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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

HISTORICAL CRISES AND THE'PERSISTENCE OF
INEQUALITY IN AN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL STATE
-- A CASE STUDY:

EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, AND INEQUALITY

presented by ‘

Gwendolyn Marie Taylor

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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Ph 0 Do chree in Education

flflwc E War/WV

Major professor

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HISTORICAL CRISES AND THE PERSISTENCE OF
INEQUALITY IN AN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL STATE
—- A CASE STUDY:

EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, AND INEQUALITY

By

Gwendolyn M. Taylor

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Administration and Higher Education

1980

ABSTRACT
HISTORICAL CRISES AND THE PERSISTENCE 0F
INEQUALITY IN AN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL STATE
-- A CASE STUDY:
EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION, AND INEQUALITY
By

Gwendolyn M. Taylor

This research examines patterns of inequity present
during and after particular economic and social crises
within the United States, an advanced industrial
nation-state. This study emanates from a broadened
definition of crisis which encompasses economic, social,
and political forces and its applicability to selected
historical periods of inequality.

Focusing on the impact of declining energy
resources, this study includes a discussion of, and an
argument for, alternatives to the present structure of
education/training and employment in capitalist
development and production. The impact of declining
energy resources is examined not as an autonomous factor,
but as an analytical element in determining what
structural, social, and economic changes follow in the
wake of new technologies, and what problems society and

its political system must attempt to solve.

To my son, Che' Michael-Justin Ghods,

and my daughter, Bri Karis-Dustin Ghods.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express to my doctoral committee members
my deepest appreciation for their support and guidance.
Thank you, Drs. Howard Hickey, L. Eudora Pettigrew, and
Richard W. Thomas. I also wish to express my gratitude to
Dr. Robert L. Green, President, University of the
District of Columbia and former Dean, College of Urban
Development, for institutional support afforded me.

Numerous friends have supported my efforts to
complete my graduate studies. My thanks to each of you.
And a special note of my warmest appreciation to my
friend, sociologist Ruth L. Harris, who has given so
unselfishly of her time and patience throughout the
completion of my degree program.

I have had the most fortunate experience of having
had Dr. Melvin C. Buschman serve as Chairperson of my
graduate education. His wisdom, scholarship, and
foremost, his sense of fairness and unwavering support
have always been above and beyond any expectations I
could have ever had. As I am among the last of the many,
many doctoral candidates that Dr. Buschman graduates, as

he is retiring from years of service to the students of

111

Michigan State University; on behalf of all his graduate
students, thank you and God bless.

To my mother, Mrs. Lucille Taylor Lewis, and to my
father, Mr. Garnie L. Taylor, Sr., I love you . . . and I

love you ever more for your faith in me.

iv

CHAPTER

I

II

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: STATEMENT OF THE

Historical Background . . . .
Social Costs of the Decline in
Significance of the Study . .

Organization of the Study . .

GLOBAL PATTERNS OF INEQUALITY:
TO THE EVALUATION OF CRISES .

Introduction . . . . . . . . .
A Crisis of Growth . . . . . .

How Much Can People Change? .

PROBLEM . .

AN APPROACH

Global Inequality: Developed and

Underdeveloped Nations . . . .

World War I: The Scramble for Power . . .

The Between—War Years . . . .

World War II: The Emergence of

the

United States as a Dominant Force . . . .

United States Hegemony . . . .

PAGE

. 1

l
7
10
11

16
16
17
20

22
26
31

32
35

CHAPTER

III

IV

THE IMPACT OF SELECTED HISTORICAL CRISES ON

AMERICAN PATTERNS OF INEQUALITY . o
IntrOdUCtion o o o o o o o o o o o 0

Crisis 1: The American Revolution .

Crisis 2: The Civil War/Reconstruction

Crisis 3: World War I . . . . . . .
Crisis 4: The Great Depression . . .
Crisis 5: World War II . . . . . . .
Crisis 6: The Civil Rights Movement

Since the 19608 . . . . . . . . . .

THE CONTEMPORARY ENERGY CRISIS AND
THE PERSISTENCE OF INEQUALITY . . .

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . .
Competition Over Scarce Resources .
Energy and Employment . . . . . . .

Work as an Indicator of Assimilation
and as an Index of Social Status . .

Economic Change . . . . . . . . . .
Barriers to the Rewards of Education
Blacks and the Job Ceiling . . . . .
Equity and Energy Futures . . . . .

An Uncertain Future . . . . . . . .

vi

PAGE

36
36
37
44
51
56
58
63
84

86
86
87
97

99
101
107
109
116
128

CHAPTER PAGE

V PERSISTENT INEQUALITY: EMPLOYMENT
AND EDUCATION 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 131

Affirmative Action Review . . . . . . . . . . 131

COHC1u810n O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 149

BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 168

vii

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: STATEMENT
OF THE PROBLEM

This study presents an analysis, from a
social-forecasting perspective, of the extent to which
historical crises affect various forms of inequality. The
key dimensions discussed are education and employment.
Included is an analysis of the formulation of public
policies surrounding these social and economic variables.

Within an advanced industrial nation-state, a crises
is that set of forces which interrupt the relative
stability of political and economic conditions within a
society. Crises often cause relationships within and
between groups and institutions to become fluid. Change
may occur in a positive or negative direction; inequality

may be decreased or increased.

Historical Background

Educational institutions have historically been an
integral part of the change process. Educational
processes during the American Revolution for European
immigrants and during the Reconstruction period for freed

blacks are important examples. Although involving two

2
very distinct populations, they shared two common
elements. First, the education provided to both
populations was used by advantaged industrialists and
professional educators to maximize economic production
while minimizing social disruption. Second, such
education served to formalize a hierarchical system based
on class and race.

Under pressure from educational reformers who
represented the views of a growing bourgeoisie, the
movement for public education in the United States began
in the industrializing Northern states (Bowles, 1972;
Carnoy, 1974). Northern industrialists saw schooling as a
means to offset the disruptive social conditions of
factory life; furthermore, educational institutions could
provide the moral guidance and control which the family
and church had supplied in precapitalist society (Katz,
1970; 93-112). Schooling was imposed on a working class
which viewed schooling, accurately, as largely serving
the children of higher-income groups (Katz, 1970; 48-50).
The South did not participate in the public-education
movement until Northern capital took control of Southern
institutions.

Public education, as it developed in the United
States, was the reformers' answer to the crisis in the
traditional social structure caused by the growth of
industry. Schooling was seen by reformers and

industrialists alike as promoting their common vision of

3
an ordered, purposeful, and progressive society. In this
view, schooling also helped preserve a class structure in
the face of economic and social change.

In addition to the system of public schooling,
church groups organized public—school societies for
educating the poor. Similar to groups in England, these
societies formed the model for American and British
missionary efforts in Africa and Asia. The purpose of
these societies was clear, as noted by Katz (1970; 93):

With minimal administrative expense,
scrupulous financial integrity, and a
commendable efficiency, the [New York
Public School] Society maintained for
decades an extensive network of schools
that taught thousands of children a year.

But make no mistake about it: This was
a class system of education. It provided a
vehicle for the efforts of one class to
civilize another and thereby insure that
society would remain tolerable, orderly,
and safe.

Although education was and is a dominant factor in
American society, the institution has very often been
inefficient, and has even decreased social opportunity
for many Americans. This had been particularly evident in
the case of black Americans. As the emphasis on education
as a precondition for many occupations grew, groundwork
was being laid for the education-based occupational
stratification of 20th-century America.

Whereas capitalist "humanitarian" values ultimately

prevailed over slavery, the treatment of native

4
Americans, blacks, and other nonwhite groups did not
improve with the expansion of capitalism. Blacks moved
from slavery to sharecropping; instead of belonging to
the landowner, they belonged to the merchant. Even with
emancipation, their political rights were short-lived and
their economic rights were severely limited.

The emancipation of slaves created a large rural
labor force whose experiences were predominantly
agricultural. The Civil War had left the South in
economic ruin. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Land, established in 1865, was the major form
of aid offered to freed blacks.

The Freedmen's Bureau was set up to improve the
economic and political position of blacks during
Reconstruction. The Bureau distributed food, clothing,
and other supplies and provided job placements, homestead
land, and educational facilities. One of the Bureau's
major successes was to provide schools and teachers for
freed blacks. Most of the teachers were missionaries from
the mission societies.

Increased political power accrued to blacks via the
right to vote and federal occupation of the South. They
were also benefited by legislation requiring the states
to provide schooling. (Before the war, there was no state
responsibility for schooling.)

Reconstruction was a revolutionary period in the

South, particularly in education. Although it was brief,

5

it produced some black colleges, primarily for teacher
training, and these colleges in turn produced a
significant number of black American scholars (Newby &
Tyack, 1971; 194). But education during Reconstruction
depended on the support of the North if it was to foster
radical social and economic change in the South. The
reality was that Northern capitalists were more
interested in exploiting Southern resources than in
promoting black liberation. Although the education
provided to blacks, especially by missionaries, did in
part focus on liberating blacks from attitudes of
slavery, it was also geared toward getting blacks to act
as a political force against Southern conservatives in a
period when Northern capitalists were using black votes
to maintain control over the Southern political
structure. Had the conservatives collapsed as a political
force, it is unlikely that the missionaries would have
turned to teaching blacks to struggle against Northern
industrialist forces.

When conservatives regained political control in the
18703, they consistently curtailed black schooling. Since
education sponsored by missionaries was the outgrowth of
an industrial society and industrial interests opposed to
the interests of conservative whites, schooling for
blacks was seen by conservatives as threatening the
plantation system.

Mass schooling was dysfunctional for the planters.

6
Indeed, with the advent of the sharecropping system,
previous arguments for the education of blacks lost their
meaning. Schooling for blacks during Reconstruction was
supported by the theory that they would be part of a new
social order in which white and black would be equal and
not socially stratified by race, but under tenant
farming, an educated labor force which understood
interest rates and simple accounting methods would be a
liability to the system rather than an asset.

Thus, Reconstruction was an interlude during which
Northern industrialists were able to make important
inroads into what was left of the South's resources. It
was not possible for Northern concerns to take complete
political control of the South, so they accepted Southern
administration of the South, and hence, Southern
definition of the black role. Even where Northern
industry determined black conditions, blacks remained at
the bottom of the occupational scale.

The economic imperatives that led whites to define
the black person as capable of only simple manUal labor
delimited the schooling provided to blacks. If blacks
were manual workers, they were to be given the limited
skills necessary to perform unskilled work functions.
Thus, capitalist needs defined people's roles in
industrializing America. Blacks were needed first as
agricultural labor and later as unskilled labor. These

functions (after the Civil War), defined largely by white

7

Northern industrialists, fixed the black at the lowest

rung on the economic and human ladder.

Social Costs of the Decline
in EnergyiResoggggg

The impact of crises upon inequality is exemplified
in the multifaceted contemporary issue of social costs
related to declining energy resources. This study focuses
on the impact of declining energy resources. Included are
a discussion of, and arguments for, alternatives to the
present structure of education, training, and employment.
The impact of declining energy resources is examined not
as an autonomous factor but as an element for analyzing
structural, social, and economic changes that follow in
the wake of new technologies, and attendant problems
society must attempt to solve.

The study presents this conceptual analysis using
the framework of social forecasting as a way of
"ordering" the bewildering number of perspectives on
macrohistorical change. An effort is made to empirically
identify the substantive character of structural changes
in society as these derive from the changing nature of
the economy, and the role of theoretical knowledge in
determining the direction of social innovation and
change.

This study follows from a broad definition of crisis

which encompasses economic, social, and political forces.

8
Selected historical periods are used to demonstrate the
juxtaposition of two inimical segments of society. In the
United States, blacks as a group represent the have-nots;
the haves, by-and-large, are white.

The conflict between the two, although it has
shifted from the open confrontations of the 19603,
remains active. Today, it is manifested in the struggle
to control political processes, jobs, educational
institutions, limited housing, better residential areas,
and even quality food.

For the most part, minority racial groups are
physically distinguishable from the Caucasian majority,
and race has historically served as a barrier to full
assimilation. Members of the majority disproportionately
control the resources vital to minority groups' survival.
In the world of work, this is well illustrated by the
fact that while white males are only 56% of the total
labor force, they are fully 80% of the managers and
administrators, and 73% of the personnel and
labor-relations workers (United States Census Bureau,
1970). It may therefore be unrealistic to expect that
white "gatekeepers" will always hire, manage, and treat
nonwhite workers in a color-blind fashion (which would
necessarily erode whites' domination of higher—status
positions).

As the economy of the country responds more fully to

limits in energy resources, racial disparities become

even more pronounced: Race relations tend to deteriorate
further with intensified competition for declining
resources, including employment opportunities.

The great postwar era of American economic expansion
-- fueled by military spending at home and the primacy of
the dollar abroad -- placated domestic discontent with a
cornucopia of consumer goods. That era appears to be
drawing to a close. The prognosis for the remaining
decades of this century is for slower growth,
simultaneous inflation and unemployment, and occasional
shocks to the system -- environmental crises, energy
shortages, international monetary disorders, and periods
of political and corporate discontent.

The expansionist philosophy which is so integral to
American society and capitalism (which is predicated on
growth and expansion), may be seriously challenged by
such limits. As economist Robert Heilbroner (1978) notes:

The constraints of the environment, which
are the great determining element in the
era into which we are moving, suggest that
we will have perhaps 25 years of "safe,"
although increasingly difficult, growth,
followed by curtailment that would promise
to be more and more drastic . . . [and]
would pose a truly historic challenge to
capitalism.

Such challenges are especially evident in the
current energy crisis. Not only must external conditions

change for people in a way that makes them willing to

develop new institutions, but also, people must reject

10
their relationship with existing structures and actively
strive to change these structures.

Historically, energy-resource crises have afforded
opportunities for competing groups to vie for controlling
advantage over natural resources. A major point of
inquiry for this study is the relationship between
declining energy resources and the persistence of
stratification based on economic, social, and political
factors.

Initially, patterns of inequality are examined on a
global basis. Because of the significance of global
networks in an interdependent world, patterns of
inequality between developed and underdeveloped regions
are examined to provide a global perspective.

However, the major focus of the study is upon the
United States, with particular reference to black
Americans. Selected national historical crises serve as a
backdrop against which persisting patterns of inequality
are examined. While data referenced apply specifically to
black Americans, inferences are often drawn for other

minority groups.

Significance of the Study

Academic discussion and research on the decline of
fossil fuels in the United States traditionally has been

the purview of the natural scientist. Although natural

11

scientists allude to the social implications of effects
of an energy decline, the particulars of social
engineering/planning have traditionally not rated among
their major foci.

Although a few social scientists have addressed how
future lifestyles will be affected by energy-resource
limitations, their theoretical frameworks rarely
incorporate the dependent effects which would inevitably
result from a decline of abundant, high-quality, cheap
energy supplies in an advanced industrial nation-state.
Inherent in such a void is inability to plan for the
construction of future scenarios in a way which would
maintain civil order in times of scarcity and/or of
extreme inequality of distribution.

It is imperative that social scientists begin to
actively involve themselves in social engineering and the
formulation of public policy to deal with the limitations
of certain kinds of economic resources and with changing

values.

Organization of the Study

Chapter II examines the relationship between
development and underdevelopment within the framework of
selected historical crises. The acquisition and control
of energy resources is viewed as a global concern for

both less developed and advanced industrial

12
nation—states. The decline of energy resources has a
significant impact on each. The problems of
unemployment/underemployment and inadequate education and
job-skills training are inseparable from the problems of
poverty. Conditions of uneven development are further
exacerbated by the decline of energy resources.
Industrial nation-states are being forced to drastically
reorient themselves to develop alternative social
structures, but as of yet, they have not significantly
altered traditional patterns of inequality. Globally, the
unequal distribution of resources is endemic to the
capitalist economies of advanced industrial
nation-states. This phenomenon tends to be accentuated by
declining energy resources: Energy-resource disparities
appear to be accompanied by unequal distribution of power
and privilege. Thus, the resolution of energy-resource
disparity alone may not significantly alter overall
patterns of inequality.

Chapter III analyzes the evolution of distinct
patterns of inequality within industrial orders, focusing
specifically on the United States. During selected
historical periods of economic crisis, patterns of
occupational and educational inequality have tended to
survive during and after turbulent upheavals. That is,
certain groups appear to remain static in terms of
relative social position during and after such crises.

Why is this so? How and why have dominant groups managed

13

to consistently survive critical periods, in contrast
with less privileged groups? What mechanisms of advantage
have been at their disposal? How are these same groups
managing to persist within the context of the current
energy decline? Chapter III addresses these questions
through the examination of selected historical crises.
Chapter IV considers the impact of declining energy
resources on changing American lifestyle patterns in an
era of "scarcity" rather than "abundance." Specifically,
changing patterns of employment and education result not
only in alterations of available employment
opportunities, but also in changing qualifications (e.g.,
education/training) for jobs. The responses of employment
and education structures to the decreasing availability
of energy resouces are often accompanied by increasing
inequality. There is a growing need for
continuing-education efforts to actively retrain many
displaced, unemployed, and underemployed adult workers.
As the unemployment rolls increase in certain areas, and
as certain jobs become obsolete, a disproportionate
percentage of out-of-work adults will be members of
minorities. Adding the factor of declining employment
opportunities for the population as a whole, it appears
that the current crisis again is disproportionately
affecting minorities, particularly black Americans.
Chapter IV analyzes the extent to which skilled and

semi-skilled segments of the labor force are growing

14

during the current decline of cheap, abundant energy
resources. At the same time, there appears to be a
significant decrease in the availability of marginal
employment opportunities. Already, new technologies whose
production methods are energy intensive have eliminated
many job positions. If the historical patterns are
repeated, those disproportionately affected by the
elimination of job categories will be the minorities and
the poor. Many of the newly developing employment
positions reflect familiar stratification patterns. As
educational institutions respond to the need for training
more semi-skilled and skilled workers, the qualifications
and prerequisites for such positions tend to become
stiffer. Training opportunities for emerging occupational
positions within energy-intensive areas of the economy
are so far disproportionately dominated by the majority
group.

Chapter V synthesizes and analyzes various education
and employment forecasts for adults derived from
implications of current and projected public policies for
the socially and economically disadvantaged in the United
States, with its changing advanced industrial order.
These implications also have significant relevance for
the society as a whole. The more advantaged sectors of
the population pay an economic cost when not all sectors
of the population can contribute to the maintenance of

society. Possible implications of social policies are

15
discussed, with major features salient to the social and
economic conditions of black Americans identified. If
such structural features remain unchecked, the results of
uneven and disproportionate proCesses could have adverse

consequences for the whole of American society.

CHAPTER II
GLOBAL PATTERNS OF INEQUALITY:

AN APPROACH TO THE EVALUATION
OF CRISES

Introduction

Global inequality as a result of economic,
political, and social crises in developed or
underdeveloped countries does not evolve in isolation.
These developments have global implications and global
consequences. Therefore, before a specific discussion of
inequality within the United States is presented, an
understanding of how patterns of inequality have globally
manifested themselves over time is developed to make the
United States case study more meaningful. This is done by
examining the relationship between developed and
underdeveloped countries during the period from the rise
of mercantile capitalism to the most recent "energy
crisis."

The major organizing theme throughout this
discussion will be the operational definition of crisis,
which is: that singular force or combination of economic,
political, and social forces which sets into motion a

period of relative disequilibrium, during which existing

16

17

patterns of inequality can be either ameliorated or
reinforced.

Specific crises to be examined within a global
context are World War I and World War II. These crises
sufficiently demonstrate that throughout periods of acute
economic, political, and social disequilibrium, developed
countries were able to perpetuate their dominant
positions vis-é-vis underdeveloped countries. A major
vehicle for the accomplishment of the domination process
was education. The present chapter defines how the
hierarchical structure of global inequality has persisted

without significant change.

A Crisis of Growth

There can perhaps be no more meaningful, nor more
pragmatically necessary, change in the world today than
toward a more just and humane world order. This is at
once a great challenge and a great opportunity. Today,
multiple crises in the global community leave many people
feeling frustrated and powerless. However, rather than
being a cause for despair, this situation can be analyzed
as symptomatic of a crisis of growth.

This crisis can be interpreted as a result of the
development of human institutions failing to keep pace
with rapid evolution of global interdependencies. A

period of crisis can be a period of imminent breakdown or

18

of imminent breakthrough. Beneath the surface discontent,
confusion, and upheaval is an opportunity for the advent
of a positive thrust forward in human history.

Today, conditions exist for choosing a positive
direction in the making of history. There is a growing
consciousness of global interdependence. Many critical
economic, social, and political problems do not exist in
isolation; the impacts of such problems often are
distributive among various nation-states. Moreover, there
is decreasing tolerance of domination by advanced
industrial sectors over less-developed nations. In
response to these changing perspectives, various
alternatives are being explored, including education for
changing world order systems.

According to Coles (1969; 14), "a country can only
develop when due regard is given to the improvement of
its human resources." Educated and informed citizens are
essential to development efforts in an increasingly
dynamic world. Concerns include the dramatic increase in
the application of technology and the related need for
trained personnel; the growing mobility of people; the
impact of the urban community; inflation in the economy;
and the need for continuing education. These factors
demand increased emphasis on the capabilities of the
educational enterprise.

Knowles (1970; 34) addresses the need for an

educated and informed adult population:

19

The society of our age cannot wait for the

next generation to solve its problems. Time

is running out too fast! Our fate rests

with the intelligence, skill and good will

of those who are now the citizen rulers.

The instruments by which their abilities as

citizen-rulers can be improved is adult

education.
This urgency further compounds the complexity and global
scope of contemporary crises. The rate at which problems
such as population, hunger, and depletion of resources
grow often appears overwhelming.

Developing countries often respond to the urgency of
their national maladies via the education of their
citizens. However, educational institutions provide only
a framework to facilitate the achievement of goals.
Although social and political structures are essential to
the achievement of human goals, such interfering factors
as greed, materialism, rising expectations, corruption,
ignorance, and apathy are not likely to disappear simply
because certain institutions are expanded.

Developing countries have traditionally invested
heavily in education. Historically, their educational
policy has been established by European countries for
their own capitalist self-interests. European powers used
education to effect changes that solidified their
influence and control over the indigenous people.

Although such policies were not always efficient or

beneficial, they did reinforce conditions of economic and

20

cultural dependence. Patterns of modernization which
evolved within this dependent context benefited few of
the domestic peoples (Adams, 1971; Prosser, 1967;
Bodenheumer, 1971).

There is a significant correlation between
illiteracy and backwardness in knowledge on the one hand,
and technological and economic development on the other.
National progress is retarded when illiteracy and
unskilled manpower abound, exacerbating conditions of
inequality via inability to maintain or develop resources

needed for development -- e.g., skilled labor.

How Much Can People Change?

The greatest problem confronting the human species
is not the hydrogen bomb, nor the population explosion.
Rather, it is the question of how much change human
beings can accept, absorb, and assimilate, and at what
rate. As Smith (1970) notes: "To learn to live with
change, to influence change so that it becomes social
progress to humanize our institutions and our
environment, would appear high on the list of future
priorities." As society becomes more specialized and
segmented, change becomes ever more closely equated with
basic survival. .

The developmental framework of Abraham Maslow is a

particularly helpful paradigm in understanding the

21

historical growth of human society. Maslow's theory of
human development postulates that human needs are
basically hierarchical in nature. "Basic" needs must be
reasonably met before meaning or "being" needs can be
addressed. Deprivation at the level of basic needs almost
always precludes actualization of the higher levels of
potential. Concomitantly, the reasonable satisfaction or
fulfillment of basic needs permits a resumption of growth
(Maslow, 1968).

Based on Maslow's theory, the present research
establishes four considerations for application in
assessment of 20th-century human crises and the viability
of the future:

1. With approximately two-thirds of the world's
people struggling to meet minimal physical survival needs
for food, shelter, and health care, and with the priority
of almost all nation-states being security needs, a major
proportion of world citizens exists at a relatively early
stage of human development.

2. It is possible to view the present sense of
global malaise and frustration as related to the
deprivation of two basic needs on a mass scale. The
potential for greater human development has been thwarted
by the inability to identify and address basic survival
and security needs (the first two Stages in Maslow's
human-development model).

3. The situation does not reflect shortcomings in

22

basic human nature. A concerted, cooperative effort to
meet basic world needs can increase the potential for
human development to higher stages of actualization.

4. The successful negotiation of the stages of human
development is greatly affected by social institutions:
There is a need for a healthy social framework within
which to maximize human potential. The lack of such
global infrastructures in an interdependent world
presents the greatest obstacle to maximum human
development.

A crisis of growth has been endemic to the process
of global institutional change. This change has not kept
pace with growing global interdependencies and
competition. As the gap widens between the
more-advantaged and less-advantaged sectors of society,

factors of inequality increase.

Global Inquglity: Developed and
Underdeveloped Nations

Most discussions of inequality focus on single
nation-states. Increasing awareness of global
interrelatedness highlights inequality among nations --
particularly between less developed and advanced
industrial nation-states. International stratification
refers to this inequality (Horowitz, 1974).

Nations differ dramatically in economic resources

and productivity. Horowitz (1974) notes that there are

23

also severe status inequalities, compounded by racism,
ethnic rivalries, and a sense of moral superiority. These
attitudes have long been characteristic of the Western
world. Additional factors are political inequalities
among nations -- the division of the world into major and
minor powers -- and unequal distribution of energy
resources. The severe contrast between utilization of
energy resources and advanced technology in developed
versus underdeveloped nation-states reinforces
historically persistent patterns of inequality.

The process of global stratification essentially
began when European nations started their worldwide
mercantilist expansion. During initial contact with
Europe, the now—underdeveloped countries demonstrated
sophisticated processes of development. However, they
lacked the dynamism ostensibly inherent in the merchant
and manufacturing class of Europe, and were therefore
vulnerable to exploitation (Rodney, 1972). The
technological stagnation of underdeveloped countries
further limited their prospects for economic expansion,
assured their military weakness, and exacerbated their
inability to develop into strong nation-states.

Underdevelopment is very much tied to the fact that
human social development has been uneven, from a strictly
economic viewpoint. In a way, it is a paradox. Many parts
of the world that are naturally rich are actually poor in

terms of goods and services provided for their citizens;

24

and parts of the world that are less well off in natural
resources enjoy the highest standards of living. Africa
is illustrative of this paradox. Although rich in natural
resources, the majority of citizens experience only
marginal standards of living. For example, the United
Nations Survey of EconomicConditions‘ig‘Afrigg (1965;
13-15) says the following of natural resources in Africa:

Africa is well endowed with mineral and

primary energy resources. With an estimated

9% of the world's population, the region

accounts for approximately 282 of the total

value of world mineral production and 6% of

its crude petroleum output.

In analyzing the role of capitalist domination over
poor countries, it is useful to consider some economic
characteristics of contemporary underdevelopment. Most
poor countries are characterized by pronounced economic
dualism. A modern, foreign-oriented, largely capitalist
sector can be found in many of their major urban centers.
These centers are located around important sources of raw
materials; in contrast, the rest of the country remains
dominated by a more traditional, wholly indigenous
sector. The economic significance of the modern sector
varies greatly among poor countries, depending upon their
colonial history (a long history of subjugation that has
transformed their social and political structures) and
the impact of the postwar expansion of world capitalism.

In any case, structural dependence on metropolitan

25

capitalist economics is characteristic of
underdevelopment.

Related to these economic characteristics are
several important sociopolitical features of contemporary
poor countries that affect the growth and operation of
capitalist institutions. Poor countries are typically
characterized by a class structure in which power is
highly concentrated among a small set of elites whose
dominance had been accepted and strengthened, first by
colonial rule and later by neocolonial administrations.

Obviously, there is an enormous gap between
standards of living in poor and rich countries. The
average per—capita production of the poorest countries in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America is less than one-tenth
that of rich countries. Evidence suggests that in the
poorest countries, a flourishing top 5% of the population
receives an average of approximately 30% of the national
income; the corresponding figure is approximately 202 in
the rich countries (Beckford, 1972; Amin, 1974; Frank,
1971).

It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they
do not concentrate on those sectors of the economy which
generate growth and raise production levels. There are
also very few ties between one sector and another (e.g.,
agriculture and industry) that could interact
beneficially. In addition to suffering from internal

disjunctures, developing economies are integrated into

26

the very structure of the developed capitalist economies
in a manner unfavorable to them and which ensures their
dependence on the industrialized countries.

Developed countries are industrialized. The greater
part of their working population is engaged in industrial
and technical processes. They boast a vertically
integrated, highly mechanized agricultural sector.

Development may therefore be viewed as moving the
great masses of people away from scarcity of food and
malnutrition to balanced food intake; from sickness and
disease to better health; from inequality of income to a
more equitable distribution; from inequality in
educational opportunity to more open admission (where
economics, age, sex, and geographic conditions do not
become barriers to educational opportunity).

Domination by inequitable institutions and
inequitable social arrangements persists worldwide. The
resolution of these conflicts and contradictions without
too much difficulty for and loss to rich and poor nations

is a pressing challenge.

World War I: The Scramble for Power

Historically, crises have been a major conduit for
maintaining an imbalance of power and have allowed
dominant powers to push their advantage. Among the most

important crises which served to alter the relationships

27

between developed and less-developed nation-states were
World War I and World War II. Underlying these crises was
a common history of exploitation by capitalist nations
over nonwhite, less-developed nations.

Throughout the 19th century, the ability to make a
profit and to acquire unending wealth had been assured by
relative peace and security. Economic power provided
dominant power structures the authority to exercise
control over the masses. As economic disequilibrium
exacerbated the crises of massive unemployment and
political unrest, the interruption of conditions needed
to produce wealth interfered with economic power and
called this authority into question.

The combination of social, political, and economic
forces set into motion a period of relative
disequilibrium, and the contradictions of oppressive
affluence on the one hand and proletarian poverty on the
other became an impetus for the crisis of World War I.
Despite the multiplication of European and world peace
agencies, armed competition between the power rivals had
divided Europe into two systems of alliance: the Triple
Alliance, composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and
Italy; and the Triple Entente, which included England,
France, and Russia.

Armed competition between the two rival European
coalitions for colonial markets, cheap materials, and

cheap labor was well under way several years before the

28

actual outbreak of war. Germany and her satellites were
determined to wield a controlling influence in Europe,
Africa, and Asia, while Russia, France, and Great Britain
were equally determined to effectively curb such
ambitions. Confusion and antagonism grew, the game of
intrigue became more complicated, and all semblance of
international law broke down. Thus, World War I began in
Europe in 1914 essentially over the acquisition of
resources.

Serendipitously, it was a war of extraordinary
importance in the development of Asian and especially
African nationalism. As an example of the thrust toward
black nationalism, the first global Pan African Congress
was convened. Colonized peoples began to absorb more
intensely than ever the political ideas of a rapidly
changing Europe.

India's determined opposition to British rule
increased under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, who
sought to resist via peaceful noncooperation, not armed
conflict. World War I resulted in the emergence of large,
active political parties openly (and sometimes violently)
agitating for national independence. In 1920, Gandhi
launched a campaign of civil disobedience and boycott
against the British government.

World War I had a similar influence upon

Afro-Americans. The worldwide struggle for democracy not

29

only raised their hopes for social and political equality

in America; it also gave them a new self-awareness.

Controlling:Oil Resources

By the time World War I broke out, European powers
-- notably the British -- were acutely aware of the
growing importance of oil as a strategic military
commodity. Oil was essential for motorized ground
transportation, newly emergent air forces, and more
efficient and powerful navies. Control of petroleum
resources became an overriding focus of Western rivalry
in Europe and a primary means by which Western powers
could establish and maintain political and economic
control over the region.

With World War I, the desire to control world oil
resources became an important feature of Western politics
in the Middle East as well. Extravagant and unrestrained
use of domestic oil reserves, especially during World War
I, had precipitated an "energy crisis" at the war's end.
The United States had supplied approximately 80% of the
Allied war requirements for oil. The United States naval
fleet had also converted from coal to oil just before the
war, and a program of naval expansion aimed at rivaling
that of Britain was begun at the war's end (Jacoby,
1974). Jacoby (1974) quotes President Wilson:

"It is evident to me that we are on the eve

of a commercial war of the severest sort
and I am afraid that Great Britain will

30

prove capable of as great commercial
savagery as Germany has displayed for so
many years in her commercial methods."

With the emergence of the automobile industry, the
domestic economy became increasingly dependent on oil and
petroleum products. American and British competition in
the Middle East intensified because of the race of major
oil companies to secure foreign sources of oil.

The consolidated power of the United States' oil
companies, with the ready assistance of the government,
provided for American participation in exploiting oil
from the Middle East. By the end of the war, the oil
industry was a major part of America's industrial sector,
with significant consequences for national economic
stability.

This period in history laid the foundation for the
modern capitalist corporate state in America. The oil
industry was in the vanguard of this development. No
other industry has ever attained quite the same degree of
symbiosis with the government, reflected in mutuality of
policies and exchanges of personnel. Under these
arrangements, and "wrapped in the American flag," the oil
companies were able to organize themselves into a cartel
independent of government control, in the interest of
eliminating "inefficient" competition.

The Allies achieved victory in 1918, but World War I

in no way ended the idea of European world domination.

31

Rather, it served only to loosen the seams of
imperialism. The Versailles settlement of the war (1919)
left many of Europe's political and economic problems
unresolved and created some new ones as well. The
relative position of disenfranchised people remained
unchanged. Boundaries were adjusted and new European
nation-states were formed, but colonized nations remained
colonized. Throughout this period of economic, social,
and political turmoil, the dominant forces remained
dominant. Structural inequality had again endured a

historical crisis.

The Between-War Years

After World War I, major oil companies became the
most visible advocates of a foreign policy that stressed
American national interest in gaining access to foreign
oil resources. Much publicity was generated about
dwindling domestic oil reserves and the alleged needs of
the newly expanded American navy. Through a highly
organized system of control, a series of imperialistic
oil concessions and successful oil explorations took
place. By the end of the 19303, United States oil giants
had accumulated a sizeable share of known Middle Eastern
oil reserves, with no provision for relinquishing
substantial concession areas, and had eliminated the

threat of competing interests.

32

At the beginning of World War II, then, all the big

" as the

players were on the scene. The "Seven Sisters,
largest oil companies were later dubbed, were locked into
joint production and marketing arrangements that
virtually guaranteed the absence of significant
competition.

In America, organized industry used its might to
realize fantastic profits through domination of world
industry. It fought labor unions and tried to nullify
democracy by using the power of wealth and capital. In
the midst of this effort, the magnificent structure of
capitalist industry collapsed in every part of the world.
DuBois (1946) states: "Make no mistake, war did not cause
the Great Depression; it was the reasons behind the

depression that caused war and will cause it again." The

rumblings of World War II were heard.

World Warfill: The Emergence of the
United States as agDominant Force
Although America had only limited foreign oil

production before 1900, at the turn of the century more
than 90% of the world's oil was dominated by the United
States and Soviet petroleum industries (Blair, 1976). The
experience of World War I had clearly demonstrated the
strategic importance of the Middle East in terms of world
conflict and the decisiveness of oil in the prosecution

of a war. A clash ensued between the British and the

33

Americans for the fruits of victory, in the form of oil.

During World War II, the Middle East assumed a new
role in the relations between the Great Powers. While it
was imperative to hold the area for the Allies, it had
been even more important not to let it fall into the
hands of the enemy, for the Middle East could supply
Germany with not only a strategic position but above all,
a supply of oil necessary for the prosecution of global
war. Thus, while peacetime objectives dictated control of
the sources of the Middle East's wealth, war objectives
dictated sacrifices to guarantee a solid front against
possible enemies. Great Britain, the United States, and
the Soviet Union cooperated in the Middle East against
the common enemy. When the hostilities were over, all
realized that the oil resources of the region would have
to be shared by the victors on the basis of new
arrangements.

The crisis of World War II, perhaps more than any
previous crisis, marked the beginning of the breakdown of
Western hegemony over developing countries. The war
caused economic, social, and political disequilibrium.
Moreover, it triggered a monumental surge of nationalism
leading to a series of revolts and a move to and Western
colonialism. However, outright colonialism was only to be
replaced by a system of neocolonialism.

World War II brought the downfall of Western Europe

as the center of world power. The major European nations,

34

weakened by the war, lost control of almost all of their
African and Asian colonies within 15 years. The Soviet
Union and the United States emerged as the dominant world
powers. I

The postwar economic reconstruction of Europe and
Japan required unprecedented amounts of petroleum. Whole
national economies were built anew. Economies once based
on domestic coal resources were transformed at every
level so that petroleum would provide a larger share of
basic energy needs. With the rise of the automobile and
the conversion of railroads from coal to diesel fuel,
transportation came to depend almost exclusively on
petroleum products. In contrast to the United States,
Europe and Japan were almost totally dependent on foreign
oil, the bulk of which was controlled by United States
companies. The predominant source of oil for Europe and
Japan was the Middle East. (Western-hemisphere production
was consumed predominantly by the United States.)

Economic and social inequality had become even more
visible by the end of World War II. Moreover, governments
increased their official sanction of inequality.
Specifically, in the United States, with the most
ethnically mixed culture in the world, the most advanced
industrial base, and consumption in excess of two-thirds
of the world's energy resources, inequality has been

exacerbated by economic and social discrimination.

35

United States Hegemony

 

At the end of World War II, the United States was in
a particularly fortunate position. While the economies of
the other advanced nations, victors and vanquished alike,
had been devastated by the war, the economy of the United
States managed to flourish. The fruits of this
flourishing economy, however, were not enjoyed by black
Americans, who continued to occupy the lowest level in
the economic hierarchy of the United States. Chapter III
will show how this stagnation, juxtaposed against
benefits reaped after periods of crisis by the privileged

portion of the population, is a characteristic pattern.

CHAPTER III
THE IMPACT OF SELECTED HISTORICAL

CRISES 0N AMERICAN PATTERNS
OF INEQUALITY

Introduction

As previously stated, crisis is operationally
defined as that singular force or combination of
political, economic, and social forces which sets into
motion a period of relative disequalibrium, during which
.existing patterns of inequality can be either ameliorated
or reinforced. In this chapter, six selected periods of
crisis in American history which fit this operational
definition are analyzed within the context of inequality.

These periods are as follows:

Crisis 1: The American Revolution

Crisis 2: The Civil War/Reconstruction Era

Crisis 3: World War I

Crisis 4: The Great Depression
5

Crisis : The Civil-Rights Movement

In discussing these periods, this chapter chronicles
key factors impeding or enhancing the protracted struggle
for social and economic equality. The historical plight

of black Americans is used to demonstrate the impact of

36

37

factors of inequality on a racial minority group.
However, processes of discrimination impact upon the
quest of other minorities for social, political, and
economic equality in an equally devastating manner.

This chapter will also illustrate the need for a
sustained commitment to the eradication of
generations-old gross inequalities which perpetuate
systemic discrimination. The legacies of slavery,
segregation, and racism remain an integral part of

contemporary America.

Crisis 1: The American Revolution

In revolutionary America, there was essentially no
species of liberalism dedicated to securing the rights of
man or woman or the emancipation of the masses. The
Revolution was, rather, a battle to secure independence
from what had become an oppressive foreign power. The
emerging bourgeoisie had grown envious of this power, for
economic reasons. The ideology of liberalism ensuing from
such a situation is basically illegitimate, and deserves
reevaluation. The history of the American Revolution and
the country's past as a colonial territory of Britain is
not analogous with the colonial and then neocolonial
domination of developing countries. Too often, such a
distortion of history, under the guise of liberalism, has

been used to further the cause of imperialist domination

38

over other parts of the world by Americans.

The American Revolution had nothing to do with any
of the fabrications which were devised to further the
cause of America's ideological penetration of the Third
World. The American colonies up to the time of the
Revolution had been regulated by the mercantilist system
-- the same system utilized by Europeans in their
overseas colonies, which had brought about the decline of
feudalism and had fostered overseas extension of the
national economies of Europe (Mashood, 1974). This system
of economic considerations spurred not only the
regulation of commerce and navigation in the American
colonies, but also the colonization of Asia, South
America, Africa, and innumerable other territories.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, slavery in
the United States had become an integral part of a
burgeoning economic system. Although various religious
groups, notably the Quakers, had questioned in a limited
fashion the right of one man to hold another in bondage,
there essentially had been no frontal attack upon the
institution of slavery. In the Northern colonies, where
use of slaves was not extensive, the majority of
colonists paid little attention to slavery as an
institution. However, like the colonists of the South,
the Northerners enacted into law, without precedent in
English jurisprudence, a recognition of blacks as

different and inferior (Degler, 1959). Perhaps it was the

39
colonists' preoccupation with their economic and
political relations with England that accounted for the
widespread indifference with which they regarded slavery.
A more timely concern during this period was that blacks
not conspire to rebel or offer aid to the French or the
Indians. However, close association over generations
between the degradation of slavery and black color would
result in the spread of prejudice against the black to
the North as well as in the South.

The general unconcern with slavery prevailed to the
end of the French and Indian War in 1763. The British
victory had exacerbated the conflict between Great
Britain and the colonies. The British ministries felt the
colonists should bear a larger portion of the tax burden
of the war and should help to support the large garrison
force British military authorities were bent on keeping
in America. The colonists, on the other hand, argued that
a Parliament in which they were not directly represented
had no right to tax them, and they believed they no
longer needed the protection of His Majesty's armed
forces.

Basically, the roots of the American Revolution may
be traced to a series of Parliamentary measures whereby
England attempted to regulate the economic activities of
her 13 colonies and to exercise controllng political
authority over them. For example, the British Navigation

Acts had secured and guaranteed Great Britain's shipping

4O

monopoly in American colonial waters. It had also
established a system of commerce and markets preferential
to Great Britain (Faulkner, 1950). Because of various
restrictions which usurped commercial trade rights from
the American colonies, especially in the slave trade,
colonial resistance increased. Such impositions
eventually produced the Revolution.

At the same time, the struggle of blacks to secure
freedom was growing. When James Otis delivered his
protest in The Righggfiof the British Colonies, he also
affirmed the Negro's inalienable right to freedom;
concomitantly, blacks were petitioning the General Court
of Massachusetts for their freedom on the grounds that it
was their natural right (Beard, 1913; Quarles, 1961).

At the end of the French and Indian War, the British
increased taxes on the 13 colonies and sent officials and
soldiers to collect these taxes. Boston became a center
of resistance to both the taxes and the British soldiers.
Irritation grew on both sides. Finally, on March 5, 1770,
confrontations between British soldiers and a group of
Boston patriots led by Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave,
ended in bloodshed. Attucks became one of the first
martyrs to American independence.

Attucks' martyrdom demonstrated the incongruity
between the colonists' quest for freedom and the black
slaves' quest for freedom in America (Franklin, 1974).

Here was a fugitive slave willing to resist England to

41

the point of giving his life for freedom -- as a
nationalist, and as a slave.

The "Boston Massacre" in which Attucks died was the
first battle of the American Revolution. Before the War
of Independence ended at Yorktown, 5,000 more American
Negroes would fight to help build the new nation.

Declarations of independence advocated a principle
irreconcilable with a concept of men as property. These
slogans had a more immediate effect on the slaves
themselves, particularly in New England, where slaves

began "suits of service,"

asking the courts for freedom
and for compensation for past labors (Aptheker, 1974). In
addition, New England Negroes sent petitions to the
legislative assemblies urging them to proclaim liberty
throughout the commonwealth. Such requests were
invariably tabled, since they required the freeing of
slaves en masse (rather than individually, as in a suit
of service).

A more direct route to freedom emerged with the war
effort: Becoming a soldier gave a slave a path to
freedom. Blacks served in every phase of the war and
under every possible condition. Some volunteered, others
were drafted, while still others were substituted for
white draftees. They saw clear implications for their own
future in the fight against England: They wanted human

freedom as well as political independence.

However, the early use of black soldiers was

42

short-lived: a pattern of exclusion set in as the
Continental Army and others became forceful advocates of
a "no-Negroes" policy. The armies did not want their
ranks populated with runaway slaves.

The policy of excluding Negroes from the armies was
based on the mistaken supposition that the war would be
short. By the close of 1776, grim necessity forced the
states and the central government to recast their
thinking. As it became increasingly difficult to raise
volunteer forces, and Congress (in 1777) began to fix
quotas for each state, local and state recruiting
officers became inclined to meet their quotas by sending
Negroes to Washington's army. Quietly reversing its
policy, the Continental command accepted all Negroes sent
by the states.

The recruiting of Negroes was further stimulated by
the system of substitution, through which a draftee could
avoid service by producing someone to take his place. A
black soldier was a common sight north of the Potomac
after 1777.

In breaking with England, the colonists evoked a
philosophy of freedom -- a philosophy incompatible with
slavery and other forms of discrimination. Groups of
American citizens viewed as inconsistent the condemnation
of England for curtailing liberties, on the one hand, and
the oppression of blacks in America, on the other. The

beginnings of a humanitarian movement were among the

43

unforeseen internal changes resulting from the war.

Despite their efforts, anti-slavery leaders were
unable to abolish slavery after the War of Independence.
Southern states had much capital invested in slavery, and
already a new economic importance was becoming attached
to the institution. It was therefore only natural that
slavery was to become an important consideration in the
Constitutional Convention. In the heated debates over
Congressional representation, the question arose as to
how slaves should be counted. Because the majority of
Northern delegates regarded slaves as only property, they
considered it inappropriate to count slaves.

The three-fifths compromise that was finally written
into the Constitution demonstrates clearly the strength
of the pro-slavery interests at the convention. Inserted
into Article I, Section 2, it reads as follows:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which
may be included within this Union,
according to their respective numbers,
which shall be determined by adding to the
whole number of free persons, including
those bound to service for a term of years,
and excluding Indians not taxed, three
fifths of all other persons (Franklin,
1976).

A series of political and economic manipulations and
trade-offs resulted in the legal sanctioning of

institutionalized slavery. With the end of British

domination, America had accepted the challenge and

44

responsibility of its new political freedom by
establishing the machinery and safeguards that ensured
the continued enslavement of blacks. "The Constitution,"
notes Faulkner (1950), "was drawn up by the wealthy
element in a distinctly commercial and agricultural
society, and it was not intended to be a democratic
document."

While the American Revolution did not change the
status of indentured servants, enslaved Africans, or
Indian labor, it did win for the bourgeoisie political
independence from the feudal mercantilism of Great
Britain. It also shifted the right to exploitation of the
slave-labor economy from a foreign feudal mercantilist
state to the emerging local bourgeoisie, which consisted
largely of wealthy plantation owners and merchants.

Through this most turbulent period of
disequilibrium, social and economic oppression became a
mainstay of the American system of development. De jure
and de facto rulings regarding inequality were to follow,

ensuring this situation.

Crigis 2: The Civil HELL?
Reconstruction Era
The War
The decade preceding the Civil War was dominated by
crises related directly and indirectly to slavery. By the

year before the opening of the Civil War, it appeared

45

from a set of resolutions adopted by the United States
Senate that the slave status of blacks was established
long-term. Resolutions sponsored primarily by Southern

leaders and adopted on May 24-25, 1860 held that

slavery is lawful in all the territories
under the Constitution: neither Congress
nor a local legislature can abolish it
there: the federal government is in duty
bound to protect slave owners as well as
the holders of other forms of property in
the territories; it is a violation of the
Constitution for any state or any
combination of citizens to intermeddle with
the domestic institutions of any other
state "on any pretext whatever, political,
moral, or religious, with a view to their
disturbance or subversion"; open or covert
attacks on slavery are contrary to the
solemn pledges given by the states on
entering the Union to protect and defend
one another; the inhabitants of a territory
on their admission to the Union may decide
whether or not they will sanction slavery
thereafter; the strict enforcement of the
fugitive slave law is required by good
faith and the principles of the
Constitution. (Fishel & Quarles, 1976)

Intersectional legal issues surrounding slavery,
specifically the Missouri Compromise of 1850, were a
preliminary battleground for the Civil War. The
significance of these matters had just become apparent
when the Supreme Court, in 1857, handed down a decision
in (Dred) Scott v. Sanford that widened the breach
between North and South. With the Dred Scott decision,
the highest court in the land openly expounded a

proslavery doctrine, creating an atmosphere conducive to

political and social revolution.

46

Two critical precursors to the war that granted
freedom to the slaves were the raid of John Brown on
slaveholders for the purpose of liberating their slaves
(1859), and the 1860 election of President Abraham
Lincoln, which, from the Southern point of view, was
revolutionary and destructive. The economic benefits of
slavery, then, severed the United States into sections
and forced them to settle the question by war. The belief
that blacks were rightfully subjected to extreme
injustice and persistent inequality constituted a
rationale for war, as opposed to a rationale for equity.

On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued. It declared freedom for all persons held as
slaves within the states in rebellion against the United
States. The emancipated blacks were admonished to abstain
from violence and to accept employment at reasonable

wages.

Reconstrgction

The post-Civil War era was when white Americans
attempted to decide a place for former slaves in American
society. Slavery's stabilizing influence was gone; the
Civil War had let loose upon the South millions of
freedom—seeking blacks. What to do with them was a
critical issue for the nation.

Blacks found themselves in a neo-slavery system when

the Civil War ended. Plantations still needed laborers,

47

and menial labor was required for the industries of the
South. Sharecropping, debt peonage, and convict leases
were used to again subjugate black labor. The South
sought, through Jim Crow practices, night riders, and
lynch law, to nullify the civil and political rights
guaranteed to blacks under the 13th, 14th, and 15th
Amendments.

The belief that the newly emancipated slaves were
inferior and unable to fend for themselves was widespread
in the white North and the South after the Civil War. An
outgrowth of that belief was the establishment of the
Conservative Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands and
Refugees-~the Freedmen's Bureau. It was ostensibly
established to aid and protect freed slaves. This
sympathetic interpretation, however, overlooks the role
of the Bureau as a conservative force against black
assertion. As the dominant authority over black destinies
at the end of the Civil War, the Bureau clearly indicated
with its actions that the new black freedom was to be
severely circumscribed. Directors of the organization
like Samuel Chapman Armstrong were more concerned with
"reestablishing order and stability" in the South than
with helping to uplift blacks.

Armstrong proposed to educate blacks with industrial
schooling: "education which would advance reconciliation
between North and South and at the same time secure . . .

order between the races." The founder of the Hampton

48

Institute and ideological father of black industrial
education, Armstrong essentially attempted to resolve the
race problem through "education." He believed that blacks
should be taught to remain in their place, stay out of
politics, keep quiet about their rights, and work. The
educational theme that he emphasized was the need for
blacks to be good, subservient laborers (Armstrong,
1882).

Such a philosophy is endemic to the basic premise
that the history of black people in America is primarily
a labor history. Africans had been brought to America for
their labor; the death of the formal institution of
slavery did not vanquish this role.

Although the Freedmen's Bureau facilitated the
education of blacks, it could hardly compensate for
hundreds of years of deprivation. The high expectations
of the freed men far exceeded the low level of actual
support. Then, the federal government abdicated its
responsibility for the education of blacks via the
Hayes-Tilden Compromise in 1877, which in effect told the
South that the "Negro problem" was a regional concern.
Thus, by default, the education of blacks was left
primarily to the states, where the burden fell heavily
upon the shoulders of blacks themselves (Flemming, 1976).

The most important contribution to educational
opportunity during the Reconstruction era was the

establishment of free, publicly supported schools in the

49

South, due in large measure to the great appreciation and
desire of black people for an education. As they gained
political power, the freedmen concluded that the key to
their advancement was education, and saw the acquisition
of knowledge as the remedy for their social and economic
ills. Freed blacks preferred integrated education; they
believed segregation violated the 14th Amendment and made
them unequal.

W. E. B. DuBois (1964) suggests that in most
Southern states, public schooling began with the
enfranchisement of blacks. In South Carolina, for
example, the 1868 Constitution, drawn up by blacks and
radical white allies, mentions education for the first
time in the history of the state. While white property
owners resented a possible tax burden, public-school
attendance was made compulsory.

Although blacks did much toward the foundation of
public education, they were not its primary
beneficiaries. More and more Southern state constitutions
were changed to allow state taxation for support of
schools, but monies intended for the education of blacks
were often diverted. Whites considered the education of
blacks useless and even dangerous to society.

The turn of the century marked the political nadir
of black people in America and the re-emergence of the
persistent patterns of inequality. The effects of

post-Civil War and Reconstruction crises were reinforced

50

by efforts to make blacks second-class citizens,
officially sanctioned by the federal court in the
infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

The years between 1890 and 1915 were crucial to
black people. This was the period when white Southerners,
with Northern acquiescence, relegated blacks to the
lowest level in the caste system. Although W. E. B.
DuBois and other progressive black leaders began to
attack discrimination and violence against black people,
they made little progress against the ramparts of racism.

Once again, patterns of inequality persisted during
and after a period of crisis. Violent manifestations of
hostility to blacks in the North and in the South, common
from the beginning of the black's presence in the New
World, were a marked feature of the last 16 years of the
19th century: More than 2,500 lynchings occurred during
this time, and the majority of these had black victims.

Few regarded these manifestations of violence as an
inherent part of the industrial imperialism to which
America was committed. But it was an integral part of the
imperialist ideology, and the subjection of blacks to
caste control and wage slavery was an essential component

of this system.

51

Crising: World War I

Armed competition between two rival coalitions in
Europe for markets, cheap materials, and cheap labor was
well underway several years before the outbreak of World
War I. Germany and her satellites were more determined
than ever to wield controlling influence in Europe,
Africa, and Asia, while Russia, France, and Great Britain
were equally determined to curb such ambitions.

In April of 1917, when the United States declared
war on Germany, black men responded not only to the call
to military service but also as volunteers. The majority
of black soldiers were assigned to service regiments:
even those blacks with more than a high-school education
were assigned to menial duties. Blacks protested this
systematic discrimination and segregation, especially
their exclusion from officer training (Logan, 1970:
Meier, 1966).

With the beginning of the war, demand for war
materiel and supplies led to a vast expansion of industry
and an increased need for labor. As the volume of
immigrants from Europe declined due to quotas imposed on
the entry of aliens to the United States, and as white
industrial workers joined the military, utilization of
the black migrant in industry intensified. Enhanced

employment opportunities brought increased wages. (Wages

52

of blacks in the North were often substantially more than
those paid in the South.)

In the past, the immigrant masses had provided the
industrial North with a cheap, readily available labor
supply. The war not only drastically curtailed the flow
of immigrants -- from 1,218,480 in 1914 to 110,618 in
1918 -- but 500,000 immigrants already in the United
States left for Europe between 1915 and 1918 to serve in
the armed forces of their native lands. With more than
4,000,000 men drafted into the United States armed
services when war was declared, the need for skilled
drafters and unskilled workers became acute (Shonfield,
1945).

In the half century between emancipation and the
outbreak of World War I, blacks, with few exceptions, had
been unable to get work in the North except in domestic
and personal occupations. However, with the nation's
usual labor force depleted, Northern industrialists
turned to Southern black women as well as men to fill
jobs. American firms had employed labor recruiters for
work among European peasants for decades, but for the
first time, intensive recruitment campaigns were aimed at
Southern black laborers. Serendipitously, the ravages of
the boll weevil and the disastrous crop failure of 1916
had left thousands of black agricultural laborers and
sharecroppers without their usual means of subsistence.

With the improving economic situation after 1916,

53

Southern landowners began to fear that the mass Southern
black migration northward would deplete their labor
supply. Thus, local and state legislation was enacted to
protect the cheap labor supply. Recruiters were charged
prohibitive license fees and subjected to strict
regulations, with heavy fines and imprisonment for
violators. To stop the migration, DuBois (1964) notes,
the South "mobilized all the machinery of modern
oppression: taxes, city ordinances, licenses, state laws,
municipal regulations, wholesale arrests, and of course,
the peculiar Southern method of the mob and lyncher."
However, such measures came too late to be effective, and
they were easily circumvented.

The decade of 1910 to 1920 saw a larger increase in
the number of Southern-born blacks living in the North
than did the preceding 40 years. Even more impressive was
the opening of industrial jobs for the first time to
blacks. Thus, with the outbreak of World War I and the
great migration of 1915—1918, the first black industrial
working class in the United States came into existence.
By 1920, one-third of all gainfully employed blacks were
working in American industry.

Then came the postwar demobilization. It led to
heavy unemployment among black industrial workers.
Blacks' disillusionment and frustration increased. They
had met with discrimination and segregation while

fighting for the Nation, and upon returning home they

 

54

were faced with intensified Jim Crow practices and
soaring unemployment.

At the end of the war in 1919, black forces seeking
employment were confronted with crowded cities and
virtually no job opportunities. In essence, the economic
situation for blacks after the war was worse than before
the war. As the nation's war industries, which had
depended heavily upon cheap, unskilled black labor, were
dismantled and reconverted to peacetime production, mass
discharges of black workers took place. As millions of
whites returned from the armed forces to the ranks of
industrial labor, employers replaced black workers with
white ex-servicemen. Former black servicemen were not so
lucky. In April 1919, the Division of Negro Economics
announced that 99% of Chicago's black veterans were still
unemployed, with little prospect of work in the immediate
future (Welsey, 1967). The same situation faced black
ex-servicemen in all large industrial cities. Those black
veterans fortunate enough to find work at all were
shunted into the most menial and lowest paid jobs; even
black veterans with college degrees ended up as common
laborers.

Despite the demand for black labor in the South
during the post-war months, very few blacks left the
industrial centers of the Midwest and Northeast to take
jobs offered by Southern employers.

The 1921 economic depression made the situation even

55

worse for black workers. Welsey (1967) observes that in
Detroit, the black unemployment rate was five times as
high as for native whites and twice as high as that of
foreign-born whites. Furthermore, Southern black workers
continued to migrate northward.

Economic recovery, and the gradual elimination of
foreign immigrant competition due to the passage of
restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924, brought a
second wave of migration out of the South in the Years
1922 to 1924. This workforce was unskilled. "Everywhere,"
wrote Roger Baldwin (1920), "the Negroes had the hardest
and most disagreeable jobs." Employers in both South and
North reserved for blacks the work usually shunned by
whites.

The confinement of blacks to the most menial jobs
was more often than not supported by government. For
example, the railroad lines and railroad brotherhoods had
worked out unwritten agreements confining blacks to
low-level railway work. When the federal government
assumed control of the nation's rail network in December
1917, it prohibited the hiring or advancement of blacks
to positions they had not occupied in the past (Aptheker,
1951). In shipyards around the country, employers and
unions -- again with government sanction -- agreed to
restrict blacks to common labor. Skilled blacks were
forced to accept jobs as helpers to white craftsmen or as

"fillers" in tasks demanding few or no skills. The door

56

to semi-skilled and skilled occupations remained closed
to black workers. Among the reasons for this was the
racism of white employers and the economic and racial
prejudice of the white trade unions dominating most
skilled occupations. As discrimination against black
workers by employers and unions became a pervasive
policy, the familiar patterns of inequality extended into

the depression era and beyond.

Crisis 4: The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 19303 had really begun
for black workers by the end of 1926. Because of the
"last-hired, first-fired" phenomenon, blacks experienced
widespread unemployment as early as 1927 (Foner, 1976).
In the early months of 1929, a supposedly flourishing
period, approximately 300,000 blacks, or one-fifth of all
blacks employed in industry, had already lost their jobs.
Moreover, employment areas open to blacks were shrinking.

The crisis of 1929-1932 was a disaster for all
American workers. From the stock-market crash of October
1929 to the economic low point in 1933, the number of
unemployed rose from three million to approximately 15
million (with some estimates as high as 17 million).
Wages dropped 45%, and the percentage of the population
living at or below the bare subsistence level rose from

402 in 1929 (the year of greatest prosperity) to 75% in

57

1932 (Sternsher, 1969).

However much white workers suffered, blacks suffered
even more. The Depression of the 19303 wiped out many of
the few black small businesses which had developed
hand-in-hand with the growth of black organizations and
institutions to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding
urban population. It created even greater miseries for
the large black lower class. In some Southern cities,
approximately three-fourths of the black population was
on relief. White workers replaced urban blacks in almost
all jobs, including the most menial jobs. Throughout the
Depression years, the percentage of unemployed blacks was
higher than that of either native or foreign-born whites.
Even in periods of extreme economic and social
disequilibrium, inequality was maintained.

The New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's
administration brought some relief to impoverished blacks
and contributed to occupational differentiation within
the black community. Blacks were employed, albiet in very
small numbers, as statisticians, lawyers, engineers,
architects, economists, office managers, case aids,
librarians, and interviewers for the first time. Lower
level white collar positions for secretaries, clerks, and
stenographers also became available. Though many of these
jobs involved administering governmental programs for
blacks, they represented the first real breakthrough in a

racially segregated labor market (Foner, 1976).

58

The passage of protective union legislation during
the New Deal era created a stable climate for collective
bargaining and precipitated a change in organized labor's
relationship with black workers. The importance of
changing union attitudes and practices toward blacks is
perhaps best conveyed in Bayard Rustin's (1975)
observation:

Although the new industrial unions were
certainly not free of the prejudicial
attitudes and policies which permeated the
entire society, they made a practice of
organizing black and white workers as
equals wherever possible. Today, this may
not seem important, but at that time it was
a gesture of revolutionary significance. No
other mass institution in American society
was so fully open to the participation of
blacks; for the first time, Negroes could
play an active role in an institution which
vigorously sought to change the direction
of society.

Increased black participation in labor unions was
probably one of the major reasons for the increase in the
proportion of blacks in semi—skilled and skilled
positions -- from 17.2% of black workers in 1940 to 29.1%
in 1950 (Rustin, 1975). Notwithstanding this increase, it
would take World War II to substantially change the

economic and social position of blacks in America.

Crisis 5: World War II

World War II was exceedingly important to the

economic recovery of not only the United States but the

59

entire Western world. The New Deal had not achieved full
utilization of the existing productive capacity, and
consequently, unemployment remained a critical problem.
The need to strengthen the armed forces was pressing: The
numbers of officers and soldiers were below World War I
levels, and the count of black army soldiers had
diminished significantly. By 1940, the United States Army
consisted of 230,000 enlisted men and officers, but there
were fewer than 5,000 blacks (Schonfield, 1945).

The building of the United States defense forces
catalyzed economic recovery. Full employment of the labor
force and increased opportunities for blacks resulted
from the utilization of idle industrial plants in defense
and in war—induced spin-offs. However, as preparation
for, and finally involvement in, World War II increased
economic stability, a sociopolitical contradiction
surfaced. While Hitler's ideology of racial hegemony
evoked revulsion on the part of many whites, the irony
was not lost on blacks that the supremacy espoused by
Hitler was rooted in the same principle as were
discriminatory practices in United States civilian and
military society -- to wit, racism.

Once again, a United States defense build-up soon
absorbed the available white male laborers. Although
demand was high for workers in the expanding war
industry, the color bar remained: blacks who applied were

often informed that they would be considered only for

60

janitorial or like positions.

Blacks as well as a significant number of whites
lacked the skills required for many defense jobs. The
government established training programs to remedy this
deficit. However, government-financed programs
discriminated against black trainees, and those few
blacks who did receive training did not readily obtain
jobs.

In An American Dilemma, sociologist Gunnar Myrdal
(1964) points out that "blacks made even less headway
during the boom following the outbreak of World War II in
Europe than during World War I." In October 1940, only
5.4% of Employment Service placements in 20 selected
defense industries were non-white; and this proportion
had declined by April 1941 to 2.5%. In September 1941, it
was ascertained that the great bulk of the war plants
employed no blacks.

There were many interrelated barriers to black
employment in the war industry. Many labor unions would
not admit blacks. Management of closed shops would turn
down black applicants because they were non-union.
Training schools would not accept black candidates either
because they could not join labor unions or because they
had no job offers. Even in open shops, management would
not make offers to black job applicants because, without
training, they were not qualified. Thus, while

unemployment was declining among whites, among blacks it

61

steadily increased. Meanwhile, the official ending of the
Depression (for white America) led the federal government
to drastically curtail welfare appropriations, further
injuring the majority of the black population which
remained unemployed or underemployed.

Black protests gained various paper concessions. The
United States Office of Education announced a
non-discriminatory policy in the use of funds for
vocational training in defense work. CIO and General
Motors officials called for an end to discrimination in
special defense industries (Spero & Harris, 1931; 29).
But these pronouncements were never enforced.

One of the most prominent protest actions against
discrimination in the 19403 was the threatened "National
Negro March on Washington" for equal employment
opportunity which A. Phillip Randolph planned for July 1,
1941. When the war mobilization began and blacks were
excluded both from war-related jobs and from full
participation in the armed forces, jobs became the focus
of the black press, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban
League, and a host of organizations and individuals
nationwide. After Randolph announced the planned march,
President Roosevelt attempted to have it called off.
Bringing so many angry black Americans to a still very
segregated Washington, D.C. was no small threat. The

marchers would find too few public facilities (drinking

62

fountains, bathrooms) near the White House, and too few
restaurants would serve them. There would be virtually no
hotel accomodations. Thus, Roosevelt had good reason to
fear the march.

On June 25, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802,
which essentially outlined a government position of
non-discrimination in employment and created the first
Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPC) (Meier &
Rudwick, 1973). Under that order, federal loans would be
awarded only to firms that would hire black and white
workers on an equal basis.

Executive Order 8802 marked the first positive
Presidential action in direct response to organized black
protest. Getting the words on paper proved to be only a
beginning; implementation was the true test. During the
five-year life of the FEPC, blacks filed nearly 14,000
complaints against continued discrimination (Franklin,
1974).

The executive order, the persuasion powers of the
FEPC (which had no enforcement power), the continuing
struggle of black organizations and individuals, and an
urgent need for workers converged to promote expansion in
the range and quality of jobs for which blacks were
hired. Blacks made relative gains during the war.
However, they substantially lost these gains immediately
after the war. White workers were not laid off or demoted

proportionately to blacks.

63

The crisis period of World War II, then, provided
blacks with employment within a war economy, but the

prospect of real and enduring progress was illusory.

Crisis 6: The Civil Rights Movement

The dream that World War II would bring permanent
improvement in the economic status of the black worker
faded even before the end of the War. As war industries
began cutbacks in production, blacks, being among the
most recently hired in many industries, were the first to
lose their jobs. Although progress had been made in
upgrading some blacks to semi-skilled and skilled jobs
during the war, the vast majority of black workers had
not risen above the unskilled category, and unskilled
jobs were most immediately eliminated. Additionally,
industries with large numbers of unskilled jobs had the
least potential for reconversion to peacetime production
(e.g., shipbuilding, aircraft, munitions, explosives).

In general, economists estimated that, as unemployment
reemerged after World War II, black workers were affected
2% times as severely as were white workers. In 1945,

more than 93% of the professional, managerial, and
foreman groups remained predominantly white, a relatively
consistent pattern throughout American history (United
States Department of Commerce, 1979).

Among the reasons for declining employment

64

opportunities for blacks in the period immediately

after the war was that the FEPC was reduced to impotence
by President Harry S Truman. When the FEPC expired in
1946, the employment of black workers on equal terms with
whites no longer had even "lip-service" support from the
federal government (Spero & Harris, 1971).

Blacks have steadily fallen further behind in the
economic race since the close of World War II. Most
employment gains for blacks occurred between 1942 and
1945; retrogression set in as soon as the war ended.

Data from the 1950 census report (United States
Department of Commerce, 1950) reveals that the median
annual wage of white workers in the United States was
$2,481. For the black worker, the median annual wage was
$1,295. The average black woman earned only $650 a year
-- $13 a week. One out of ten white families had an
income under $1,000 per year ($20 a week), whereas 28% of
black families were at or below this level. More than
half of all black families received under $2,000 a year;
only one in ten earned more than $4,000 a year. Only 0.3%
of all black families received as much as $10,000 a year.
Black families had an average income of $1,869, just 54%
of the average for white families, despite the fact that
in black families, generally, a larger number of members
worked. Perlo (1975) elaborates on the discrepancy of

black earning capacity:

65

Since World War II, there had been a sharp
widening of the income differentials
against Negro workers both in the North and
in the South. By 1949. most of the wartime
gains in the South had been lost, while the
situation was no better than before World
War II. Since World War II, the living
standards of Negro people in cities have
been reduced about one-fourth compared to a
cut of about one-eighth for white urban
working people.

Job opportunities for blacks, in either numbers or
status level, failed to grow with the increasing demand
for labor following the dispatch of armed forces to Korea
in the middle of 1950. The majority of blacks who had
worked in defense plants during World War II were not
recalled for employment, although the majority of white
workers were recalled.

An Urban League study (1952; 22), Discrimination in

Defense Hiring, discovered that

in almost all of the thirty key industrial
cities investigated, discriminatory
policies and practices robbed blacks of the
chance to earn a living; that in no area
was there hiring without bias; that nowhere
was there integration of blacks into the
skilled or even semi-skilled jobs; and
that, although there was a trickle of
employment of blacks, in most cases even
those who had been employed during World
War II were being bypassed in favor of new
white recruits.

The report further observed:

Discrimination against Negroes follows a
uniform pattern in plants located in

Northern and Southern industrial centers.
As the work force expands, a few Negroes

66

have been added to the maintenance and

common labor group of workers. Negroes are

rarely accepted for in-plant training

programs in any of the communities studied

by League personnel. The employment of

Negroes in white-collar, administrative,

and technical jobs in these expanding

industries is practically unheard of.
In the same report, Julius A. Thomas, director of the
Urban League's industrial-relations department, warns,
"Unless drastic steps are taken to curtail discriminatory
practices in the majority of the nation's industries
having defense contracts, there will be very few Negro
workers in the manpower mobilization program."

To add to the difficulties of black workers, a
technological revolution was underway in the areas of
automation and cybernation. This transformation greatly
accelerated the elimination of the menial, unskilled, and
semi-skilled jobs that had for so long been the mainstays
of black employment. Meanwhile, the introduction of
technological innovations in Southern agriculture --
tractors and herbicides right after the war, followed
during the 19503 by mechanization of the harvest -- was
driving tenants and sharecroppers out of the cotton
fields. Heavy unemployment in the countryside led to mass
immigration of displaced blacks to the cities. Thus,
while the need of basic industries for unskilled labor
was declining, the influx of unskilled blacks from the

agricultural regions of the South to Northern and Western

cities was increasing. Between 1940 and 1950, some

67

608,000 black men and 125,000 black women left farm
employment, and the percentage of blacks living in the
South declined from 772 in 1940 to 68% in 1950 (Foner,
1976).

This most recent group of blacks to migrate into
urban areas once again joined the labor force at the
lowest rungs of the ladder, and the institutionalized
system of racism permitted only a very small percentage
of this group to attain skilled occupational status.
Racist wage and job classification differentials
suppressed the earnings of black employees even further.
Discrimination in Defense Hirigg (1952) referred to a
government study that found that white men earned $4,458
on average while black men averaged $2,831; the average
income for black workers was only 52% of the average for
white workers. The income and unemployment gaps between
whites and blacks had been increasing since shortly after
World War 11.

Thus, black workers remained confined to the worst
jobs at the lowest pay. They were forced to live in the
most inferior housing, most often in overcrowded
conditions, and they paid higher food prices. Franklin
quotes the National Negro Congress:

In the U.S., in 1940, there were 3,292,406
dwelling units for Negroes. Of these over
one million (1,082,128) "needed major
repairs," and almost two million

(1,908,000) had no running water. Over
twice as many Negro homes as white (35.1%

68

and 16.32) needed major repairs, and almost
three times as many Negro homes as whites'
(62% and 26.6%) had no running water. Twice
as many white homes as Negro homes (82.9%
and 43%) had electricity. All of these
figures, of course, are much worse in the
South. . . . Well over 702 of all Negro
homes in that area have neither electricity
nor running water.

The postwar years were marked by growing black
reaction to this disenfranchised status. World events,
together with black demands, forced the federal
government to respond via the creation of a Presidential
Committee on Civil Rights. The committee's report,'lg
Secure These Rights, condemned racial segregation and the
general denial of blacks' civil rights. Though
integration of the armed forces had begun during World
War II, the report noted, Truman's Executive Order 9981
was the first step toward eliminating segregation (albeit
not discrimination) in the armed forces.

Stimulated by the Cold War, the United States geared
up as a modern imperialist leader of the Western world.
The United States could no longer afford to project a
worldwide image as a racist country which discriminated
against its minorities, particularly as African and other
colonized countries began to demand their independence.
In the ideological struggle with communist countries,
such perceptions would put the United States at a

disadvantage. The paradoxical United States position

vis-A-vis minorities was readily apparent as the

69

United States claimed to be the leader of the "free"
world.

The end of World War II and the beginning of the
Cold War seemed to have brought a revitalization of black
awareness. Although blacks had consistently protested
against racial discrimination, the postwar years created
a sense of urgency. The GI bill provided black men with
the opportunity to pursue education, although
opportunities remained limited due to discrimination and
segregation.

In the period from 1946 to 1950, considerable
skepticism about the economy's capacity to continue its
war-level performance prevailed. At the highest levels of
government, this skepticism was expressed by the Congress
in the form of the Full Employment Act of 1946. The bill
included no specific machinery to accomplish its purpose;
it was merely a moral commitment.

A number of factors combined to abruptly dissipate
the economic doubts inherited from the Great Depression:
the monetarization of the debt; the backlog of unfilled
needs from the War; the high rate of capital investment
(especially in the West); the dramatic increase in
military outlays associated with the Korean War; and,
last but not least, the development of the Marshall Plan,
an aid plan that assured extensive market opportunities
for United States capital. All these factors converged to

generate and sustain a high level of aggregate demand

70

relative to the system's supply capabilities. By the
early 19503, the shadow of the Great Depression was
finally beginning to fade.

Throughout the 19503 there appeared an intensive
striving toward a democratic state. The extremes of the
Red Scare movement of the McCarthy Era substantially
aided in bringing Americans into line -- i.e., more like
the "average American." Although the mood was very
conservative, there was a constant awareness of brewing
discontent. The era of prosperity following the
Depression led to a push for new urbanization and
concomitant secular values; a push for higher education
came in retaliation for the Soviet "Sputnik" space
launch. This all took place against the backdrop of
middle-class American democracy (Rozwene, 1973). The
economic and social plight of black Americans during this
period continued to deteriorate.

The black struggle in the 19503 was dominated by two
powerful civil-rights strategies. One was very old; the
other was new to the American polity and dramatic in
form. The first was a series of lawsuits begun in 1938
that finally resulted in the outlawing of racial
segregation in education in 1954. The second was the
nonviolent mass protest that began with the Montgomery,
Alabama bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
1955 -- a most important precursor of the mass protests

of the 19603 (Newman, 1978).

71

The legal strategy focused initially upon the South.
This strategy was directed by the NAACP against the
legally couched but blatantly discriminatory practices
and policies that resulted in denial of the vote, of
equal education, and of equal access to public
transportation and a host of other public accomodations.
In case after case over the years, the NAACP waged before
state and federal courts the struggle to establish the
legal rights of black Americans.

The most important legal victory was the federally
sanctioned end of Jim Crow segregation in the South. The
case arose in the field of education. The historic 1954
Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, was
the product of a systematic and carefully orchestrated
legal assault carried out over 20 years by the NAACP
(Kluger, 1976).

Between 1934 and 1954, the NAACP argued five
higher-education cases before the Supreme Court (Kluger,
1976), systematically whittling away at "separate but
equal" until little remained of the once-powerful tenet.
By the time of Brown v. Board of Education, the Court had
conceded too many other points in the preceding cases to
back off.

The May 17, 1954 Supreme Court ruling held that
state-instituted "separate but equal" public educational
facilities were "inherently unequal." It was a dramatic

blow not only to the dual school system but to the whole

72

legally structured Jim Crow segregation system in the
South. The "separate but equal" doctrine that had
governed the lives of black Americans for almost 60 years
had provided legal justification for keeping black
Americans in the worst schools, at the back of the bus,
away from lunch counters, and out of the mainstream of
society.

It soon became clear to black Americans that the
legal battles won by the NAACP would become living
realities only when blacks took a more direct hand in
exercising the rights they had won. The first thrust
toward direct action to make the accumulated legal rights
meaningful came in 1955-1956, when the black population
of Montgomery, Alabama, was successful in a boycott to
end segregation on the city's buses under the direction
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott was intended
to last only one day, and began when Rosa Parks, former
state secretary of the Alabama chapter of the NAACP, was
arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white rider
who had boarded after she had. The boycott lasted an
entire year, and became a full-fledged movement that
integrated the racially segregated bus company of
Montgomery. More significantly, it foreshadowed a new
era.

In the North, "separate but equal" had never had the
force of legal doctrine. Here the struggle for jobs

remained a central issue throughout the postwar period.

73

In 1950, the NAACP organized a march on Washington
with the support of some 60 organizations in a new
civil-rights coalition. More than 4,000 delegates from 33
states came to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of
civil rights in the North and the South. For the South,
the coalition sought anti-lynching laws and voting-rights
legislation. For the North, it sought permanent fair
employment practices legislation (United States
Commission on Civil Rights, 1974).

FEPC legislation passed the House in 1950, but
failed to make it through the Senate. Organized pressure
was then focused on state legislatures. Between 1945 and
1958, 16 states passed fair employment practices
legislation with enforcement provisions, and several
others enacted FEPCs that relied on voluntary compliance.
Augmenting their lobbying with symbolic action, the
civil-rights forces in 1951 held a 10th-anniversary
service for the wartime FEPC at the grave of President
Roosevelt. (Evidence suggests that this public event
helped convince President Truman to establish a Committee
on Government Contract Compliance to oversee
fair-employment practices in federally supported
production contracts.)

Newman (1978) notes that the struggle for jobs
received support from an array of civil-rights forces. A.
Phillip Randolph, the NAACP, the Urban League, and

various black labor groups called for an end to

74

discrimination by employers and unions. The NAACP went to
court against both employers and organized labor. Both
the NAACP and the Urban League issued periodic reports on
the employment status of blacks in industry and labor
unions.

Many factors stimilated the resort to more drastic
direct action to secure the rights of black Americans.
Few, if any, were more important than the massive
resistance to the extension of these rights. Wilhelm
(1971) indicates that in many communities, economic
sanctions were invoked against blacks active in
civil-rights movements. Dismissal from jobs, denial of
loans, and foreclosure of mortgages were some of the
tactics used to persecute "aggressive Negroes." A cruder
and more direct method was violence; in 1957 and 1958,
blacks were murdered with impunity in South Carolina,
Alabama, Georgia, and other Southern states. Such
incidents were disheartening to those who hoped for an
early and peaceful extension of civil rights to all.

As blacks' concern with the violence of civil-rights
opponents grew, blacks became more aggressive in their
tactics. The Montgomery bus boycott set an example that
was followed in other communities, especially in the
South. It was in the cities that blacks most clearly
began to manifest their impatience, since blacks were
becoming increasingly urban.

By the second half of the 20th century, there were

75

indications that the national government would attempt to
improve the status of Afro—Americans. From the time of
President Truman's civil-rights proposals in 1948,
Congress had begun to consider civil-rights legislation.
Between 1953 and 1957 the House of Representatives passed
civil-rights bills several times, but none ever came to a
vote in the Senate.

In 1957, President Eisenhower signed the first
civil—rights act since 1875. It authorized the federal
government to bring civil suits in its own name to obtain
injunctive relief in federal courts when any person was
denied or threatened in the right to vote. It elevated
the civil-rights section of the Department of Justice to
a division, headed by an assistant attorney general. It
created the United States Commission on Civil Rights,
with the authority to investigate allegations of denials
of the right to vote, to study and collect information
concerning legal developments constituting a denial of
equal protection of the laws, and to appraise the laws
and policies of the federal government relating to equal
protection.

Congress was impelled to enact civil-rights
legislation not merely in response to the President's
suggestion or even to mounting pressure from advocates of
civil rights. The status of Afro-Americans in the United
States was playing an increasingly important part in the

rapidly changing international scene, as well. On March

76

8, 1957 -- six months before the new civil-rights act was
passed -- Ghana became the first former African colony to
join the United Nations. Peeks (1971) notes that the
emergence of independence of the sub-Saharan nations
enormously changed the worldwide significance of the
American race problem and provided a considerable
stimulus to the movement for racial equality in the
United Staes. As of 1957, diplomatic representatives of
Ghana had taken up residence at the United Nations in
Washington, a fact that could not be ignored by Congress.
It appeared that black men from the Third World had
arrived just in time to help redress the racial balance
in the advanced industrial world.

As the domestic civil rights struggle intensified,
blacks became more indignant over their condition -- not
only as an oppressed racial minority in a white society,
but as poor people in an affluent one. The civil-rights
victories being won in the South would, after all, be of
greatest immediate benefit to Southern blacks. By the
early 19603 there were many rural counties in which
blacks were finally winning the right to vote or to take
any seat they wished on a bus. However, agricultural
unemployment, together with punitive Southern relief
practices which kept agricultural workers off welfare
rolls, had compelled a migration that diminished the
ranks of the rural black poor. In the cities,

unemployment, underemployment, low wages, and relief

77

restrictions created new hardships. A civil-rights
revolution was occurring, but poor urban blacks had
little to show for it.

The 19603 saw a whirlwind of activity in the world
of ordinary politics and more extraordinary protest.
Political, economic, and social changes were occurring,
and disequilibrium was exacerbated.

President Kennedy was encountering increasing
opposition to civil-rights legislation in Congress. He
had not stressed the issue of civil rights in his
campaign for the Presidency; his main concern had been to
overcome Southern misgivings about his Roman Catholicism.
Late in the campaign, however, Kennedy made a personal
and sympathetic phone call to Mrs. Coretta Scott King
because her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had
been jailed in Georgia. Kennedy's actions in response to
Dr. King's plight have been widely suggested as the
decisive factor in the 1960 campaign. After first calling
Mrs. King to express his concern, Kennedy and his brother
Robert intervened to get King released from prison.
Martin Luther King, Sr. retracted his earlier endorsement
of Richard Nixon (who had done nothing upon hearing of
the jailing), and other black religious leaders soon
followed his lead. Aided by Kennedy's publicists and word
of mouth (one million copies of a pamphlet describing
Kennedy's role were distributed), the story had reached

black voters everywhere by election day.

78

Most political observers were aware of the
significance of the black vote in the Presidential
election. The civil-rights thrust of Kennedy's
administration, with its historic Negro appointments,
responded to this fact. Kennedy appointed five blacks as
judges in federal courts, and named Thurgood Marshall,
the NAACP's leading lawyer, to the Circuit Court. The
number of black lawyers in the Department of Justice,
headed by Robert Kennedy, rose from 10 to more than 70.

President Kennedy was less reluctant than Eisenhower
had been to use executive power to enforce the protection
of civil rights. He sent troops to Mississippi in 1962 to
enforce a court order directing the University of
Mississippi to admit a black student; in the following
year, he sent troops to Birmingham, Alabama, to restore
order when brutal police tactics against black
demonstrators provoked violence.

Not until the Birmingham demonstrations in the
spring of 1963 did Kennedy initiate bold legislative
proposals. In June, he sent to Congress a comprehensive
proposal designed to ban discrimination in all places of
public accomodation -- hotels, motels, restaurants,
retail stores, places of amusement -- and to strengthen
the attorney general's authority to speed up
desegregation of public education.

While the leaders of the NAACP could justifiably

take great pride in the legal victory they had won in the

79

Supreme Court against segregated education in 1954, the
practical results were disappointing. By 1961, only 775
out of 2,839 biracial school districts in 17 Southern and
border states had achieved some form of desegregation
(Spero & Harris, 1971). In the North, de facto
segregation existed in most of the larger cities because
of rigid patterns of segregation in housing. Everywhere
—- in hotels, restaurants, and job opportunities --
humiliating patterns of discrimination persisted.

Increasing numbers of blacks, most of them young
people, had begun to turn to more direct forms of action.
In February of 1960, a small group of black college
students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a
lunch counter in a local variety store where blacks had
been denied service. They refused to leave until the
store was closed. This "sit-in" tactic had a daring
personal character that was particularly appealing to the
younger demonstrators (Peeks, 1971). The new tactic
spread rapidly. In 1960 and 1961, large numbers of blacks
participated in similar forms of peaceful protest against
discrimination in restaurants, hotels, beaches, and the
like. Sometimes they were joined by white students who
wished to share in the moral commitment of the sit-in
movement.

In May of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), an interracial group founded in 1942, organized

groups of "freedom riders" to go throughout the South

80

testing segregation practices in public transportation.
Many of the young people who participated in these
activities were arrested for trespassing or disorderly
conduct, and often they were physically assaulted by
racist whites. But the spectacle of well-disciplined
sit-in students and freedom riders who conducted
themselves with dignity and high moral courage in the
face of violent reprisals touched the conscience of the
nation and quickened the pace by which national chain
stores began to desegregate their lunch counters and
hotel owners began to open their facilities to use
without discrimination. In response to the activities of
the freedom riders, Attorney General Robert Kennedy used
his influence to obtain an Interstate Commerce Commission
ruling in September 1961 that banned racial
discrimination in interstate carriers and interstate
terminals.

Although the most visible activity was in the South
in the first half of the decade, the North was by no
means quiescent. Northern demonstrations focused on the
areas of housing, employment, and education.

Cloward and Piven (1974) note that the Commission on
Civil Rights reported that "agitation against segregation
and discrimination Northern style is actively being
pursued in 43 cities and 14 Northern and Western states,"
and that "it is doubtful that any single 18-month period

has seen as much intensive activity even in the South. By

81

the fall of 1963, the NAACP reported significant activity
was underway in 75 cities in 18 states."

Encouraged by the early successes, protest
organizations with varying ideologies emerged. Their
common concern was a commitment to basic human rights and
equality. Protests soon touched virtually every city and
town of any size with a black population. Armed only with
the technique of nonviolent civil disobedience, the
tactics of direct-action protest, and the determination
to prevail, black America was on the march.

During the 19603, numerous blacks participated in
some kind of demonstration, and a significant proportion
of those demonstrators were arrested at some point in
time. Sit-ins, freedom rides, wade-ins, and even pray-ins
in churches continued through the early sixties. The
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963
gave national prominence to black discontent.

All this activity dramatized the fact that large
numbers of Americans had no opportunity to share in the
new prosperity. These were the "new poor" who had been
identified by John Kenneth Galbraith in The Afflgent
Society (1958) and more fully in Michael Harrington's
indignant book on poverty, The Other Amerigggg (1963).
Thus, the objective of economic expansion and the
proposed Kennedy anti-poverty program became linked to
Johnson's omnibus war on poverty: The expansion of the

technological society must be accompanied by measures

82

that would channel more human resources, especially from
the impoverished underclass, into the mainstream of
economic progress. On August 20, 1964, the Economic
Opportunity Act, which appropriated funds for education
and training programs, was signed.

It is difficult to select any single factor most
responsible for winning the historic Civil Rights Act,
finally passed in 1964. Demonstrations, public reaction
to the senseless brutality against peaceful protesters,
the March on Washington, and the presence of sympathetic
individuals in high office all played a part.
Nevertheless, passage of the Act was a solid affirmation
that the country was being forced to acknowledge that
blacks were willing to stand up for those "inalienable
rights."

Legislative gains notwithstanding, blacks were
continuously being confronted with the reality that
obtaining real equality required more than the right to
ride interstate buses, to sit down at a lunch counter, or
even to vote. One urgent problem needing further
attention resulted from the black flight to Northern
cities in search of more equitable economic arrangements.
Between 1960 and 1970, the black population of the 14
largest metropolitan areas increased 80%; large numbers
of blacks were moving from rural areas into Southern
cities as well. By 1960, 70% of the black population

could be classed as urban, whereas 50 years earlier more

83

than 70% had still lived in comparatively backward rural
conditions in the South (Cloward & Piven, 1974). Most of
the blacks who lived in Northern cities were crowded into
the blighted areas from which white groups had departed
to the suburbs or to other attractive sections within the
city. Ghetto blacks paid high rents to slum landlords,
sent their children to inferior schools, and received the
poorest share of public services (police protection,
garbage collection, health services). By 1960, many were
living in poverty -- 55.1% of all non-whites had median
incomes under $3,000. In 1963, the unemployment rate for
blacks was more than double that for whites; and of the
blacks who were employed, 80% worked in unskilled jobs at
the bottom of the economic ladder. The comparable figure
among employed whites was 40% (Peeks, 1971).

The problem of black poverty was so massive and the
disadvantages in education, housing, and employment were
so severe that Whitney Young, then head of the National
Urban League, urged the Johnson administration to take a
"Marshall Plan" approach to the problems of poverty by
spending up to $10 billion a year for housing, job
training, and education. "Only by a crash program could
blacks begin to acquire the education, the jobs, and the
opportunity to take a greater share in the fundamental
rights and privileges of American democratic life,
including a share in the decision-making process" (Evans

& Novak, 1966).

84

The appropriations for President Johnson's poverty
program fell far short of the special effort Whitney
Young and other black leaders had demanded: and, as the
war in Vietnam began to take a larger portion of the
national budget, there seemed to be little hope for any
escalation of the war on poverty.

Then came an unleashing of black frustration,
peaking in the urban riots of 1964. Black rage did not
abate easily; in 1967, between June and August, street

rebellions occurred in 67 cities.

Since the 19603

By the close of the 19603, the black movement of the
postwar period had made some modest economic gains. A
large number of the unemployed and impoverished masses in
the cities were receiving some form of government
assistance. Others had benefited from the expansion of
municipal payrolls, stimulated in part by federal
programs inaugurated during the Great Society years of
the Johnson Administration. The relative economic
improvements of the 19603 enabled more blacks to gain
employment, even in the private sector.

Overall, however, the rate of black unemployment
remained high, and by the mid-19703, the gains of the
19603 had been substantially eroded. As black protests

subsided, federal concessions were withdrawn. With the

85

ascent to the presidency of Richard Nixon, the
administration of subsidized programs by states and
localities became more restrictive, partly in response to
threatening rhetoric and restrictive regulations from the
federal government. At the same time, the Great Society
pograms that had provided resoures in response to black
protest were curtailed or eliminated in favor of new
revenue-sharing or block-grant programs, gradually
redirecting monies away from the older cities to richer
cities, suburbs, and towns. Within each locality, some of
the funds which had previously provided jobs and services
in the ghettos were channeled into police departments and
tax reductions.

The persisting recession and rampant inflation that
characterized the 19703 caused a sharp reduction in the
standard of living of already-depressed groups.
Unemployment rates were still much higher for blacks.

It is now apparent not just how much was
accomplished during the civil—rights struggle, not just
how much is yet to be accomplished, but also how tenuous

were the results of the struggles of the sixties.

CHAPTER Iv
THE CONTEMPORARY ENERGY CRISIS AND
THE PERSISTENCE OF INEQUALITY

Introduction

In the stagnant economy of the 19803, the decline of
available energy resources exacerbates the already
depressed economic condition of the poor, a
disproportionate percentage of whom are blacks. For this
segment of society, the contemporary "energy crisis"
appears to divert attention from their urgent need for
more equitable access to economic, political, and social
resources in order to enhance opportunity, especially
during periods of intense disequilibrium.

This is not to say that the energy situation does
not directly affect the poor. Quite the contrary: The
energy crisis aggravates their poverty. As the price of
energy rises, it places a progressively heavier
regressive burden on the poor.

As larger shares of the economic system are diverted
into the purchase of energy, energy production becomes a
major driving force of inflation and cannibalizes the
economic system it is supposed to support. For the

economically dispossessed, the energy crisis is not the

86

87

distant, abstract "running out" of a natural resource,
but the immediate, practical, rising cost of energy. The
poor are affected by the energy crisis in ways that are
only too evident: many families at or below the poverty
level: widespread unemployment, especially among black
youth; a shrinking tax base, as viable industries and the
more economically secure citizens relocate; and a
resulting deterioration of municipal services, to name a
few effects.

Thus, the nation is in the grips of an energy
problem gag an economic problem. Taken separately, each
poses many problems of enormous complexity. Together,
they pose a challenge of crisis proportions. The
convergence of these problems frustrates the best efforts
toward solutions. Race and class considerations make
matters worse. Energy policy, which affects every member
of society, undoubtedly has a disproportionate effect on
the lives and livelihood of blacks as well as other

minorities, if characteristic patterns are replicated.

Competition Over Scarce Resources

A country is insecure to the degree that it is
dependent upon external sources of scarce primary
resources. Lacking global institutions with effective
authority to assure equitable access to and distribution

of scarce resources among all nations, national leaders

88

predominantly select as an alternative the mobilization
of national finances, technologies, and productive
institutions toward the goal of maximum resource
self-sufficiency. Other priorities -- for example, unmet
housing needs, education, environmental concerns, human
and civil rights, and the like -- become subordinate.

The current energy crisis exemplifies the priority
preference of advanced industrial nations. Maximizing
energy independence is linked to the balance-Of-payments
competition: The quintupling of crude oil prices caused
most countries to give priority to energy-related
industries, rather than to the social-justice needs of
their citizens.

Historical, political, economic, and social forces
have set into motion periods of relative disequilibrium,
during which patterns of inequality were perpetuated and
Often systematically reinforced. Structural conditions
favoring the development of public policies to strengthen
such patterns are very much a part of contemporary
America and other advanced industrial nation-states.

There is a finite supply of the five critical
resource systems -- energy, nonfuel minerals, food,
water, and human skill. These five systems are so
interrelated that to examine them separately is somewhat
misleading. Food cannot be produced without water.
Electrical energy cannot be generated without copper. The

most crucial resources, of course, is energy, for it is

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the key to access to all the others, including human
energy.

Resources have become increasingly integrated into a
global system which has integral structural inequality.
Part of the world starves while another part reaps the
benefits of continuously record-breaking profits: a
segment of society continues to be disproportionately
unemployed or underemployed while benefits accrue to
other segments with access to means of economic
advancement.

Every generation faces transition. Today, the United
States is confronted with massive change. Suburbs are
growing at the expense of the cities. The Sun Belt is
growing at the expense of the Snow Belt. The economy is
shifting emphasis from manufacturing to service. The
national growth rate is slowing; the balance-of-payments
deficit is growing. The very meaning of "the American way
of life" is being questioned. A national energy policy
must be developed and implemented within this context;
energy policies do not unfold in a vacuum. Changes in the
energy equation interact with changes in hundreds of
other social, economic, and political equations.

Many decisions went into the shaping of this nation.
America developed a petroleum technology and a way of
life that made it possible, and necessary, to build
automobiles with exceptional fuel efficiency.

Super-highways were constructed to help lead people away

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from the very cities built to accomodate them. Highly
centralized energy generating technologies were developed
which aggravated the problem of pollution and altered the
desirability of certain locations. America developed a
way of life that made public transportation unimportant
and, in many cases, undesirable.

Now, new decisions confront this nation -- decisions
that ultimately will help to determine the society of the
future. With the emergence of a post-petroleum
civilization, intense struggles have developed between
traditionally recognized rich nations and recognized poor
nations, as well as between the more and less advantaged
sectors within rich nations, over the sharing of energy
resources and markets -- over access to food, fuel,
minerals, and water.

The roots of America's energy dilemma extend deep
into its history (much deeper than the 1973-1974 Middle
East oil embargo). The United States remained a neophyte
in exploiting resources until the Civil War. Water,
human, and horsepower energy were the mainstays. The use
of steam was still uncommon in America, and electricity
was not to be introduced until the late 18803.

Until the Civil War, government intervention in
resource development was marginal and inconsistent.
Following the Civil War, however, unprecedented
industrial, scientific, and technological developments

begun during the War accelerated and expanded as America

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began its movement from a predominantly rural
agricultural society to an urban industrial society.
Blacks, like all Americans, found themselves caught up in
this massive transition, but their admission to the
accrued economic advantages of industrial America was
painfully slow.

America's towering presence in the 20th century
global arena was powered by cheap and abundant fuel
sources, allowing unprecedented economic, industrial, and
military development. Abundant oil, coal, electricity,
and natural gas became synonymous with "America." Crude
Oil especially gained in popularity as a fuel. It was
easier to get out of the ground, to transport, and to
handle than the bulkier coal. Oil flowed through a
pipeline, left little residual waste when burned, and was
cheaper than coal. Even before the contemporary gasoline
era, oil was considered an excellent investment.

The oil industry is heavily concentrated -— and in
general, oil wealth is concentrated, not only in
particular corporate enterprises but even in individual
families. The peculiar characteristic of oil -- its
mobility or fugacity -- makes it a substance easy to
monopolize and control from oil well to gas station.
Exercising such control requires huge amounts of capital
and relatively few people, and this circumstance has
produced extraordinary profits (Blair, 1978).

From the very beginning of America's quest for oil,

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little thought was given to the value of oil as a
nonrenewable natural resource. Whenever a driller hit a
strike, he extracted as much oil as he could, as soon as
possible, in order to jump the gun on any possible
competition. (Competitors would drill dozens of wells
along adjacent properties, hoping to extract more oil
than the original explorer could manage.)

The mad rush for profit from oil riches led to a
waste of natural resources as well as financial waste.
Energy-powered economic, industrial, and military might
was the apex of an inequitable pyramidal social
structure, with the bottom level of America's economic
pyramid consistently and disproportionately occupied by
blacks and other minorities. Energy resources wer less
available to them for economic and social progress. They
owned few, and most often none, of the corporations,
small businesses, transportation networks, farms,
automotive vehicles, and household appliances requiring
coal, oil, electricity, or natural gas. Moreover, the
increasing number of blacks moving to urban areas knew
little about or had little access to energy as a key
housing, employment, health, and economic development
resource. As corporate control of energy tightened before
the 19303, blacks and other minorities had less and less
influence on energy decisions, even in their own homes --
particularly as they moved from rural homes, where the

primary energy source was wood, to gas-, coal-, and

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electric-powered homes in urban areas.

Assumptions about scarcity are central to any
economic and political doctrine. The relative scarcity or
abundance of foods has a substantial, direct impact on
the character of political, social, and economic
institutions.

Basically, the past three centuries have been an era
of exorbitant, perhaps abnormal, abundance, with a direct
impact on the shaping of attitudes and institutions. The
bonanza of New World and other sources of virgin
resources, the take-off and rapid-growth stages of
science and technology, the availability of "free"
ecological resources such as air and water to absorb the
waste products of industrial activities, and lesser
factors allowed this process to unfold with apparent
inexorability.

Virtually all the philosophies, values, and
institutions typical of modern industrial society are
fruits of an era of apparently endless abundance. The
return of scarcity in any guise represents a serious
challenge to the modern way of life. Ophuls (1977) refers
to "ecological scarcity" as a new form of scarcity.
Instead of focusing on simple Malthusian overpopulation
and famine, concern is now centered on shortages of
energy and mineral resources necessary for industrial
production; pollution and other limits of tolerance in

natural systems; physical constraints, as in the laws of

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thermodynamics; complex problems of planning and
administration; and many other factors never even
considered by Malthus. Ecological scarcity is therefore
an ensemble of separate but interacting constraints on
human action, and it appears to pose problems surpassing
those presented to past generations by scarcity in its
classical form. Factors such as maldistribution and
control of resources exacerbate the problems.
"Spaceship Earth," a term used to describe the

consequences of ecological scarcity, expresses the nature
and difficulty of the challenge. Acccording to Boulding
(1970), since

this overpopulated globe is beginning to

resemble more and more a spaceship of

finite dimensions, with neither mines nor

sewers, our welfare depends not upon

increasing the rate of consumption or the

number of consumers —- both of these

potentially fatal -- but on the extent to

which we can wring from minimum resources

the maximum richness and amenity for a

reasonable population . . . far from

scarcity disappearing, it will be the most

dominant aspect of the society.
There is, of course, no historical precedent for such a
society. What is ultimately required by this crisis of
ecological scarcity, with its large potential impact on
all forms of disequilibrium, is the invention of_a new
mode of post-industrial or advanced-industrial

civilization.

The common denominator in the energy equation is the

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issue of political power over physical resources.
"Whoever controls world resources controls the world in a
way that mere occupation of territory cannot match"
(Barnet, 1974). Where vital materials are in heavy demand
and short supply, that fact alone gives power to some
people over others. Even the illusion of scarcity creates
power. A world of scarcity is a world of inevitable
conflict.

The full dimensions and ultimate consequences of the
current "energy crisis" in oil-deficient nations continue
to unfold. In this age of scarcity, resource-grabbing is
becoming a much more powerful rationale for military
intervention. Whatever role securing access to minerals
might have had in military planning a generation ago,
there is no doubt that increased access did follow the
commitment of military power.

National energy policy will be developing for years
to come. Knowledge of the size of petroleum resources and
ultimate energy futures is largely speculative.
Increasing knowledge will demand policy alterations, as
well as constant reevaluation based on equity concerns.

Equity is defined in the dictionary as "justice
according to natural law or right, specifically freedom
from bias or favoritism." The notion is, indeed,
widespread that equity has something to do with social
justice. But what is "social justice"? What is

"favoritism"?

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In his signal work, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls
(1971) explains that justice is tied very closely to a
concept of social and economic equality: "It is not just
that some should have less in order that others may
prosper." Social and economic inequality can only be
justified if such inequality works to the benefit of all,
particularly the least advantaged.

What are some of the problems of inequality, in
terms of energy? Those who are poor pay a much larger
proportion of their income for direct energy supplies
than do those who are relatively affluent, meaning that
any energy price increases are likely to hit the poor
much more strongly than the well—to-do. Small users of
electricity and natural gas almost invariably pay more
per unit than do large users, meaning that those who use
the most energy are rewarded -- a perverse system for a
nation concerned about energy shortages. Minority workers
are rare among employees in many phases of energy
production, and hence are not able to enjoy many of the
direct consumer benefits from increased domestic energy
production. In addition, blacks generally have a more
tenuous hold on their jobs than does the average
American. They are much more likely to be bumped out of
work in any energy-intensive setting as the nation makes
the transition into a new energy environment (Anderson,
1978).

The importance of equity in energy policy has been

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very slow to emerge. Perhaps because equity issues in
energy policy are subtle and not readily perceived, it
has taken the nation several years to even begin to
recognize that there is more to energy policy than
national security, economics, and environment.
Nonetheless, energy policy formulators are reluctantly
beginning to show awareness of the importance of
social-justice concerns.

It has become clear that the impacts of the energy
crisis are not uniformly distributed throughout society.
The energy crisis for some is an inconvenience, for
others a problem, and for still others a life-and-death
matter. Policy may alleviate these effects or exacerbate

them.

Energy and Employment

In addition to the crisis of energy prices, blacks
face energy-related employment challenges. For example,
more than two million jobs were lost during natural—gas
shortages in the severe winters of 1976-1977 and
1977—1978. More than 400,000 of these jobs were held by
minorities and women (Case, 1978). Blacks face several
barriers to jobs in both the conventional and the
emerging energy industries. Historically, they have had
poor access to corporate, nonprofit, university, and

public institutions most likely to experience

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energy-related increases in employment. Declining public
support for public and private sector affirmative action
programs will not improve minOrity access to these
employment opportunities. As energy analyst Ellis Cose

(1978) points out:

Energy, economic and job booms are most
likely to occur in rural Colorado, Wyoming,
Utah, Montana, and North and South Dakota,
locations with relatively tiny black
populations. Supporting banking, insurance,
finance, real estate and other business
activity is likely to occur in cities. But
primary energy recovery, transportation and
other production activity is most likely to
take place away from population centers
with sizable low-income, elderly and
nonwhite populations.

How much employment various energy policies and
strategies generate remains debatable. Nordlund and

Mumford (1978; 66) suggest:

Increased reliance on domestic energy
sources, a policy with few opponents, will
help boost employment in U.S. industries by
more than 200,000 persons each year between
now and 1981. Two industries, coal mining
and power plant construction, will provide
most of the new job opportunities. New and
expanded coal production will create
approximately 25,000 new jobs per year.
Power plant construction, which includes
nuclear, fossil—fueled, and hydroelectric
plants, will generate about 150,000 jobs
yearly over the 1978-81 period.

If this is correct, it is clear that few of these jobs
will be generated in metropolitan areas where the poor

and minorities disproportionately live. Coal mining and

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transportation and power—plant development occur mostly
outside of cities.

Whether the energy-related phasing out or creation
of jobs affects blacks negatively or positively depends
upon federal, state, and local energy and urban policies.
Whether these policies help or hinder blacks depends, in
turn, on their impact on the resolution of the energy
policymaking crisis. The paucity of black energy
policymakers increases the prospect that energy policies
will fail to reflect the interests of the poor. Also
important is whether energy policy will be integrated
with employment, housing, education, health, and other
priority concerns in poor communities. Thus, it is
necessary to address the general condition of the economy

relative to the energy situation.

Work as an Indicator of

Assimilation andfgs an

Index of Socigi Staggg

Work achievement and the freedom to choose one's job

have always been very highly valued in this country.
Supporting values include democracy, freedom, equality,
individualism, future progress, optimism, and the pursuit
of happiness. The status of black Americans in the labor
force provides a concrete setting for asking whether

America has kept its promise of freedom and dignity for

all.

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Employment factors are particularly important in
assimilating into American society. Within this context,
race has always served as a barrier to full assimilation,
because members of the majority control resources vital
for minority-group survival.

Assimilation can be viewed as a two-edged process.
To assimilate successfully, the minority group must adopt
the language, values, and behavior patterns of the
majority group, and the majority group must accept the
newcomers into its ranks as neighbors, friends, and
workmates. Gordon (1965) labels these two aspects
"cultural" and "structural" assimilation, respectively.
The degree of similarity or dissimilarity in occupations
held by the white majority versus various minority groups
serves as an indicator of structural assimilation.

Black Americans, the most visible minority group in
the United States, have the unenviable position of being
next to native Americans at the bottom of the economic
heap. The roots of this situation, as previously
discussed, stretch back to slavery, the legacy of which
has thus far been too strong to totally overcome. No
other minority group in the United States has had to cope
with the heritage of slavery, which includes an extremely
negative set of attitudes toward them. No other group has
been so systematically excluded from prestigious
positions in American society.

The handicaps of impoverishment, limited schooling,

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and the lack of an influential employment network system,
important as they are, seem insufficient to account for
the degree of overt discrimination against blacks. Blacks
were making economic gains in the 19503 before the most
recent federal legislation was enacted: their rate of
progress slowed down in the 19703, after the major
legislation went into effect. If black men continue to
progress at their current rate, it will be 75 years

before they can achieve economic equality with white men

(Thurow, 1976; 20-29).

Economic Change

While Americans are idealists about democracy, it
must be realized that economic power is not distributed
very democratically. Distribution is a key issue in part
because a significant fraction of Americans have
difficulty sharing in consumption increases, and in part
because of the clear relationship of material wealth to
economic and political power. Who gets what and why they
get it has always been a minor issue in capitalist
ideology, assumed away by an idealized view of equal
Opportunity and meritocracy. The Horatio Alger myth told
the poor that the rich had more wealth and power because
they worked harder, had greater intelligence, and were
more frugal. This mythology continues to underlie much of

the American meritocratic ideology today. Making things

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worse is the inescapable cynicism that comes with almost
daily revelations of corporate bribes to foreign
governments, political payoffs, or tax avoidance by oil
companies with huge profits.

The government does not use its distributional power
in ways that really satisfy most citizens' needs. A basic
underlying factor which is disturbing to the American
work force is a sense of 1033 related to the American
dream of continuous affluence and economic growth. During
the postwar period, the United States and other advanced
industrial nation-states experienced essentially
continuous economic growth and increases in real incomes.
More recently, they are confronted with long periods of
slow economic growth and exiguous improvements, if any,
in real incomes. For the majority, the age of boundless
affluence has drawn to a close.

The American labor force is directly influenced by
such changes in national economic conditions. The fear of
inflation is manifest in low growth rates and short
growth periods. Another direct impact is the tremendous
weakening of the world economic hegemony of the United
States. American goods have trouble effectively competing
in the world market, in contrast to the increasing
success of other nations' goods in the United States
market. Furthermore, United States-based multinationals
have moved much of their manufacturing outside of the

country.

103

Unfortuantely, most measures proffered to improve
America's domestic and international position will
disproportionately, and negatively, affect people
marginal to the labor force, although repercussions will
also be felt by mainstream workers. The struggle against
inflation, a deliberate policy of slow growth, translates
into high levels of chronic unemployment, going even
higher when inflationary pressures heat up. Whatever
"normal" unemployment is among the general population,
blacks, especially black youth, and other minority groups
have traditionally been unemployed at levels many times
higher, and there appear to be no policies to correct
this disparity.

To promote private investment and increase
productivity and competitiveness in the world market,
taxes on the more economically advanced populace and on
corporations are reduced. The inflationary potential of
budget deficits arising from lower tax revenues and
continuing public expenditures leads to demands for
reduced governmental outlays, especially in the area of
social-service programs. These policy prescriptions
exacerbate the already deteriorating economic conditions
of black and other minority people.

Another factor hurting minorities is the decay of
cities. This inevitable phenomenon afflicts blacks and
other minorities heavily because cities are

disproportionately populated by minorities.

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The closing down of plants with relatively lower
profit margins and the construction and expansion of more
profitable plants is also part of this "recapitalization
of capitalism." Among the probable consequences are
further deterioration of the manufacturing base of the
Northeast and displacement of workers whose home
localities offer few alternative employment
possibilities. Regional employment policies entice
corporations to relocate in particular regions with such
incentives as lower tax rates, lower wage rates, and a
docile workforce. Where the jobs are located and who gets
the available jobs -- mainstream or marginal workers --
will be affected by such policies.

In the drive to contain wage levels and lower the
prices of United States goods in the international
market, some corporations have already begun to take back
gains previously won by unions. As collective bargaining
becomes more difficult, a decrease in real wages results.
Inevitably, an already high unemployment level forces
many unions to accept lower benefits and even forego
some. The equity impacts of this situation are very
divisive. The "last-hired, first-fired" operational
method could very well cause employed blacks to once more
bear a disproportionate share of the burden of
unemployment.

Entering the 19803, the perennial problem of the

19703 for blacks, massive unemployment, lingers on. In

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fact, the situation appears to grow progressively worse
relative to the majority population, as the
administration risks high unemployment for the dubious
benefit of a tentative lowering of the inflation rate.
Gains made during the 19603 and early 19703 are rapidly
being eroded.

Among the most obvious remnants of the change that
took place in the 19703 is the continued conservatism of
the majority. During the latter half of the 19703 the
emphasis was on economic growth rather than on extension
of opportunity to others. There is no shortage of
individuals who maintain that demands for equal
opportunity excessively strained the societal fabric
during the 19603 and 19703.

As economic conditions for the general population
continue to worsen in light of the energy crisis, concern
for equal opportunity continues to erode. This process is
not without precedent: In periods of economic, social,
and political disequilibrium, inequality persists.

There is inequality in almost every society. Seldom,
however, is it confined to inequality among individuals;
most often, it is groups within a society that are
regarded as unequal because they are of different races
or castes or different ethnic, language, or religious
heritage. An expressed commitment to equality and freedom
for all citizens is characteristic of advanced industrial

societies; but inequality among different segments of

106

their populace remains pervasive.

Most modern societies have introduced formal
education as a means of eliminating inequality between
population groups. Education is provided so that all
children will learn similar skills for participation in
adult life. In this way, modern societies hope to
transform inequality based on birth-ascribed status to
inequality based on ability or lack of ability. For many
groups, this transtrmation has not taken place. Better
explanatory factors for inequality between groups are
needed.

Nowhere have the causes of group inequality been
more deeply probed and debated than in the United States.
Even though Americans espouse the principles of equality
and freedom, and even though public education is provided
as a channel for individual self—improvement, a social
and economic gap betwen blacks and whites persists. The
gap in educational attainment between these two groups is
just as wide as the gap in socioeconomic status, and
equally persistent.

Educational institutions have been unable to support
the myth of equal opportunity and full personal
development. The educational system, perhaps more than
any other contemporary social institution, has become a
laboratory in which competing solutions to problems of
personal liberation and social equity are tested and an

arena in which social struggles are fought. The school

107

system is a monument to the capacity of the advanced
corporate economy to accomodate or deflect efforts to
move away from its primary basis. Paradoxically,
educational systems mirror the factors of inequality
found in other major societal institutions -- e.g.,
health care, employment, and housing.

The critical relationship between education and the
capitalist economy is this: Schools produce workers.
Capitalist production is not simply a technical process;
it is also a social process. Workers are human beings who
participate actively in production with the aim of
satisfying their personal and social needs. The central
task of the employer is to erect a set of social
relationships and organizational forms both within the
enterprise and, if possible, in society at large that
channel workers' energies into the production and

expropriation of surplus value.

Barriers to the Rewards
of Educatigg
Inequality and social immobility stem from the

property and market institutions of capitalism, from the
social relationships of work, and from the dynamics of
uneven development. The roots of inequality in the United
States are to be found in the socioeconomic class
structure and a system of racial power relationships. The

school system is but one of several institutions

108

perpetuating the structure of privilege. Education, in
and of itself, is relatively powerless to correct
economic inequality; indeed, the class, sex, and race //
biases in schooling only reflect the structure of,
privilege in society at large. The educational system
basically neither adds to nor subtracts from the degree
of inequality and repression, because these originate in
the economic sphere. Rather, it reproduces and
legitimates a pre-existing pattern in the process of
training and stratifying the work force. The core of this
process corresponds closely to the social relations of
dominance, subordination, and motivation in the economic
sphere. Through the educational encounter, individuals
are induced to accept the degree of powerlessness they
will face as mature workers.

Formal education is usually designed to equip
citizens with personal attributes -- attitudes, values,
knowledge, and cognitive and other skills -- needed to
perform adequately the social and economic roles
characteristic of their group. Historically, the
education of blacks has equipped them with suitable
qualities for their lower position in society, while-that
of the dominant group has equipped its members with
qualities necessary for superior roles. The dual nature
of education in the stratified American society may be
expressed in various ways: segregation, tracking within

the same schools, biased learning resources: differences

109

in educational identities -- that is, stereotypes,
treatment, and expectations; and different evaluations of
and rewards for the same academic skills displayed by
members of the two groups. In the United States, such
differences between black and white education have been
well documented.

The claim that formal education is intended to
equalize black and white status misrepresents the
relationship among education, opportunity structures, and
systems of social mobility in the United States. In a
dual system of social mobility, the same level of
education does not necessarily yield equal value in both

systems of mobility.

Blacks and the Job Ceiling

Too many discussions about the education of blacks
center on the influence of education on their economic
status, especially on their ability to obtain.better jobs
and higher wages. It is generally assumed that improved
economic conditions will create more jobs and higher
income levels and result in greater social and political
participation.

Drake and Clayton (1970) and Fraizer (1957) use the
concept of job ceiling to describe the occupational
experiences of black Americans. The term denotes the

following:

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1. Members of particular minority groups are not
permitted to compete freely as individuals for all types
of jobs to which they aspire and for which they are
qualified.

2. They either are excluded outright from the most
desirable occupations or are not permitted to obtain
their proportionate share of such jobs, solely because of
racial or class status, not because they lack the
requisite training.

3. As a result of these restrictions, such
minorities are confined largely to the least desirable
jobs.

In such a stratified society, occupations are thus
divided into two broad categories: those above the job
ceiling, and those below it. Workers above the job
ceiling are in the four top categories: (a) professionals
and technicians; (b) managers, officials, and
proprietors; (c) clerical, sales, and kindred workers;
and (d) skilled craftsmen and foremen. In the American
cultural idiom, these are the most desirable occupations
in terms of financial remuneration, social prestige, and
the like. But these are also the occupations to which
blacks have had limited access, even when they have the
necessary qualifications.

Workers below the job ceiling are in the following
categories: (a) semi-skilled workers; (b) personal and

domestic service workers; (c) common laborers; and (d)

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farm laborers. These are the least rewarding occupations
in terms of pay, prestige, and other benefits; and blacks
have traditionally been restricted to and overrepresented
in these jobs.

Research suggests that, for blacks, occupational
progress does not depend on educational attainment in the
same way it does for whites (Newman, 1978). American
society uses two different criteria in assigning adult
roles to whites and blacks: Whites are judged qualified
for jobs on the basis of education and ability, whereas
the jobs available to blacks are predetermined on the
basis of skin color. Inferior education has very often
served as an initial step in excluding blacks from
obtaining the more desirable jobs available to whites,
but equal education does not by itself remedy the
disparity.

The 19803 are the decade of a slower-growing economy
and greater competition for "prestige" occupations. By
1985, it is expected that at least 20% of the population
will have competed college (Horowitz, 1980). Continuing
education will become a key factor in diversifying one's
choices. The health and scientific fields and other areas
that require strong conceptual and data skills will
constitute the new "prestige" jobs. How these jobs affect
long-range mobility will be a key factor in establishing
a more equitable society.

The 19703 were especially difficult for blacks in

112

the white collar service fields that offered little
advancement without substantial formal training. The
19803 could see a continuation of the pattern.

Underemployment is also fast becoming a major source
of dissatisfaction in the workplace. As the educational
level of the workforce rises, discontent and alienation
spread among highly educated workers forced to take jobs
previously performed by workers with less schooling.

America is essentially attawatershed the likes of
which have not been seen since the 19303. Inevitably,
leaders will be forced to confront these issues, which
ultimately determine who controls what part of the wealth
of the country.

Energy policy will have a lot to do with this
distribution. Economic distributional gaps will be either
ameliorated or exacerbated by the kind of energy policy
intentionally or inadvertently adopted. Equity
considerations cannot be separated from energy-policy
considerations.

The relationship between energy policy and jobs has
great implications for the employment future of everyone.
However, this area is especially crucial to blacks and
other minorities who have been consistently denied access
to economically advantageous sources of employment.

Black employment is affected by the energy shortage
in various ways. First, blacks are employed in many of

the industries likely to experience layoffs during energy

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shortages. These include various manufacturing concerns
and the transportation industry -- automobile
manufacturing, mass-transit operation, etc. Employment
cutbacks due to the energy shortage will
disproportionately hurt blacks employed in energy-related
sectors.

An equally important employment impact of the energy
shortage will become more apparent in the very near
future. There are virtually no blacks employed in
developing and producing new sources of energy. Education
and training are essential for blacks to compete for
available positions. Such training could in part replace
some of the jobs lost in energy-related plant shutdowns
and could perhaps lessen the growing black unemployment
rate. However, there is no paucity of documentation of the
inaccessibility of education and training for blacks for
certain kinds of employment. One result: an acute
underrepresentation of blacks in emerging energy sectors
at all levels.

Micro-level employment effects are reflected in the
impact of energy policy on the volume of employment and
the characteristics of jobs in various occupations and
industries. Some industries are energy intensive: others
are labor intensive. The energy-intensive industries are
likely to be most adversely affected by price adjustments
stemming from attempts to conserve energy and encourage

investment in the search for new energy sources. As a

114

result, depending on the shape and direction of energy
policy, some industries and occupations will be net
employment gainers; others will be net employment losers.

Despite limited and short-lived gains in employment
and income among blacks in the past several decades,
substantial disparities remain between blacks and other
groups in the American economy. Blacks are still
disproportionately concentrated in occupations and
industries with limited opportunities for upward
mobility. Further gains in economic equality require
continued broadening of black access to stable,
well-paying jobs. To accomplish these goals, blacks and
public policymakers must assess where jobs will be
located and what preparation is required to qualify for
expanding opportunity. For blacks, this assessment should
specifically address not only where employment
opportunities will exist in an economy influenced by a
new energy policy, but also where black workers will be
in the new environment. Such projections should be based
on various assumptions about the state of the general
economy and economic growth under various energy
scenarios. Racial employment projections need to be
developed on the basis of the expected pace of progress
toward a reduction in economic inequality for blacks
during the decade of the 19803.

As with all forecasts, the results should be viewed

as a broad guide to the direction and rate of change in

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employment rather than as a precise enumeration of likely
outcomes. Any such findings would also have to be
considered preliminary, because no comprehensive energy
policy has yet been developed. As the direction of the
emerging national energy policy becomes apparent, it may
be possible to project more accurately the potential
effects on jobs.

Employment projections derived from the United
States Bureau of Labor Statistics (1980) projections of
the nation's economy for 1980 and 1985 are based on
assumptions regarding the expected path of several
components of the economy. These include growth trends in
the labor force, gross national product (GNP),
productivity (as measured by output per manhour), fiscal
and monetary policies of the federal government, as well
as other policies that might affect the course of
economic growth. The Bureau projects minority employment
across the board. Its energy-policy assumptions produce
demand estimates for industries across the economy.

The data suggest that black workers would continue
to experience a mixed pattern of occupational gains in an
environment of higher petroleum cost. Between 1970 and
1985, black participation in the manufacturing industries
might increase at a rate comparable to the gains recorded
between 1960 and 1970. At the same time, a sharp
reduction in the proportion of blacks in agriculture is

projected. No proportionate gains are shown for blacks in

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the construction industry, and a reduction of black
participation in the service industries is projected.
When specific occupations are analyzed, in absolute
terms blacks have gained entrance into professional and
technical areas, but within those categories, few gains
among engineers are expected through 1985. Most gains
among black professionals are concentrated in the social
science and health fields, and relative to whites, black
"gains" are disproportionately low. Most importantly,
gains in the social science and health fields tend to
concentrate these services within racial groupings.
Unlike urban policy, national energy policy
articulates no integrated and comprehensive program for
blacks. The various areas of energy crisis for the
economically depressed —- prices, institutional demise,
jobs, and policymaking -- must be addressed. Only then
will energy policy be truly national. Ultimately, it is
in society's best interest to couple the development of
an energy policy with the question of equity. If equity
is not addressed as a distinct factor, even the more
advantaged sectors of society will pay exorbitant social

COStS 0

Equity and EnergyFutures

The energy crisis, especially in terms of long-run

social and political implications, may be more important

117

than most people think. Scarcity leads to spiraling
unemployment rates; large-scale changes in energy
sources; and a substantial conversion of the United
States economic base.

The peak of natural gas and petroleum production in
the United States occurred early in the 19703. World
production of oil is expected to peak between 1985 and
2000. If present trends continue, cheap, abundant natural
fluid fuels will have come and gone in a mere 100 years
(Ophuls, 1977).

Western civilizations are clearly in a critical
state of affairs because the extraordinarily plentiful
and high quality energy resources upon which these
civilizations are built are seriously threatened.
Furthermore, there is no scientific assurance that near
substitutes can be made available in the quantities upon
which the industrialized economies of the world have
grown dependent. There is increasing concern that because
of environmental limitations, economic engineering, and
institutional delays inherent in United States production
and consumption systems, it will not be possible to
develop and implement alternative technologies fast
enough to compensate for the decline of fluid fossil
fuels. Nor is there any basis for assuming that energy
resources for the United States will be as low cost and
abundant in the foreseeable future as at present.

Thus, the present directions of development cannot

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be sustained unless alternative long-lasting sources of
energy, comparable in quality and quantity to natural gas
and petroleum, can be developed. However, from a
technical resource management perspective, the problems
of the United States are excess, inefficient use and
waste, rather than energy resource limitations, although
the quantity and quality fossil fuels is finite.
Americans will eventually be forced to accept the
permanence of energy-based scarcity. Recurring
recessions, inflation, tight money supplies, and
increased unemployment all result in part from energy
shortages.

The American vision of an ever-abundant future, in
Kenneth Boulding's (1966; 275) words, will give way, and
the nation "will begin to move from a wasteful,
rambunctious cowboy economy, where growth is the main
goal, to a sparse, contained spaceship economy, which
consciously puts limits on growth."

It is undeniable that the United States and other
advanced industrial nation-states have in the past
exploited developing nations, and that the surplus from
that exploitation has been an important factor in the
maintenance of American national abundance (Blair, 1976).
As developing nations conclude that such relations have
been less than equitable, they have begun to institute
controls on foreign investment and to consider

withholding natural resources.

119

Concomitantly, it is becoming less profitable to
exploit the Earth. As fossil fuels become scarce and
easily accessible fuel reserves are used up, replacements
must come from locations that are more expensive to
exploit, such as Arctic or deep-ocean wells. With foreign
economies and the Earth's fossil fuels less available for
exploitation, the rich will prosper at the expense of the
lesser advantaged in the United States.

Energy links the effects of capital productivity and
labor productivity, for it enables relatively new, more
capital intensive machinery to produce goods with much
less participation of labor than during pre-war
transformation. As new production technologies displace
the older ones, energy-intensive production displaces
human labor. When progressively less labor is required
for a given rate of output, the ability of the economic
system to regenerate jobs is threatened. Also, the amount
of energy and capital needed to accomplish tasks similar
to the pre-war transformation have increased; the amount
of labor used to produce the same output has decreased;
and the impact on the environment has worsened.

Unemployment has been chronic. In the United States
during the last few years, unemployment, especially or
blacks, has been rising to levels unprecedented since the
1929 Depression (United States Department of Commerce,
1979). Apparently, no economic force has been

sufficiently strong to counteract completely the effects

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of changes in production technology on the availability
of jobs.

The trajectory of industrialization -- the
increasing replacement of human labor by machines --
leads logically to the erosion of the industrial
workforce. By the end of the century, the proportion of
factory workers in the labor force could conceivably be
as small as the proportion of farmers today. The entire
area of blue-collar work could diminish to a point where
the term could lose its sociological meaning as new
categories more appropriate to the divisions of the new
labor force are established. Meanwhile, at the current
rate of labor-market entry, the professional and
technical class will be the second largest occupational
group in society by the end of the century. This is the
new dual revolution in the structure of occupations and,
to the extent that occupation determines modes of
behavior, it is a revolution in the class structure of
society as well. This change in the character of
production and of occupations is but one aspect of the
emergence of the "post-industrial" or "advanced
industrial" society.

An industrial system requires a wide range of skills
and professional competency broadly distributed
throughout the workforce. Specialized human resources are
indispensible to the science, technology, and production

methods of industrialism.

121

The science and technology of the industrial society
is never static; it generates continual, rapid,
widespread changes in production methods and products,
which in turn create frequent changes in the skills,
responsibilities, and occupations of the workforce. Both
the threat of obsolescence and gains from new and
expanding fields reflect the highly dynamic quality of
jobs and occupations. Major adaptations are required of
workers by the frequent changes generated by technology
and science.

Inevitably, a complex industrial society requires
continual training and retraining of the work force. The
content of an occupation or job classification is rarely
set for life, as in the traditional society. Occupational
mobility has come to be associated with a high degree of
geographical movement, and with social mobility in the
larger community, both upwards and downwards.

Complex industrialization requires an educational
system functionally related to the skills and professions
imperative to its technology. Such an educational system
is not primarily concerned with conserving traditional
values or perpetuating the classics. However, a case can
be made for a significant degree of generality in the
educational system. Because of the rapidity of change and
knowledge growth during the course of a career, workforce
participants must be able to adapt to changes in

specialties and to shift to new fields. The complex

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industrial society tends to require an increasing level
of general education for citizens, not only because this
facilitates training and flexibility in the workforce, so
that education becomes one of the principal means of
vertical social and economic mobility in a technical
world, but also because as incomes rise, natural
curiosity increases the demand for formal education.
"This demand for a certain minimum of culture is created
by the conditions of the capitalistic mode of production
itself, with its high technique, complexity, flexibility,
mobility, rapidity of development of world competition,
and so forth" (Ophuls, 1977).

Blacks are often left out of this process of
mobility. As Harrison (1972) argues, "society has
essentially created a separate and secondary labor market
for blacks and other disadvantaged persons; although no
walls enclose this secondary labor market, people with
black skin frequently find it difficult to get a passport
for travel to the primary labor market."

Fuchs (1972) adds: "'Low' income or 'poverty' in the
U.S. is largely a matter of economic distance. When most
Americans have a great deal, those who have much less are
poor regardless of their absolute level of income." A
relative poverty standard explicitly recognizes that all
so-called "minimum" or "subsistence" budgets are based on
contemporary standards and political realities, not on

any intrinsic or scientific basis.

123

For the underclass, the acute poor, etc., a complex
industrialized state provides many obstacles, both social
and economic. With technological change and declining
reserves of energy rsources, there is always a danger of
increasing unemployment, even at constant levels of
demand and constant levels of labor-force participation.
Also, new technology often creates new skill requirements
which general institutional education can meet better
than can specific job training. This combination of
trends makes it convenient for employers to increase the
(often arbitrary) general-education requirements they
impose as hiring standards for jobs demanding constant
skills.

Encouraging the labor force to pursue school through
higher levels can serve a dual purpose. It cuts down the
amount of time any potential worker will spend in the
labor force, reducing the potential size of the
unemployed pool and undercutting some potentially
threatening developments in the system as a whole. It
also imposes on the general public the costs of certain
kinds of training, freeing private firms of these costs.
But the longer most workers remain in school, the less
effective are the traditional stratifications between
those with no or limited schooling and those with more.
It then becomes necessary either to adjust relative
educational distinctions upward (establishing college as

a new boundary between groups of workers, for instance),

124

or to devise new forms of distinction on the job or
within labor-market institutions (to replace previous
distinctions created by education) (Bell, 1974).

As the effects of technology, population growth, and
resource consumption perpetuate change and uncertainty in
the global environment, the need to formulate policy
regarding future events becomes acute.

Within the context of the present research, a
forecast is simply a proposition in the future tense
which carries no weight of positive proof. Therefore, it
is not the truthfulness of the proposition that one can
evaluate; instead, it is the reasonableness of the
arguments and explanations which support the proposition.
Forecasts must be more than mere propositions; the
propositions must be accompanied by logical warrants,
reasons, assumptions, and grounds.

The future of equity in distribution of
energy-derived resources is uncertain. Its very
historical justification is being questioned and
challenged. When people perceive uncertainty ahead, their
concern with the future increases proportionately.
Therefore, the future must be more fully taken into
account.

A country's external relations do not alone account
for persistent patterns of inequality. The internal
pattern of economic, social, and political organization

must be analyzed to evaluate factors constraining a more

125

equitable system of advances. Practitioners of medicine
realize that diagnosis must precede prescription. That
social scientists generally have not followed th same
course in their prescription of equitable "cures" is
largely attributable to an unstated assumption that
inequality and its attendants, racism and discrimination,
are to be treated as separate in any analysis of
societal, economic, and political disequlibrium. However,
it is the opinion of this researcher that factors causing
inequality cannot be separated from "the whole of
society" -- e.g., political, social, and economic
conditions. An analysis that includes consideration of
racism and discrimination is a necessary prelude to
devising appropriate policies and strategies for
promoting the welfare of the society as a whole. This
analysis is essential to understanding the most recent
shift from abundant and inexpensive energy resources to
limited sources of energy.

Unless certain patterns of society are altered, the
final quarter of the 20th century will be marked by
significantly more inflation, more unemployment,
shortages, political polarization, possibly terrorism or
violence on the European model, and the further
centralization of power. In considering possible changes
in social patterns, several points are essential to the
issue of energy resources and equity. First, it is in the

long-run interest of all of the world's people to achieve

126

sustainable societies. But a sustainable society that
remains grossly inequitable probably cannot be achieved,
and if achieved, it cannot be maintained -- it is
socially, militarily, and politically impossible. Second,
energy is the key to sustainability. The energy policies
and actions of the United States are integral to any
world solution to the problems of energy and
sustainability. Third, energy is the primary distributive
mechanism in the American economy today. Not only can
energy either alleviate or exacerbate the economic,
social, and political inequities in society, but such
effects will be forced to occur within the next few
decades.

What do the later 19803 and the 19903 portend?
Following are a few fairly reasonable predictions. There
will clearly be continued economic uncertainty, and those
on the bottom half of the economy will continue to suffer
the most. There will be continued high inflation, which
also will have a particularly rough impact on those at
the bottom of the economy. A large amount of the
inflation will be in the costs of health care, food,
shelter, and energy items, which together are the major
share of the budget of poor people. There is little
reason to believe that inflation will not be relatively
high.

Wages, overall, will not keep up with inflation,

despite union escalator clauses. Other factors will

127

prevent wages from keeping pace with inflation, one key
factor being that the majority of workers in the United
States are not members of unions.

Economists have recently been attempting to redefine
the term full employment. A part of this effort involves
defining frictional employment, the number of people who
"normally" are moving from one job to another at any
given time. These are not people who will never be able
to find jobs; they are between jobs for a month or two.
The frictional unemployment rate has been moving up. At
one time it was considered acceptable at 1% to 2%; now
it's acceptable at 3% to 4%, and 5% to 7% is becoming the
norm. The figures considered to be acceptable levels of
inflation and unemployment will be ever-increasing.

This is an era of cutbacks in social services.
Feeling the burden of the energy crisis, the middle class
has applied pressure resulting in reductions in taxes,
and as the resultant cutbacks in government services and
entitlements occur, the first in are the last out: There
is a certain kind of seniority system, and programs that
minorities and the poor have won over the last 10 to 15
years are coming under the heaviest attack.

Significant problems in housing can be expected.
Growing numbers of families are sharing housing in
response to the scarcity of affordable housing. One cause
of this scarcity is that the Federal Reserve System of

savings and loans is issuing fewer housing loans.

128

The United States' dependence on foreign oil poses
particularly difficult energy problems for minorities and
the poor. Energy use in many ways correlates directly
with income. Poor people have the least ability to change
their energy use in response to price, since there is
little elasticity in their demand for energy. They have
the least energy-efficient homes and buy the least
energy-efficient appliances. The poor have little access
to the capital needed to make their home environments
more energy efficient.

Because energy directly and indirectly affects
employment opportunities, wages, education, social
services, prices, and living conditions, it may well be
viewed as the new frontier in civil rights, human rights,

and international relations.

An Uncertain Future

Whether one attributes the perpetuation of racial
inequality to prejudice based on the color of one's skin
or to class barriers, or elements of both, most observers
agree that the problem at times seems almost intractible.
Active white resistance, lack of the political commitment
and will to break barriers, and the self-interest of
those who benefit disproportionately from the status quo
all combine to reinforce the gap between promise and

reality. Any increase of the numbers of blacks joining

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the social, economic, and political ranks of the middle
class to date has not changed this fact.

Against this backdrop, the decline of cheap,
abundant energy resources has been changing the structure
of the American work force, requiring skills and training
to be altered. Continuing learning experiences are an
ever-more-integral factor in adult socialization. Just as
adults are now socialized into work as a means of meeting
needs and of assimilation, the future will see people
socialized into continuing education as a key to economic
and social advancement.

Continuing education, in the sense of organized
instruction in industry, government, community agencies,
schools, and colleges, disproportionately serves the
advantaged classes. Blacks, elderly persons, and those
with part-time jobs, low incomes, and low educational
attainment are poorly served by current forms of
organized instruction (Cross, 1978).

On socioeconomic indicators, "learners" are most
similar to today's college students and "nonlearners"
least similar. "Nonlearners" come primarily from the
ranks of the lower socioeconomic classes and the elderly.
In both categories, the least advantaged are
disproportionately black.

Since education focuses primarily upon the future,
when information and technology will be key, access to

continued learning is essential. The newly emerging jobs

130

reflect very traditional patterns of stratification.
Education, as an element of policy development, is
reflective of the emerging shape of society. Unless
groundwork is laid very carefully, there may be divisive
confrontations over issues much more encompassing than
whether certain energy choices will or will not generate
more jobs.

A number of important decisions confront this and
other industrialized nation—states. Should the emphasis
be on "hard" or "soft" energy technologies? On
conservation or production? On regulatory solutions or
"free-market" solutions? The combination of choices made
will affect all the citizens of the country -— minority
as well as majority.

In raising such questions and in searching for
answers, it is important that consequences of potentially
harmful decisions be anticipated and analyzed. It is
hoped this analysis makes a contribution in stimulating a
more humanistic view toward emerging socially related

energy policy.

CHAPTER V
PERSISTENT INEQUALITY: EMPLOYMENT
AND EDUCATION

Affirmative Action Review

The measurement of social change is at best an
imprecise art, especially in the realm of attitudes and
beliefs. But tenuous as the art of predicting the future
is, we can be relatively assured that racial problems
will remain a part of the United States culture in the
year 2000. Pettigrew (1977; 39-41) suggests that the
"nature of our racial problems, though necessarily
evolving from the past, will nonetheless be radically
different from what we have known during recent decades."

Assessment of progress toward equality by black
Americans in recent decades is especially pertinent in
view of the growing perceptin among white Americans that
"advances" made by blacks to date are self—sustaining and
need no further impetus or assistance.

Throughout the decade of the 19703, with its two
devastating recessions and record-level unemployment,
there were continual pronouncements about the
"significant" economic progress of blacks. According to

Wattenberg and Scammon (1974; 643-652), 52% of all blacks

131

132

have now achieved middle-class status. The news media has
fostered interest in the black middle class phenomenon by
giving high visibility to such research studies as a Rand
report which purports to show a narrowing of the economic
gap between blacks and whites (Smith & Welch, 1978).

With this heavy focus on the "new" emerging black
middle class has come a significant decline in the number
Of whites who believe that there is still racial
discrimination against blacks. While three-fourths of all
whites in 1970 believed that blacks still eperienced
discrimination in trying to achieve full equality, by
1977 this proportion had fallen to only one-third
(National Urban League, 1978).

Indeed, there are many today who believe that the
nation's debt to black people for past injustices has
been so fully paid that whites themselves are becoming
the victims of "reverse discrimination." In this view,
few inequalities between the races remain, and any that
do can be ascribed to "deficiencies" in the motivation,
character, or intellect of individual blacks. Many whites
have become resistant to efforts toward racial equality
in education, employment, housing, and overall economic
security. Since, in their view, equality of opportunity
has already been achieved, and there is no need for
special-emphasis efforts on behalf of blacks and other

minorities, they strongly resist the use of their tax

dollars for social programs on behalf of minorities. This

133

attitude was quite apparent in many persons who voted for
passage of Proposition 13, to reduce property taxes, in
California. It was their contention that their taxes were
going for "unnecessary" social programs that would
primarily benefit racial minorities (Austin, 1976;
37-42).

The spread of these disturbing ideas is increasing
fears among blacks that "progress" has come to a halt and
that many of the perceived gains are eroding. Some blacks
justifiably suggest that an era of retrogression has
already set in, bolstered by the Bakke decision regarding
education and jobs, and other reverse-discrimination
suits in the field of employment. Everywhere, there is
evidence of white backlash and a retreat from the
pro-civil rights convictions of the 19603.

Although growing research attention is turning to
the economic advances of the black middle class, it is
also acknowledged that persistent unemployment and
poverty still prevail in the black community. However, as
Pettigrew (1977; 40) points out, "the nature of racial
discrimination has altered considerably. . . . More
typical now are techniques ostensibly 'non-racial' in
character." Thus, some urban Native Americans with skills
prosper, while many on the reservations slip deeper into
poverty. Young, educated Asian-Americans forge ahead,
while older Asian-Americans and new arrivals face major

obstacles. Some middle class black Americans benefit from

134

the gains of the civil-rights movement, but most poor
blacks have experienced few positive changes in their
immediate lives. Indeed, poor minority people have lost
ground in absolute as well as relative terms in the past
few years, under federal programs that have often acted
against their interests.

Given the declining significance of racial barriers
as a variable in hard-core unemployment and poverty among
blacks, the primary explanations offered for persistent
high unemployment are structural deficiencies, such as
lack of education, lack of job skills, lack of work
motivation, and lack of steady employment history. Such
external factors as lack of jobs or racial discrimination
are not acknowledged in the conventional view. Thus, it
is argued that unemployment among blacks remains high
primarily because of the influx of structurally deficient
persons into the labor force.

In addition, chronic poverty is attributed to the
prevalence of a sizable black "underclass" which
possesses structural deficiencies. Thus, high levels of
joblessness and poverty among blacks are said to be due
primarily to the prevalence of "structurally
unemployable" attributes and "underclass" values rather
than to such external factors as a depressed economy, the
unavilability of jobs, ineffective targeting of jobs, or
lack of equal employment opportunities.

Several news analyses have set forth viewpoints

135

which supposedly account for the divergent trends among
blacks. The theory of two black societies has been set
forth in a series by the New York Times. The analysis
suggests that a cleavage has been steadily developing in
the black community between the middle class and the
chronically poor "underclass" or "structurally
unemployed" (New York Times, 1978). In other words, the
new popular theories hold that, while the gap between
blacks and whites is narrowing, the cleavage between the
black middle class and the black underclass is widening.
Consequently, the current situation of blacks is more
appropriately accounted for on the basis of class or
economic differences than racial differences (Wilson,
1978).

Unfortunately, such reformations have too often been
uncritically accepted. They have not been properly
assessed for their empirical or factual bases. For
example, most of the pronouncements concerning the
emergence of two black societies have failed to clearly
define the criteria for inclusion of a person in the
middle class or the underclass category. Darden (1974;
53—54) explains that, as usual, such "statements are
highly subjective and are made with little or no specific
reference to the source of the data." He further
comments, "This procedure is followed for fear that any
point by point check for verification may result in part

truths, half truths or no truth at all." Vague references

136

are often made to various categories of blacks, such as
"bourgeois" or "structurally unemployed," without
specifying the nature and size of such groupings. One can
hardly document a significant advancement of blacks into
the middle class if that group is ambiguously defined --
or not defined at all.

In order to place the current economic situation of
blacks in proper perspective, it is necessary to
underscore the fact that, although the rest of the nation
may be recovering from the 1974-1975 recession -- the
worst economic decline since the Great Depression of the
19303 -- the black community remains in a state of
economic depression. Black unemployment is at an all-time
high, whether one uses the official United States Bureau
of Labor statistics or the "hidden unemployment" count of
the National Urban League (1978).

Officially, the number of unemployed whites dropped
by 28% (from 6.7 million to 4.8 million) between the
first half of 1975 and the first half of 1978. The number
of unemployed blacks never fell from the record of 1.5
million during the peak of the 1974-1975 recession
(United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1979). When
discouraged workers are added to the official count, the
actual number of blacks out of work doubles to 3.1
million (National Urban League, 1978) -- remaining at the
record high of the 1975 recession.

Not only did blacks fail to recover from the

137

1974-1975 recession, they are also still reeling from the
cumulative effects over time of recurring recessions.
Essentially, the American economy has been subjected to
increasing numbers of recessions within intervals as
short as three years. In fact, over the past two decades,
this country has had at least five recessions: 1953-1954,
1957-1958, 1960-1961, 1969-1971, and 1974-1975. Before
blacks had had a chance to recover from one recession,
they had been hit with another.

The increasing frequency of recession cycles and the
tenuous nature of recoveries have made it exceedingly
difficult to disentangle cyclical unemployment from
structural unemployment. According to the Joint Economic
Committee of the United States Congress (1976), cyclical
unemployment can be distinguished from structural
unemployment as follows:

Cyclical unemployment refers to a situation
in which workers are laid off or cannot
find jobs because of a general economic
recession and an overall shortage of jobs.
Structural unemployment refers to a
situation in which certain groups of
workers cannot compete successfully in the
labor market because of a deficiency of
skills or education, a depressed regional
economy, or discriminating hiring
practices. Such workers have difficulty
finding satisfactory jobs even during
periods of high overall employment.

The persistence of long-term unemployment creates a

serious danger that much of what now is considered

cyclical unemployment will become "structural," and the

138

difficulties of solving the unemployment problem will
increase sharply. Eliminating cyclical unemployment
requires recovery of the economy. Dealing with structural
unemployment requires not only adequate overall job
opportunities, also means providing workers with
remedial education, job training or retraining,
psychological assistance, motivation, and placement
assistance to help them compete in the job market.

Importantly, the Joint Economic Committee neglected
to mention that if structural unemployment among certain
groups of workers is largely due to discriminatory hiring
practices, then strong enforcement of affirmative-action
mandates may be needed more than job training or remedial
education. This notion is reinforced as the unemployment
figures for blacks continue to deteriorate.

Black workers were being disproportionately laid off
by local governments at a time when Congress had passed
legislation expanding the number of public jobs at the
local level. During this time, almost half of the workers
who had previously been employed in local government were
unemployed.

It could have been expected that such persons would
receive their fair share of public employment as jobs
were handed out. But most of the new public-service jobs
did not go to the long-term unemployed, blacks, and other
disadvantaged groups. They were once again denied equal

employment opportunity because affirmative-action

139

commitments were not being appropriately enforced in the
public and private sectors.

Equally serious is the plight of those persons who
will not be helped at all by remedies presently proposed
or mandated. These are the unemployed, blacks
particularly, who have virtually no job experience or who
have been out of the labor market for a long time and are
now again trying to find work. They make up almost
one-half of the black unemployed, and they are ineligible
for unemployment-insurance benefits or public-service
jobs. These workers are least likely to have any cushion
to fall back on. Particularly, youth who have never
worked are losing the valuable years of experience needed
for progress in the world of employment.

The public policy of affirmative action is a natural
extension of the long struggle for equal rights in this
country. From the birth of the Constitution, blacks have
fought for their rightful place as citizens of this
country, but American society has offered them justice
with one hand while withdrawing it with the other.
Although the country has recognized the legitimate claim
of black people to basic citizen rights via the 13th,
14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the nation
has been unwilling to enforce them. The resultant process
of reversal was highlighted in the infamous Plessy v.
Ferguson decision of 1896, which sanctioned the doctrine

of separate but equal as public policy.

140

After nearly sixty years of struggle under such
severe legal, economic, and social restrictions, a ray of
hope was again offered in 1954, when the Supreme Court in
the Brown decision held de jure segregation
unconstitutional. Today, legal segregation as public
policy is almost nonexistent, but the vestiges of
generations of slavery, segregation, and deprivation, and
continued illegal discrimination, have created real
barriers to the attainment of full equality. Inadequate
health care, dilapidated housing, massive unemployment,
and a preferential legal system are monuments to
America's denial of equal justice and the failure of
public policy to eradicate such disadvantages.

When President Carter emphasized the need to honor
the human rights of people throughout the world,
Americans needed to realize that there cannot be a
well-ordered and just society at home when inequality
persists to such an extent that a large segment of
society is disadvantaged. The history of black Americans
continues to be a struggle for government at all levels
to recognize their rights and to enforce rights equally
for all citizens.

Affirmative action is but one strategy designed to
provide justice and equality for citizens. It is a
strategy for peaceful transition to a fair and more
equitable society. There is little question that if

affirmative action fails, citizens who are the recipients

141

of less-than-equal treatment will pursue new strategies,
some of which may not permit the nation to move smoothly
and peacefully to a more equitable society.

Since its inception as a major part of the strategy
for achieving equality of opportunity in employment,
affirmative action has been surrounded by controversy.
Part of the contention has been stimulated by those who
traditionally oppose government intervention on behalf of
minorities. Much of the controversy, however, results
from misunderstanding the concept of affirmative action,
from problems in implementing the strategy, and from
unrealistic expectations for equal-opportunity and
affirmative-action strategies to transform the social and
economic structure into one which reflects greater
equality -- given the fact that many major institutions
had not bought into this goal.

In theory, affirmative action is a preventative
procedure designed to minimize the probability of
discrimination. Affirmative action in the federal program
is defined as the deliberate design and implementation of
employment procedures to ensure equal opportunity to all.
Procedures for recruiting job applicants, evaluating the
qualifications of candidates, notifying potential
candidates about opportunities for promotion, delegating
new assignments, and awarding salary increases and
benefits are to ensure that opportunities are made

available to all on a fair basis, as spelled out by

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Executive Order 11246 and its implementing regulations.

In practice, affirmative action may not always be so
affirmative! The administration of many
affirmative-action programs runs counter to their
purpose. For obvious political reasons, the government
has been reluctant to move against the unions. In
universities, the tenure system tends to keep the upper
faculty ranks nearly frozen, with only slow prospects of
entry for minorities. The civil-service system has
adopted confusing affirmative-action programs that are
often ignored and are certainly not consistently,
equitably, or vigorously enforced.

Ironically, the federal government is neverthless
committed to correcting what it terms "patterns and
practices" of discrimination against entire classes of
employees -- mainly women and blacks. Federal
contractors, a group that includes most major companies,
must set goals for increasing the number of women and
minorities in nine job categories, ranging from manager
to unskilled laborer. These goals are at the heart of
affirmative-action programs theoretically designed to
improve job opportunities in all ranks and specialties
where women and minorities are underrepresented. However,
the nine categories are so general, and the reporting
forms ar so unspecific, that such gimmicks as placing
women and minorities in "dead-end" management positions

to compensate for their scarcity in other professional

143

areas are readily applied (Business Week, 1978).

Again, it must be recognized that the continuation
and acceptance of such practices fosters discrimination.
As has been discussed throughout this presentation, one
of the most pressing issues facing the nation has been
and continues to be how to eliminate racial
discrimination. Solving the problem is complicated by
several factors:

1. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination
remains a major problem for the vast majority of black
people regardless of socioeconomic status.

2. Past discrimination has disadvantaged black
Americans to such an extent that this disadvantage is
being passed from one generation to another. It is
necessary to continually re-emphasize this situation,
because "reverse discrimination" has become one of the
many emotional phrases used by opponents to undermine
affirmative-action programs.

In a declining economy, white males, who are
currently overrepresented in the best jobs and
professions, have realized that they can no longer obtain
privileged positions based on group membership, and have
resorted to allegations of reverse discrimination and
attacks on affirmative action. But as history and the
present situation of black people in the United States
demonstrate, it is virtually impossible for this minority

to discriminate against the majority.

144

For example, white males constitute approximately
73% of all faculty positions in institutions of higher
education, although they are just 43% of the total
population (Wagstaff and Moore, 1974). They have been
able to obtain these positions because of a system which
excluded blacks, other minorities, and white women. While
academia professes to be a bastion of enlightenment, in
reality it has been sexist, elitist, and racially
exclusive. The attack on affirmative action has come
primarily from academia, where white males are
overrepresented. They attack affirmative action because
it has begun to make some progress in bringing minorities
and women into higher-education institutions.

A central issue in the affirmative action/reverse
discrimination ballgame inevitably is whether race should
be taken into consideration. A more-than-sufficient
reason for doing so is that the system has so many
built-in inequities that race must be taken into
consideration to overcome past -- and present --
discrimination.

Racial discrimination denies opportunities to one
group while it favors another. Just as discrimination
against black people has had a compounding effect because
the disadvantages it causes are transmitted from one
generation to another, favoritism or positive
discrimination for white males has had the effect of

transmitting societal benefits from generation to

145

generation. Even when blacks have achieved middle-class
status, it has been almost impossible to transmit the
attendant benefits to their children because of the
fragile nature of that status. Too often, middle-class
status is determined by fluctuations in the job market,
and is often dependent upon participation of black women
in the labor market.

Compensation in the area of education is critical
not only because public policy has helped erect barriers
to educational opportunity, but also, and more
importantly, because education is the key to social and
economic mobility in this society. The current status of
blacks, especially in higher education, attests to the
institutionalization of discrimination. Black student
participation in graduate and professional schools
remained severely limited even in the 19703. Only 3.2% of
the doctorates awarded to United States citizens went to
blacks. In the fields of law and medicine, blacks were 5%
of the full- and part-time students in American Bar
Assocation—approved law schools in the fall of 1974 --
and there were fewer first-year black students in law
school that year than in 1972. Black doctors were only 2%
of all practicing doctors in the United States in 1974,
and most of them were graduates of the two traditionally
black medical schools —- Meharry and Howard Universities
(National Academy of Sciences, 1974; 4). In institutions

of higher education, blacks constituted 3% of the total

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college faculty, including those in predominantly black
institutions (Wagstaff, 1974).

Just as evidence of meaningful change through
affirmative action began to accrue, the bottom fell out
of the academic job market. The continuation of
affirmative-action programs is necessary if this
situation is not to reinforce historical patterns of
discrimination.

If affirmative action is to be effective, the
process must be totally revamped. Legislative and
executive government support is necessary. Commitment to
the letter of the law must be shown.

A cursory analysis of the current situation for
blacks at all levels of employment makes it clear that a
fair system has not been established. Progress toward
eliminating disparities through the achievement of
nondiscriminatory employment practices is projected to be
slow. Twenty years from now, the proportion of blacks
among both Ph.D. and non-Ph.D. faculties will still be
far below parity, even if the requirements of affirmative
action are aggressively implemented (Institute for the
Study of Educational Policy, 1978; National Academy of
Sciences, 1975).

Clearly, equal opportunity cannot be ensured without
disrupting "business as usual." Almost everybody is
willing to undertake equal opportunity if it involves no

cost; however, by definition, affirmative action requires

147

most institutions to alter traditional practices that
produce discriminatory outcomes. Affirmative-action
programs designed to increase the supply of jobs require,
by definition, the expenditure of extra resources. They
require that blacks be treated differently than whites.
In short, efforts to correct the results of past
discrimination and to prevent the occurrence of new
discrimination interrupt the status quo.

Much ambivalence or antagonism to affirmative action
has been addressed by Hamilton (1977). He contends,
rather cynically, that the struggle for equality of
opportunity as traditionally understood and pursued
within the civil-rights context might already have come
to an end. Hamilton cites the March 21, 1977
foreign-policy speech by President Carter in which the
question of human rights was switched from the national
to the international arena.

The impact of such a foreign policy stance
is that this country feels confident enough
about its own internal "human rights
affairs" to be able to assert leadership on
the issue in the international arena. Such
a position would have been untenable (if

not unthinkable) ten, fifteen, and
certainly twenty years ago. (Hamilton,

1977)
Hamilton feels that "affirmative action and other
preferential treatment policies are not likely to be
linked, in attitudes and actions Of many people, to the

earlier thrust for justice in the civil rights, equal

148

opportunity stuggle" (Hamilton, 1977). He therefore
advises that affirmative action preferential policy be
seen "for what it is, namely a corrective policy approach
which makes no claims to being egalitarian or
'democratic'" (Hamilton, 1977). Pointing out that a
corrective policy must necessarily raise questions of
reverse discrimination, since it is a zero-sum game, he
also suggests that the corrective purpose be linked with
a compelling (perhaps a substantial) state interest,
i.e., changing the emphasis from the individual to be
trained to the constituency to be served. In this way, he
argued, the critical areas of societal concern would be
such matters as health care for the poor and quality
teachers in inner-city schools.

Affirmative action will not, and should not be
expected to, alleviate all discrimination problems. But
strong implementation of affirmative action can do much
to assure a more-equitable distribution of opportunity.
Moreover, affirmative efforts to bring black people into
the mainstram of American life will have a direct
influence on the quality of life for all Americans. The
true goal of affirmative action is not to deny
opportunities to those who presently are dominant, but to
see that each person has the opportunity to achieve his
or her full potential and to bring to the whole society

the wealth found in cultural diversity.

149
Conclusion

Almost two decades have passed since Martin Luther
King, Jr. shared his dream that "one day this nation will
rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal.'" Today, this dream remains more a goal
than a reality. Although one can argue as to whether
adequate progress has been made in this quest, there is
little question that massive changes, albeit relative,
have occurred for the nation's black population. While
certain advances have been made, improvement has been
uneven, and in some cases, the black situation has even
deteriorated.

Although opinions differ about the meaning and
causes of rising dependency, crime, unemployment/-
underemployment, and family deterioration, it is a
complex process to weigh the benefits of progress against
the costs of continuing or intensifying social problems.
The task becomes further complicated by the diversity
inherent in change. Regarding social matters, isolated
developments are meaningless; the whole becomes essential
to any understanding of a part. However, the
interrelationships between education, income, employment,
family patterns, housing, health, and other factors are
never direct. Gaining insight from a more comprehensive

perspective is often an extremely complex task, due to

150

the voluminousness of the information that must be
considered. The circumstances of society are dynamic and
interrelated.

While a number of factors can be considered in
assessing social and economic status, well-being can be
profiled along the following dimensions:

Employment. Earnings are the primary source of
income, and work is a major activity of most adults. Job
satisfaction affects overall well-being, while
occupational position and earnings are important
determinants of individual status and prestige.

Income. Money is of central importance in a society
where the consumer is sovereign and where public services
and facilities are relatively scarce. Money may not buy
everything, but income is a significant determinant of
well-being.

Education. A diploma is becoming a more common
prerequisite to employment in better-paying and
higher-status jobs. Education's effect on values and
outlooks is another factor in determining class standing
and future prospects.

Familyypgtterns. The family is still the basic
mechanism through which economic and social status is
transmitted from one generation to the next.

Health. Sound health is important for the enjoyment
of life, and its absence can affect earning capacity,

education, family patterns, and other social indicators.

151

Health is also affected by economic problems. For
example, low income may mean a deficient diet, which can
result in health problems.

Housing. Adequate housing is vital. Living in
deteriorated, overcrowded housing can be a source of
misery and a handicap to development. The location of
one's dwelling may well be a determinant of access to
schools and jobs. The cost of housing affects how much
money remains for other needs.

Power and control. The "good life" is not just a
matter of physical comfort; it is also reflected in
intangibles such as self-fulfillment and
self—determination. Having a voice in business,
government, employment, unions, and shaping community
life are of significant importance here.

Current conditions, and changes and rates of change
in the aforementioned dimensions, generally determine
whether conditions for blacks are intolerable, merely
acceptable, or favorable. An assessment of change may
demonstrate a need for redirection of society toward
acceleration of improvement. Public policy has played a
pervasive role in socioeconomic change, and government
intervention strategies can be analyzed to determine
their impact on blacks as well as identifying the most
effective approach or combination of approaches for the

future.

The aforementioned social-class indicators are based

152

on socioeconomic variables of status -- i.e., occupation,
education, wealth, power, and prestige. Other indicator
factors also affect various sectors of American society:
ethnicity, race, sex, and age. When multiple parallel
stratification systems exist, individuals may be
simultaneously ranked on several systems. Though the
stratification systems are parallel, they are not
necessarily equal.

Policymakers have certainly acknowledged the
inconsistencies of stratification. Racism is a
particularly poignant illustration of how factors in
parallel systems of stratification manifest themselves.
Civil-rights legislation and affirmative-action policies
have resulted from America's continual need to
"legislate" inalienable rights for the consistently
disenfranchised black population.

Entering the 19803, perceived gains by the black
population are being revaluated. In absolute terms, and
despite the battle against inequality, black children,
youth, and families are worse off than whites in every
area of American life. Twenty-six years after Brown v.
Board of Education, most black children still have not
gained the opportunities that most white children take
for granted. In some areas, the gap between black and
white children's chances for success has actually widened
rather than narrowed in the past decade. For example,

although black infants are twice as likely as white

153

infants to die within the first year of life, the
infant-mortality rate fell faster during the 19703 among
white families than among black. Real per capita income
increased slightly for whites but fell for blacks. The
disparity in school—suspension and teenage-unemployment
rates between whites and blacks increased. Today, 47 out
of every 100 black babies are born into poverty, compared
to fewer than 1 in 8 white babies (Children's Defense
Fund, 1980). Between 1969 and 1977, the rate of poverty
among black families rose from 3.75 times that of white
families to 4 times (United Press International, 1980).

In early 1979, the overall black unemployment rate
was 11.6%, compared to the white rate of 4.9%. The black
teenage rate was 35.2%, compared to the white teenage
rate of 13.5% (Lion, 1979; 5-6). The historical pattern
of a black unemployment rate double that of whites still
held -- a quarter century after the Supreme Court's
landmark decision outlawing racially segregated systems
of public education as inherently unfair and
unconstitutional. To deny race as a factor of inequality,
especially as related to black Americans, distorts any
assessment of social and economic status.

This research project focuses on two socioeconomic
factors relevant to blacks -- unemployment, and education
-- and demonstrates the relationship of these
socioeconomic factors to racial discrimination and

poverty.

154

Employment

To more fully understand contemporary minority
employment problems (particularly those of black
Americans), the combined effects of institutional racism,
the growth of modern industrial capitalism, and minority
access to employment opportunities must all be
considered. To ignore or underestimate such historical
factors plays into the hands of those policymakers who
have traditionally placed blame for poverty upon the
poor.

By-and-large, much of the unemployment of blacks is
directly traceable to post—World War II structural
features inherent in modern industrial development, such
as industrial decentralization from the older inner-city
plants to newer suburban plants; migration of Northern
plants to the Sunbelt; and the exportation of
labor-intensive jobs to cheaper, non-union overseas labor
markets. Harman (1978; 209) points out that chronic
unemployment and underemployment are a major problem of
post-industrial societies.

The possibility of long-term chronic unemployment
and underemployment rests on two propositions: (a) that
over the long run, economic growth may not continue to
generate enough jobs to accomodate the expanding
workforce; and (b) that the quality of available jobs may

not be compatible with rising educational levels of the

155

workforce. Of major concern is Harman's claim that "lack
of sufficient and satisfactory jobs is not just a problem
of the present, but one that will remain and perhaps
intensify in the years ahead" (Herman, 1978; 209). The
implication of such findings, if accurate, for minorities
and especially blacks (given their employment history),
is a bleak employment horizon.
Notwithstanding special employment programs, many of
which are having some effect, minority unemployment and
underemployment stands little chance of being reduced
until there is a societal understanding of the need for
all employable persons to be employed. The social costs
of unemployment to minorities and the total society are
very high. America has more than enough capacity to
reduce unemployment. Noted economist Robert Lekachman
(1977; 39-40) alludes to this:
By the standards of other advanced
societies, unemployment in the United
States is routinely disgracefully high. The
percentage of poor people is again larger
than Scandinavians, Western Europeans,
Japanese, or Australians are prepared to
accept. . . . The United States remains,
despite the buffets of recent years, an
exceedingly rich community. Yet it allows
large numbers of adults and teenagers to
drift along unhappily without useful work
or hope of finding it.

Lekachman adds that "an enlightened community offers

decent employment to all who want work and are capable of

working" (Lekachman, 1977; 91). Those who are unable to

156

work, he feels, should receive, "without stigmatism or
recrimination, a reasonable cash grant."

Structural problems inherent in modern industrial
societies will also have to be addressed, as will
awareness on the part of American citizens that work is
vital to the human personality and to the peace of
society. Full employment thus is a key to social justice
in the United States today. No other progressive goal can
fully be achieved without it.

Histogigal employmentjpgttergs of blgck workers. As
previously mentioned, contemporary employment problems of
urban minorities (mainly blacks) have resulted from the
combined effects of institutional racism and the
structural characteristics of American industrial
development. Sociologist Julius Wilson (1978; 1-4)
identifies the period from post-Reconstruction to the end
of the New Deal as one of "industrial expansion, class

conflict and racial oppression,‘ when some of the most

blatant forms Of institutional racism occurred. He
describes the period from post-World War II to the 19703
as a time of "progressive transition from racial

inequalities to class inequality." According to Wilson:

As the nation has entered the latter half
of the twentieth century . . . many of the
traditional barriers have crumbled away
under the weight of the political, social
and economic changes of the civil rights
era. A new set of obstacles has emerged
from basic structural shifts in the
economy.

157

Wilson's arguments emphasize class subordination as
opposed to racial oppression. While this author does not
accept all of Wilson's arguments, there is a recognition
that some of his arguments are important in providing key
racial and class factors in the historical employment
patterns of black workers. Currently, there is an
increasing urban underclass, disproportionately comprised
of racial minorities. At the same time, there is a direct
relationship between high unemployment rates among racial
minorities and the technological and organizational
changes occurring in American industry. Wilson (1978;
96-97) contends that the current high unemployment rate
of black workers is "partly related to the rapid growth
of corporate industries which depends more on technical
progress and increases in physical capital per worker
than on growth of employment."

As the post-World War II corporate sector developed,
industrial technology expanded, resulting in an increase
in technological unemployment. Since black workers
constituted a large percentage of corporate-sector
workers rendered redundant by emergent technology, they
were displaced in larger numbers than white workers by
advancing technology (Wilson, 1978).

During the 19503 and 19603, urban black workers were
joined by their Southrn black counterparts leaving the

plantations as a result of agricultural mechanization.

158

The introduction of new farming machines and techniques
between 1950 and 1965 increased farm output by 45% and
reduced farm employment by 45% (United States President's
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, 1967).
Although mechanization affected all agricultural areas
nationally, its greatest impact was concentrated in the
cotton South among black farm workers. Over four million
Southern blacks left the South after 1940, destined for
inner cities in Northern industrial centers where
industrial decentralization was rapidly occurring.

Of the 20 million farm workers displaced out of
agriculture between 1940 and 1965, Southern black
farmworkers were the most vulnerable. Most were living in
economies characterized by low wages and sub-human
working conditions. By 1966, the black working class of
the South, which had migrated north, now formed with its
Northern counterpart a massive class of unemployed and
underemployed workers in the heart of the nation's
cities. In 1966, the average unemployment rate among
blacks in the central cities was 9.3%, compared to the
national average of 3.5% (Gordon, 1972; 6).

Such high unemployment and underemployment rates
have traditionally been explained by scholars and
public-policy analysts by attributing them to blacks'
lack of skills and family disorganization, and to a
lesser extent, to institutional racism. Few analysts

examined the larger context for linkages between the

159

changing nature of American industry, the declining
manufacturing sector, and racial discrimination. For
example, during the 19503 and 19603, central cities
experiencing the largest black unemployment were those
which did not consistently share in the nation's economic
growth (Piven & Cloward, 1971; 216).

Within this context, the unfavorable minority
employment picture was exacerbated by the nature and form
of economic development. Nevertheless, racism remained an
important factor. In many cases where minority workers
had as much formal schooling as white workers, minority
workers still failed to obtain jobs (Sorkin, 1974; 68).
Such racial practices by business and union alike
prompted the rise of minority working class protest
groups in the 19503 and 19603 (Foner, 1976; 293-310,
397-424).

Role of the Cities

A general understanding of the historic role of
American cities is essential: Namely, to function as
receiving centers for successive waves of immigrant
workers, particularly cheap workers. American industrial
cities, above all else, provided jobs for immigrants.
Now, as "the wilting of metropolitan areas raises to new
heights the crisis of function of the American city,
. . . the less skilled will apparently bear the brunt of

the burden of no growth and decline" (Sternlieb and

160

Hughes, 1977; 156-157). A large proportion of these
less-skilled workers are black.

Compounding the problems of declining industrial
cities and the decline and shift of the manufacturing
sector is the overseas transfer of some jobs once
available to minorities (Frank & Freeman, 1976). In many
cases, this American corporate shift overseas was
motivated chiefly by avarice -- the insatiable need for
higher profits at the expense of American workers (Barnet
& Muller, 1974; 216). Some of the largest United
States-based global corporations, like Ford, which long
provided employment to minority auto workers, employ more
than 30% of their workforce overseas (Barnet & Muller,
1974; 303).

Unfortunately, too few people make the connection
between American multinational corporations and
unemployment. Yet as Barnet and Muller (1974; 333)
contend:

The mobility of capital and the immobility
of labor and government are adversely
affecting income distribution in the United
States and causing serious structural
unemployment. As a result, the economic
security of the average American is
threatened.

The aforementioned effort to call attention to some
of the structural aspects of black workers' employment

problems is not an attempt to ignore institutional

racism, which still exists in domestic labor markets. Its

161

only purpose is to make clear the larger picture and to
identify other pertinent factors responsible for the
unemployment and underemployment of black workers.

Institutional racism still exists in America and has
historically disproportionately kept black workers in the
unskilled, low-wage, low-mobility sector and white
workers in the skilled, high-wage, high-mobility sector.

Blacks proceeded from the system of slavery to that
of sharecropping. It was well into the middle of the 20th
century before most Southern black sharecroppers left the
Southern fields for the Northern factories where they
faced relatively higher levels of unemployment and
underemployment than other groups (Foner, 1976). From the
post-Reconstruction period to the mid-19703, when
effective civil rights enforcement procedures were
finally having some effect on black employment
opportunities, institutional racism took its toll on
black workers. Organized labor limited employment
opportunities for minorities through union constitutional
restrictions and through control of labor markets (Hill,
1967; 365-402).

Black young adult unemployment. Black young adults
are essentially a minority within a minority. They are
consistently drifting further and further out of the
American mainstream. The problem of young adult/teenage
unemployment is at best a blot on the social

consciousness and human values of American society. Black

162

teenagers have experienced rates of unemployment of 25%
and above throughout the past decade (United States
Department of Labor, 1977). Although white teenage
unemployment rates are also significantly higher than
those of adults, the disparities are not nearly as wide
as for black teenagers.

Partly in response to widespread joblessness, black
teenagers and young adults have dropped out of the labor
force in alarming rates (United States Department of
Labor, 1975). Limited access to employment other than in
dead-end, menial jobs undoubtedly contributes to high
drop-out rates. Institutional barriers to full
participation in the labor market further exacerbate this
condition. The normal problems of young people adjusting
to the world of work are compounded in the case of black
teenagers by poor public-education systems, employment
discrimination, and limited supportive services in the
community.

The extraordinary nonparticipation of young blacks
in the labor force makes the conventional measure of
unemployment almost meaningless as a guide to the problem
of joblessness in the black community. If just one-half
of the non-participants among black teenagers were added
to the total unemployed as measured by the standard
definition, the black unemployment rate would probably be
nearly double reported rates.

Although significant gains have been made by blacks

163

in the past 20 years, there remains a major gap between
black and white Americans. Reviewing national demographic
and socioeconomic changes for the black population,
particularly since the 1962 second edition of Gunnar
Myrdal's classic study of American blacks, An American
Dilemma, the differences between black and white
populations have on the whole not changed. Myrdal (1966)
argues that the professed American creed of "liberty,
equality, justice, and fair opportunity for everybody"
had in practice been extended least of all to blacks.

While the civil-rights movements launched in the
19503, along with the Great Society of the 19603,
provided socioeconomic gains for many blacks entering the
19803, the picture now appears more bleak.

When the dismal record on mortality, steady
employment, and income is considered, it becomes clear
that a major move by American blacks into mainstream
middle-class America is not imminent. What gains blacks
have made are now being threatened by cutbacks of
federally supported social programs and changes in the
government's role in protecting civil rights, plus an
increasing number of immigrants into the United States
who compete directly for low-level jobs on which many
blacks must still rely.

Past history, both positive and negative, provides a
mechanism for new beginnings. Events and circumstances

which promoted equality between black and white Americans

164

require consistent commitment and support to preserve
those gains in the present, and to improve a future that
is inevitable. Whatever has retarded or impeded progress
is retrogressive and affects all American citizenry.

Gains in American levels of living since 1940 have
improved the condition of black and white alike, albeit
for whites such gains, relative to those of the black
population, remain consistently greater across all
socioeconomic measures. Laws now (at least on paper)
prohibit the most blatant forms of discrimination. There
is a general climate of congeniality in the workplace and
in other formal and informal meetings. While the
etiquette by which we live, especially that supported by
law, provides a relative degree of advancement for
blacks, the relations and tolerance are often forced.
They successfully mask stereotypical ways of thinking and
the bureaucratic manipulations that sustain them. Such
actions have persisted, and reveal themselves in the many
ingenious ways civil-rights laws are circumvented to
ensure basic human rights, which are themselves
renegotiated over and over again.

While attempts have been made to ameliorate problems
of continuing discrimination and lawlessness by improving
the enforcement of civil-rights legislation, the paradox
confronting such actions is the very inadequacy of the
enforcement provisions. The need for civil rights

enforcement provisions to begin with addresses volumes

165

about the resistance of white Americans to accepting
black Americans as equals.

When the American public views itself as a civilized
and mature people, then there must be acknowledged not
just how much has been achieved in civil rights, nor how
much is yet to be accomplished, but how fragile is the
result.

Americans are an aggressive and competitive people.
During more economically advantaged times, black
Americans have achieved enough to maintain and even
reduce a little the relative distance between them and
white Americans. But dependence upon the economy to
reduce disparity between the races continues to position
black Americans at a disadvantage where they become
vulnerable to the kind of progress that vanishes in times
of economic retrenchment. Moreover, the economic system
has inherent limits which tie later comfort to early and
continuous high earnings, which are not yet commonly the
lot of black American workers. When competition for basic
needs becomes keen in a stagnant or receding economy, and
when, at the same time, the push for equality manifests
itself in a closer proximity, the film of civility often
disintegrates and disequilibrium occurs. Too often, such
times are perilous; newly learned manners give way; and
retrogression sets in, sometimes exacerbated by an
indifferent or opportunistically neglectful government.

While the cutting edge of black Americans' progress

166

has been protest and intense effort has been an integral
part of this process, such persistent and creative
efforts have not achieved their goal. This lack of
achievement is testimony to the power and influence of
white majority resistance. This is not just because of
their wealth, or because of the restrictions societies
impose on minorities; it is also because black and white
Americans still live out their lives in separate social
worlds. That separateness is no accident; it is managed
and contrived. Residential segregation is only the
physical manifestation of the way American society as a
whole is organized. Such living arrangements lead to
separate communication networks that operate continuously
to the advantage of the majority in maintaining their
better-than-equal life chances. The majority controls
public and private institutions and the management that
controls access to employment and training opportunities.
The separate worlds of black and white Americans are
only one manifestation of how racism has become
institutionalized in America. Blacks disproportionately
are denied employment regardless of merit; denied housing
regardless of creditworthiness; and receive less from
income security systems regardless of characteristics
similar to white fellow citizens. Economic, social, and
political disequilibrium foment institutionalized racism.
In the final analysis, the challenge of economic,

social, and political dislocation in modern industrial

167

society calls for both a general public commitment as
well as public-policy programs to attack inequality from
a broader focus -- one that includes dimensions which
address the pervasive and destructive features of ethnic

and racial discrimination and class subordination.

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