A brief discussion on a social study looking at how racism holds back African-Americans in one city, Baltimore, in regards of education & employment, against their Caucasian / White counterparts. People all over the world think that there's no, or minimal, discrimination in Europe & North America in the areas of employment & education, & merit rules the day. But, this & several other studies will confirm that racism & discrimination very much exist & affects the minorities very much so.
Now, we have to keep in mind that this study is looking at the racism effect on African-Americans & Caucasians / Whites; people whose religious beliefs & social attitudes might not differ so much & the only difference between them will be the colour of their skin. Now, what if we factor in the religious beliefs? Those religious beliefs will show up in the subjects' names, familial & social connections, social attitudes, & perhaps, their outlook (facial hair, dressing style etc.). Per my own observations & experiences, these factors adversely affect the individual & make his / her climb up the social & corporate ladder that much harder.
That's why, 2nd-generation immigrants (children of immigrants) usually shun the habits of their immigrant parents & adopt their host countries' customs & cultures. This adoption helps them in gaining acceptance in the social & corporate arena & seemingly makes their life that much easier. Children who stick to their parental cultures keep suffering. Other people in their family & friend circle start pointing out that how people they know are getting ahead without acknowledging some simple facts that how those children who are getting ahead have forsaken the cultural & religious practices of their immigrant parents, & have adopted their host country's customs & cultures.
The simple reason the general public wants to believe that there's no racism is that it's much easier to lay the blame of a Muslim teenager rebelling against the society with a gun or an African-American man being homeless & broke on their own abilities & competencies, instead of how hard it is to succeed in life when the cards are stacked against you from the time of your birth, simply because of the colour of your skin, or your religious belief, or your family's networks.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KARL ALEXANDER, JOHN DEWEY PROF. OF SOCIOLOGY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV.: 40%of high school dropout rate overall. We all would want better than that for our children, much better. One of the interesting things, because there's a lot of discussion of high school drop out is that that's the end of the story. But 60% of the study youngsters who left school without high school degrees eventually get some kind of high school certification, and most of them do the GED degree, which is an alternative certification, but by the standards of federal government accounting that's high school completion. 10% who dropped out return to high school and finish with regular diplomas.
So what started out as a 40% high school degree at age 28 is down to 25%, which is still really very high, but it's not 40%. So these kids who leave school, many of them realize that this wasn't a very good decision and they regret it and they try to do something about it. When we talked at age 28 to everyone, 80% of the total panel said that they intended to get additional education, 80% at age 28. It was 85% among high school dropouts. We call them permanent high school dropouts because by age 28 they didn't have a GED or a high school diploma. ... it really is quite impressive to see how the success ethos that school is the way to get ahead has permeated through even a very disadvantaged population of urban youth. So these kids want to succeed in life, they want to do well, and they understand, many of them, that school can be the path out, up and out. But there are just so many barriers that stand in the way that for many of them, they're not able to see it through.
JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: And there is a racial disparity in high school dropouts between white and black, who found work even though they were high school dropouts.
ALEXANDER: Yes, there ... is a racial disparity, but it's not the one that you might anticipate. So one of the interesting opportunities that we had here, because we did start out with a very diverse sample within the framework of the Baltimore City Public Schools system is that we have a large presence of low-income white children. And there's a vast literature on the problems of the urban poor and concentrated poverty in our big cities, but you very rarely see low-income whites as part of that picture, as part of that story. And that's regrettable, because there are low-income whites in Baltimore and there are low-income white neighborhoods in Baltimore. There have been all along, and there still are. But very rarely do you see them brought into the conversation about the challenges of the urban poor and whatnot.
So we were fortunate in being able to include a large group of these youngsters in our study, and we monitored their experiences over time as well. And what we find is that the lower-income whites, white children, white males specifically, of disadvantaged family background have the highest dropout rate, non-completion. At age 28, their average years of schooling is about 10.2. So the typical lower-income white male growing up is a permanent high school dropout in terms of the way--our coverage of it.
Now, the others--and the comparisons we make are lower income against higher income, or lower socioeconomic standing against higher socioeconomic standing growing up, African American and white, and male and female, men and women. And when I say that the white males of disadvantaged family background have the lowest high school completion rate, had the highest high school dropout rate, I'm not saying that the others are going gangbusters. In fact, for the other three groups, they're all eleven-point-something years. So for all four--lower-income white men, white women, African-American men, and African-American women--at age 28, the typical youngster out of that group, all four of those groups, has not finished high school. But white men, if you look at the numbers, are least successful of all. ... in terms of using the educational system as the vehicle for moving up in life, 'cause they've got the lowest levels of formal schooling on average. ... .
But then to turn the page, ... they are most successful in the world work--so least successful educationally and most successful in the world of work, and across a whole host of particulars when you look at it: they're more likely to have worked full-time; they find jobs fast, more quickly, and they're ready to move on to the next job; their earnings are higher; and they have a very distinctive pattern of successful vocational development--from adolescence on, their employment experience is much better than that of African-American men of like background, and much better also than women of like background, both African-American and white. So these white guys don't use schooling as the vehicle for doing well in life, but they do have employment opportunities that aren't as readily available to the others who grew up in the same kind of circumstances.
...
...
... what we find, which is really tremendously striking is that at age 28, 45% of these guys are working in the high-skill, high-wage jobs in manufacturing and in the construction trades, 45% are working as either electricians, plumbers, welders, things of that sort. But the kinds of jobs that used to be the backbone of the old Baltimore industrial economy and everyone says that they're gone with deindustrialization ... , but if you look around, people are still building buildings, they're still doing a road repairs to the highways. If you need to upgrade your electricity at home, you call an electrician, or if you need a new hot water heater installed, you call a plumber. So there are people who are still doing this kind of work and working in these trades. And what we see is that it's white men of lower-income background who have the greatest access to these kinds of jobs, 45% of white men. 15% of African-American men are working in this same sector, the way we classify it. ... so the white advantage, just in terms of penetrating into this sector of employment, is threefold advantage. But on top of that, the white men who are working in the sector, their earnings are twice that of African-American men, roughly $44,000 against ... $22,000.
A little bit more than double. And that's at age 28 in terms of 2006, 2007 dollars. So these guys not only have better access to this high-skill, high-wage work in the blue-collar economy, but ... their positions that they find themselves in are much more--they pay a lot more than the positions African-Americans of like background find themselves in.
This is actually longstanding in Baltimore. We see it in the experiences of our study group, but there was a report that was published in the early '60s that looked at the earnings, using Social Security data, ... of the automobile mechanic graduates to Baltimore vocational and technical high schools back in the day. Actually, it was Mergenthaler and Carver. They were segregated at the time. And the white graduates, the white auto mechanics graduates four or five years afterwards were making twice what the African-American graduates were making in the same program, auto mechanics. So this is a longstanding pattern.
And so there is another--there's a second option for how to establish yourself in life and achieve a reasonably comfortable standard of living.
...
...
... I say men because it is particularly men. There aren't many women, white or are African-American, who are working in these kinds of jobs. When you look at the sex composition of the employments of our study youngsters, there is a high-degree of sex segregation, and it's very traditional. The women are concentrated, African-American and white, in the traditional pink-collar sectors.
...
...
That's service and clerical work--with some sales, but service and clerical. Service and clerical employment makes up 60-70% of lower-income women's--in terms of family background. ... And they pay less. ... So women and men substantially are finding themselves at different places in the labor market, and men are in more lucrative positions than women.
And that actually--it's interesting. We see the same thing for those who were from more favorable family backgrounds, and most of whom attended college, and many had completed college, but it's at the upper end of the employment hierarchy. So those women are concentrated in the professional fields. And you could name them as well as I, probably, 'cause they are gendered. It's teaching, nursing, social work, the helping professions. Men of like background are more likely to be in executive or managerial positions or to be in the high-level technical positions of today's postindustrial economy. And those jobs pay more than the helping-profession jobs that women access. So we see men being advantaged in terms of employment opportunities--.
...
...
So what we describe in the book is this pattern where white men of modest background are advantaged in terms of their employment experience over everybody else. Why that happens is a larger question. And there's a historical backdrop to it. There are--in the long shadow, we think there really are two--it's a story about two kinds of family privilege. And the flipside of family privilege is family disadvantage. But there's middle-class family privilege in terms of helping children do well in school. And that's what we see. Children of parents who themselves were college-educated, who have middle-class jobs and whatnot, their children are doing just fine.
...
...
... this pattern of differential success in school, it's not particular to what we see in Baltimore. It's we see it nationally as well that children from advantaged families are more successful in terms of family income, parental levels of education, and so forth. So that's one success narrative.
This other success narrative involves blue-collar attainment, and where--parents can be helpful there, too, but in a not quite as obvious way, 'cause we know about middle-class parents. Middle-class parents can do all kinds of things to help their children do well in school. They buy expensive educational toys, they do enrichment experiences, and so forth. Blue-colar parents, it's not so obvious, until you step back and think about it, how they can to help their children be successful. And the way it plays out in the experiences of our study group is that blue-collar parents can help open doors to good steady employment through social networks. When we asked at age 22 our study participants how they found the work, white men of modest background much more often said through family and friends, and African-Americans much more often said through themselves. And if you're on your own and you're not well connected, that makes it--that's not an easy thing to do, to find your way to a good opportunity. ... It is white privilege, working-class white privilege specifically.
Another facet of that is we have--the white high school dropouts at age 22, 80% of them were working. ... African-American male high school dropouts at age 22, 40% of them were working. So whites just have these employment advantages all along the way. And what we find is, if you look at those groups specifically, between age 22 at age 28, 5% of the whites acquire a criminal record along the way. I think it's 45% of the African-Americans acquire a criminal record along the way. So they have limited job opportunities, and they're trying to figure out a way to get by, and they get in trouble.
