Abstract
Although racial categories are biologically arbitrary, they are deliberate social constructions. Racial lines are drawn to accomplish socioeconomic divisions, so we should not be surprised at the stubborn persistence of racial inequalities. Despite multiple slave rebellions, a virulent Civil War, several major constitutional amendments, a 90-year sociopolitical war against Jim Crow, and an ongoing movement for racial justice, American society remains wedded to the racial paradigm of the founding slave owners: the reproduction of racial identities (and racial conflict) across generations through persistent intergenerational inequality in the distributions of wealth and power.
Patrick L. Mason was president of the National Economic Association for the year 2004. He is associate professor of economics and director of the African American Studies program at Florida State University. He is coeditor of International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: African Americans, Labor and Society: Organizing for a New Agenda (2001), Race, Markets, and Social Outcomes (1997), and African Americans in the US Economy (forthcoming). He was the chair of the Committee on the Status of Minorities in the Economics Profession (2002–2004).
Timothy Bates and William Bradford
The minority-oriented venture-capital (VC) industry is a small, but rapidly growing group of funds that specializes in investing equity capital in minority business enterprises. Major sources of funds for the minority VCs include public pension funds and banks seeking to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act. These institutional investors are clearly motivated by social returns as well as attractive financial yields when they choose to invest in minority VC funds. Yet our findings indicate that the minority VCs are earning high rates of return from their investments in minority-owned firms. Given their impressive record to date, the minority VCs appear to be positioned to maintain their rapid growth trajectory if institutional investors are forthcoming with the funding required to support this growth.
Timothy Bates is distinguished professor of urban and labor affairs at Wayne State University. His current research focuses upon the development of the minority venture capital industry and the nature of the small business community that serves minority clienteles in central cities.
William Bradford is Endowed Professor of Business and Economic Development and a professor of finance and business economics at the School of Business, University of Washington. His current research interests include the development of the minority venture capital industry.
Wilhelmina A. Leigh
This analysis seeks to determine the extent to which childbearing in central cities by teens of selected racial/ethnic groups can be explained by place-specific factors. A review of the research on this topic guided the selection of the demographic, economic, political, and social factors considered, which included: percent of population foreign-born, unemployment rate, income, and presence of African American or Latino elected officials. The unemployment rate and income measures have the expected relationships to teen childbearing. In addition, central cities with larger percentages of the foreign-born were less likely to report childbearing among either African American or Latina teenagers.
Wilhelmina A. Leigh, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, DC, conducts policy research in the areas of health, housing, and employment. Dr. Leigh has been employed at federal government agencies, other non-profit research institutions, and in academia. Recent related publications include The Reproductive Health of African American Adolescents: What We Know and What We Don't Know (2002). In 2003, she received from the Healthy Teen Network, formerly the National Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Parenting and Prevention, Inc. (NOAPPP), their inaugural award for “outstanding contribution in promoting science-based practices in adolescent pregnancy prevention programs.”
John W. Graham and Steven A. Smith
In 1993, African-Americans were 9.5 percent of all college-educated workers, but only 4.3 percent of those workers employed in science and engineering (S&E). This paper uses a cross-sectional dataset collected by the NSF to investigate why blacks disproportionately choose careers outside of S&E and offers some policy recommendations to change things, including increasing the percentage of minorities who major in an S&E educational field and stemming the attrition of black S&E-trained workers away from careers in S&E. Our analysis also finds evidence that workers respond to economic incentives and perceptions of fairness in their selection of S&E and non-S&E fields of employment.
John W. Graham is professor of economics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark and is the current department chair. He earned his Ph.D. in 1978 at Northwestern University and taught previously at the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on understanding race and gender differences in labor markets and among families.
Steven A. Smith is assistant professor of management at the University of New Orleans. His research has focused on the careers of scientists and engineers, and the impact of race, gender, and nativity on career dynamics in the scientific labor market. He received his Ph.D. in strategic management from Rutgers University.
Marshall H. Medoff
Why are blacks underrepresented at central positions in professional baseball? The economic hypothesis posits that positional segregation is due to differential skill/development costs and the lower socioeconomic status of black families. Over the time period 1980–2000, the relative socioeconomic status of black families increased, resulting in blacks being better able to acquire the expensive skills needed to participate at central baseball positions. The data show that, consistent with the economic hypothesis, there was a numerically significant increase of blacks at central baseball positions. Changes in other possible sociological explanatory factors were considered, but found to be either without merit or unsubstantiated.
Marshall H. Medoff is professor of economics at California State University, Long Beach. He received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include labor market discrimination, the economics of abortion and adoption, and the sociology of the economics profession.