Race and region. Understanding Black Disadvantage in Occupational Mobility During the First Generation after Emancipation

• In Event: 212 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Place and Space

Abstract

This article revisits the comparison of white immigrant and African American occupational trajectories after emancipation that was at the core of Lieberson’s well-known book. Linking census records of parents in 1880 and their adult sons in 1930 of a sample of Irish and African American sons of illiterate farm laborers, we are able to disentangle class from racial disadvantages with more precision than otherwise possible and to identify mechanisms through which black disadvantage operated. Our analysis shows very substantial differences an all outcome measures—from literacy to occupational income or homeownership, with the exception of employment and marriage status. We further show that almost half of the differences in occupational income are due to the fact that African Americans remained in the South were opportunities for occupational mobility out of agriculture were limited. Racial disadvantage proper—through limited access to certain occupations, direct discrimination, or spatial segregation—in the South and outside the South were roughly comparable. This article thus contributes to our historical understanding of the origins and dynamics of racial inequality after the end of slavery.

Authors

• Andreas Wimmer, Princeton University

• John Robert Warren, University of Minnesota