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Race, Class, and Labor Markets: The White Working Class and Racial Composition of U.S. Metropolitan Areas,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1006/ssre.2000.0693Get rights and content

Abstract

Because divisions caused by racism are presumed to weaken the working class and because racism is more apparent in local areas with relatively large Black populations, labor market proportion Black is expected to be positively associated with class inequality among Whites. However, Black population size has also been systematically linked to White privilege across a wide array of indicators. In this article, I test the effects of labor market proportion Black on Black–White and class inequality for men and women using hierarchical linear models with 1990 data from U.S. metropolitan areas. The analysis demonstrates that labor markets with larger Black populations have greater class inequality among White men (not women), but also greater relative White-over-Black advantages across class levels, male and female—and these race effects are substantially larger than the class effects. The results are thus consistent with a contradictory position for the White working class with regard to racism.

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      Research on lynching patterns confirm this trend; lynchings occurred at much greater rates in locations where there was a higher concentration of Black residents (Tolnay et al., 1996). Evidence specific to labor market opportunities also supports this perspective (Cohen, 1998, 2001; Huffman and Cohen, 2004; Tomaskovic-Devey and Roscigno, 1996). Greater concentration of minorities in the local labor market increases the degree of racial/ethnic segregation (Huffman and Cohen, 2004).

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    I thank Reeve Vanneman for his guidance and suggestions and Suzanne Bianchi, Randy Capps, William Evans, William Falk, Matt Huffman, Bart Landry, David Meyer, Mike Tyler, and the anonymous reviewers at Social Science Research for helpful comments on drafts of this article.

    ☆☆

    Address correspondence and reprint requests to Philip N. Cohen, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100. E-mail: [email protected].

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