Introduction

Smelser, Ronald; Zitelmann, Rainer

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-12823-5_1

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“…The interaction between macroeconomic shifts, segregation, and racial disparities forms a core pillar of the scholarship of William Julius Wilson (1978Wilson ( , 1987Wilson ( , 1996Wilson ( , 2009. Throughout his work, Wilson has emphasized the importance of "indirect structural forces," such as changes in the types of jobs available or the spatial locations of those jobs, in shaping racial disparities (Smelser et al 2001). Although these forces appear orthogonal to questions of racial inequality and do not necessarily have their origins in any racialized process, they have disproportionately harmed African Americans and other groups that are concentrated among the less affluent parts of society.…”

Section: The Relationship Between Economic Structure and Racial Dispamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These two topics stand at the core of sociology, yet they are often studied in isolation. Scholars of racial stratification have focused their attention on disparities and gaps (Leicht 2008;Morris and Western 1999), neglect-ing the impact of larger shifts in the economy and the income distribution-what William Julius Wilson has called "indirect structural forces" (Smelser, Wilson, and Mitchell 2001;Wilson 2009). As I document, a major cause of racial disparities is cross-racial income stagnation.…”

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Income Inequality and the Persistence of Racial Economic Disparities

Manduca¹

2018

SocScience

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More than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, black-white family income disparities in the United States remain almost exactly the same as what they were in 1968. This article argues that a key and underappreciated driver of the racial income gap has been the national trend of rising income inequality. From 1968 to 2016, black-white disparities in family income rank narrowed by almost one-third. But this relative gain was negated by changes to the national income distribution that resulted in rapid income growth for the richest-and most disproportionately white-few percentiles of the country combined with income stagnation for the poor and middle class. But for the rise in income inequality, the median black-white family income gap would have decreased by about 30 percent. Conversely, without the partial closing of the rank gap, growing inequality alone would have increased the racial income gap by 30 percent.

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Section: The Relationship Between Economic Structure and Racial Dispamentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%