Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader

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Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader | The New African American Inequality | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

The New African American Inequality

The interpretation of twentieth-century African American inequality remains fraught with controversy. Have barriers to African American economic progress crumbled or remained stubbornly resistant to fundamental change? Has the story been similar for women and men? What mechanisms have fostered or retarded change? Those questions matter not only because they cut so close to the heart of twentieth-century American history but also because they bear on important public-policy choices in the present. In this article, we rely primarily on census data assembled in the University of Minnesota's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) to examine the controversial topic of black inequality. Our answer to the questions the data pose does not support either the optimistic or the pessimistic version of African American history. But it does not come down in an illusory middle, either. Rather, it recasts the issue by arguing that after World War II the nature of black inequality altered fundamentally. Inequality, we contend, worked differently at the end of the twentieth century than at its start or midpoint. At the start of the twentieth century, pervasive, overt racial discrimination barred blacks from most jobs, denied them equal education, and disenfranchised them politically. During the second half of the twentieth century, slowly and sometimes in the face of violent opposition, the situation of African Americans changed dramatically. Courts and Congress—prodded by a massive social movement, national embarassment on the world stage during the Cold War, and the electoral concerns of urban politicians—extended political and civil rights. Affirmative action and new "welfare rights" contributed to the extension of social citizenship—guarantees of food, shelter, medical care, and education. By the end of the century, legal and formal barriers that had excluded blacks from most institutions and from the most favorable labor market positions had largely disappeared. Black poverty had plummeted, and black political and economic achievements were undeniable.¹	1
Yet, for many people—both white and black—the sense remained that racism still pervaded American society, operating in both old and new ways, removing some barriers but erecting others. Observers found discrimination in racial profiling by police; in verbal slips by members of Congress; in disproportionate poverty, incarceration, and capital punishment; and in institutional and public policies that disadvantaged blacks. Racism, they maintained, kept African Americans residentially segregated and clustered disproportionately in the least desirable jobs, if not out of the work force altogether, and circumscribed their opportunities for education, high incomes, and the accumulation of wealth. Far more often than whites, African Americans lived in poverty. Most black children were born out of wedlock, and a very large fraction of them grew up poor. And in the 1980s and 1990s, some indices of black economic progress began to reverse direction.	2
Two books captured the debate over black progress. In Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, the political scientist Andrew Hacker stressed the continued force of racism in American life. In America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, written partly in response to Hacker, the historian Stephan Thernstrom and the political scientist Abigail Thernstrom emphasized its attenuation. Hacker highlighted the continuing obstacles confronting blacks; the Thernstroms focused on black progress. Hacker intended his analysis to buttress affirmative action; the Thernstroms wanted to undercut its legitimacy. Economic inequality was only one among several topics considered in each book. But it was crucial—fundamental to the story of progress or of its absence. Was the glass half empty or half full? Could past black achievement be projected into the future, or had it stalled, leaving an enduring categorical inequality etched deeply into the substrate of American life?²	. . .

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