Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this article we posit that racial discrimination is not uniform across the U.S. labor market. While it is likely that patterns of racial discrimination occur more in some types of jobs more than others, little empirical research exists which examines the effect of race across segmented labor markets. Incorporating two decades of comparable data sets from GSS data, this article revisits William J. Wilson¡¯s hypothesis that the significance of race in determining labor market outcomes is declining. We examine the effect of race within two dissimilar labor segments over time, dividing the labor market into technique versus social-skill orientated segments. Using this theoretically useful dichotomy, we examine if the net effect of race (African-American and White men) on occupational prestige from the 1970s to the 1990s has declined. Empirical results indicate that this theoretically driven dichotomy is meaningful. Our multivariate analyses show that the net effect of race is different in each labor market. This suggests that racial discrimination against African Americans is not uniform across the entire labor market, but instead differentiately manifested with various labor market segments. Overall, our findings partially support Wilson¡¯s thesis indicating that while the effect of race is no longer a significant indicator of occupational prestige by the 1990s in a technique oriented job segment, it remains a significant predictive variable within ¡®social-skill orientated¡¯ job segment, even when controlling for a range of social class and structural variables.