Hays Reference Hays1994; Ray and Rosow, Reference Ray and Rosow2010), and constitute a structural mechanism that should be of importance to scholars interested in labor market markets, intersectionality, or social psychology. Normative institutional arrangements identify social contexts, such as the number of White male managers (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012), where certain behaviors such as favoritism (DiTomaso 2013) are more or less acceptable and certain structures hold individuals more or less accountable for their treatment of others. Moreover, normative institutional arrangements focus on the accepted arrangement of relationships within social institutions, such as the high level of racial and gender homogeneity in the workplace.
Third, these books speak to the relevancy of empirical research on contact and group threat theories (Bobo and Hutchings, Reference Bobo and Hutchings1996; Dixon Reference Dixon2006; Jackman and Crane, Reference Jackman and Crane1986; Quillian Reference Quillian1995, Reference Quillian1996) as well as social psychological research on relative deprivation (Bobo Reference Bobo1983). In particular, they show how contact does not lead to reducing inequality. If anything, contact actually leads to more inequality. Contact theory asserts that a sizable proportion of a minority group offers opportunities for contact between majority and minority group members (Allport Reference Allport1954). Although contact theory posits that equal status contact may reduce prejudice and group threat, it seems that race may trump social class in individuals’ views of which frame they draw upon to make inferences about group superiority and inferiority (Bobo and Hutchings, Reference Bobo and Hutchings1996; Feagin Reference Feagin2013). In other words, while working-class Whites share a social class location with some Blacks, they view the racial hierarchy as more salient to how they make sense of social relations between groups.
Blacks and other minorities (though the books focus less on Latinos and Asians) pose a group threat to Whites (Bobo and Zubrinsky, Reference Bobo and Zubrinsky1996). This group threat is acute for working-class Whites who experience a form of relative deprivation by feeling as though they deserve more than to be in a similar socioeconomic position as Blacks. Public narratives about Affirmative Action and reverse discrimination have even led some Whites to believe that they experience more discrimination than Blacks (Norton and Sommers, Reference Norton and Sommers2011).
Finally, these books have implications for scholars interested in the growing social class divide in America (Bobo et al., Reference Bobo, Johnson, Suh, Bobo, Oliver, Johnson and Valenzuela2000; Hunt and Ray, Reference Hunt and Ray2012). What is very evident from both books is that there is a shrinking segment of “rich White liberals.” As DiTomaso (2013) highlights, however, rather than working-class Whites viewing non-Whites in a similar socioeconomic position as allies, they view them as competitive threats to their social and economic resources and interests. Documenting Desegregation shows that there is a growing divide in Black America as well. The labor market outcomes for college-educated Blacks, though different from their White college-educated counterparts, speak to recent work on Blacks’ social class identification. Matthew Hunt and Rashawn Ray (Reference Hunt and Ray2012) found a growing gap between the social class profiles of college-educated Blacks compared to less college-educated Blacks. Yet, despite the increases in Blacks’ socioeconomic status from the 1970s through the 2000s, they found little evidence of change over time in the relationship between various socioeconomic status characteristics and social class identification. Collectively, these studies highlight that while the experiences in the labor market have improved for some individuals, there are many Americans who have felt and experienced a reversal in their socioeconomic standing.
In conclusion, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is heralded as the landmark decision that finally corrected the racial wrongs of the United States. Documenting Desegregation and The American Non-Dilemma, however, show that racial inequality is alive and well in the twenty-first century. In fact, these books document that racial inequality may be increasing in some areas. And though they fail to name it directly, these books also illuminate the importance of incorporating an intersectional perspective. Blacks and women are not monolithic groups. There are important dividing diffuse and status characteristics that differentially shape labor market outcomes. Likewise, Whites are not a uniform group, and may, in fact, be more complex that the literature suggests (see Sidanius et al., Reference Sidanius, Pratto and Bobo1996). Moving forward, research on labor market outcomes should aim to move past the Black-White dichotomy by collecting viable data on Latinos and Asians and by utilizing theories on Whiteness, intersectionality, and group dynamics.
