Lecture Nine Racial/Ethnic Stratification: The Color of Opportunity

Institutional Racism: What Does it Look Like?

Gender/Race Wage Gap: For Every White Man’s $... YearBlack men Hispanic Men White Women Black Women Hispanic Women 1970$.69na$.58$.48na 1980$.70 $.58$.55$ $.73$.66$. 69$.62$ $.78$.63$. 75$.65$.54

What accounts for the decline in Latino Men’s Wages?

American Opportunity Structure Resources for Social Mobility Wealth High Income Good Neighborhood Good Schools Good Jobs Access to Health Care ↑ ↓ → →

What affects our access to economic resources? In a mixed-class system, our access to economic resources is largely determined by our master status position, which is a social category that takes priority over all other positions and usually determine ones position in the system of stratification  Are they ascribed or achieved?

Under Correctional Control

Race: An American Master Status Position? Devorah Pager, a sociologist at Princeton University asked the following questions in her study:  Does race matter when ex-felons are looking for jobs? Beginning in February 2004, Pager sent 13 white, black and Latino men posing as ex-convicts to more than 3,500 job interviews throughout the city, most of them in Manhattan. Saying they had completed only high school, they applied for a broad spectrum of jobs, from couriers to cashiers, deli clerks to telemarketers. What her study found is that the achieved status position of “Felon” could not override the ascribed status position of “Black Male” in the job market.

The Color of Opportunity What Pager’s study found is that:  Black men whose job applications stated that they had spent time in prison were only about one-third as likely as white men with similar applications to get a positive response.  "It takes a black ex-offender three times as long to receive a callback or a job offer," said Devah Pager  However, most astonishing was that they found that White men who are ex-felons are more likely to be hired that Black men without a criminal record

A growing problem of Inequality? Pager’s study is critically important to understand the system of stratification and the opportunity structure in American society, especially as more people than ever before in are under correctional control in the US We now have more than 7 million people under correctional control or 1 in 31 Americans  However, black men are more likely to be incarcerated than any other social group

Is Immigrant Status a Master Status?

Immigration and Life Chances

“Misery Strategy” in Border States Entering or reentering the US without papers is an aggravated felony  Makes it nearly impossible to enter with documents, apply for asylum, or get permanent residence /citizenship In June 2010, undocumented immigrants represented 14.8 percent of Arizona state prisoners, but accounted for only 7 percent of the state's overall population

“Operation Streamline” Forces undocumented migrants through the federal criminal justice system and into U.S. prisons.  Depriving migrants of due process and effective assistance of counsel According to Chief Judge of the District of New Mexico, Martha Vázquez:  “The increase in our criminal caseload...has caused us to conduct hearings in a way that we’ve never had to conduct them before, and in a way that other jurisdictions don’t have to.... We have... up to 90 defendants in a courtroom.”

Barriers to Mobility? Master status positions (which are ascribed) lead to social exclusion, whereby individuals and social groups are cut off from mechanisms that allow social mobility in a society Income/wealth are the main lubricants of social mobility in American society, however we see that their distribution in becoming increasingly unequal

Who is most likely to be in Poverty? 58% of Americans will live poverty for at least 1 year  1 in 3 will experience extreme poverty for at least one year  27% will experience poverty before age 30 Higher rates of poverty among non-whites  White- 8%  Black – 25%  Hispanic/Latino – 22%  American Indian – 25%

Black/White Wealth Gap As the wealth/income gap grows we see a growing “equity inequity” between racial and ethnic groups Average white family has a net worth 7 times that of the average Black family  This gap has grown since the 1960’s when the Civil Rights Movement brought about political equality The wealth gap accounts for many of the racial differences in socioeconomic achievement  When economic resources are equal, the wage and education gap between Whites and Blacks disappears

Where do we go from here? We see a shrinking middle-class in our mixed-class system of stratification as the gap between the rich and poor grows  However, we see that the burden of poverty and inequality is not shared equally among all racial/ethnic groups nor men and women As our country is currently debating how to rebuild our economy we can consider where exactly our consumer economy (and therefore consumer culture) has brought us today and if this reflects our true American value