Contemporary sociologists implicitly have assumed that the race-class debate has been resolved: Blacks tend to fall in one of two categories—”the black middle class” or the “truly disadvantaged.” However, lost amid the controversies over the supposed privileges of the former and the problems of the latter is the plight of the “forgotten” category of blacks: the black working class. Accordingly, we present a sociological analysis of the black working class and ask: How has the black working class changed compared to its white counterpart from 1850 to 1990? Employing the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for our analysis, we find that for the last five decades blacks are more likely to be working class than middle class or bottom class. In addition, blacks currently are more likely to be working class than are whites. In fact, in recent decades the percentage of blacks who are working class exceeds those for whites and, indeed, are higher than ever recorded for whites.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BlauPeter M. and DuncanOtis Dudley. 1967. The American Occupational Structure.New York: Free Press.
2.
BrooksClem and ManzaJeff. 1997. “Class Politics and Political Change in the United States.”Social Forces77:231–56.
3.
CancioA. Silvia, David EvansT., and MaumeDavid J.Jr. 1996. “Reconsidering the Declining Significance of Race: Racial Differences in Early Career Wages.”American Sociological Review61:541–56.
4.
CollinsSharon M.1989. “The Marginalization of Black Executives.”Social Problems36:317–31.
5.
CurryLeonard P.1981. The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: The Shadow of a Dream.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
6.
DennisGilbert and KahlJoseph A.. 1987. American Class Structure: A New Synthesis.Chicago, IL: Dorsey Press.
7.
DuncanOtis Dudley. 1961. “A Socioeconomic Index for All Occupations.” pp. 108–34 in Occupations and Social Status, edited by ReissA.. New York: Free Press.
8.
DuncanOtis Dudley. 1968. “Inheritance of Poverty or Inheritance of Race?” pp. 85–110 in On Understanding Poverty, edited by MoynihanD. P.. New York: Basic Books.
9.
EvansM. D. R., KelleyJonathan, and KolosiTamos. 1992. “Images of Class: Public Perceptions in Hungary and Australia.”American Sociological Review57:461–82.
10.
FarleyReynolds and AllenWalter. 1987. The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America.New York: Russell Sage.
11.
FeaginJoe R.1991. “The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places.”American Sociological Review56:101–16.
12.
FeaginJoe R. and SikesMelvin. 1994. Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience.Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
13.
FranklinJohn Hope and MossFranklinJr. 1994. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans.7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
14.
HarrisWilliam Hamilton. 1982. The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War.New York: Oxford University Press.
15.
HiggsRobert. 1977. Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914.New York: Cambridge University Press.
16.
HortonHayward Derrick. 1992. “Race and Wealth: A Demographic Analysis of Black Homeownership.”Sociological Inquiry62: 480–89.
17.
JargowskyPaul A.1996. “Take the Money and Run: Economic Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.”American Sociological Review61: 984–98.
18.
JaynesGerald David and WilliamsRobin M.Jr. 1989. A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society.Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
19.
KeithVerna and HerringCedric. 1991. “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community.”American Journal of Sociology97:760–78.
20.
KluegelJames R., SingletonRoyceJr., and StarnesCharles E.. 1977. “Subjective Class Identification: A Multiple Indicator Approach.”American Sociological Review42: 599–611.
21.
LandryBart. 1987. The New Black Middle Class.Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
22.
LiebersonStanley. 1980. A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants Since 1880.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
23.
MasseyDouglas S. and DentonNancy A.. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24.
MorrisAldon. 1984. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.New York: Free Press.
25.
RugglesSteven, David HackerJ., and SobekMatthew. 1995. “Overview of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.”Historical Methods28:33–9.
26.
StarobinRobert. 1970. Industrial Slavery in the Old South.New York: Oxford University Press.
27.
TaylorMarylee C.1998. “How White Attitudes Vary with the Racial Composition of Local Populations: Numbers Count.”American Sociological Review63:512–35.
28.
TolnayStewart. 1997. “The Great Migration and Changes in the Northern Black Family: 1940–1990.”Social Forces75:1213–38.
29.
VannemanReeve and PampelFred C.. 1977. “The American Perception of Class and Status.”American Sociological Review42:422–37.
30.
WilsonWilliam J.1980. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
31.
WilsonWilliam J.1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
32.
WrightErik Olin and ChoDonmoon. 1992. “The Relative Permeability of Class Boundaries to Cross-Class Friendships: A Comparative Study of the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Norway.”American Sociological Review57: 85–102.
