In fact, whites pioneered quotas", "set asides" and "preferences" in numerous fields- none sadder than the injustice dealt to black railroad-men. This history has been documented extensively- see examples below for instance. Keep them in mind the next time you hear about "quotas."
Such suppression occurred not only in the south, but in the North as well. The North did not use open laws but subtle suppression. White unions for example forced blacks out of numerous jobs on the railroads. Black firemen, brakemen, switchmen and other technical personnel, good men who had performed well and played by the rules, men with years of seniority earned the hard way, were forced out and whites with less experience took their place. Whites pioneered affirmative action quotas in both the North and the South. In the North the quotas were disguised- such as having 2 seniority lists- one for blacks confined to certain jobs, and one for whites, where all jobs were supposedly "open." But no "official" law was on the books like in the South. Another dodge was to classify blacks at certain low-level positions such as "porter" even as they did higher level work classifications. When time came for promotion, the "porter" classification was conveniently, "not eligible" for certain promotions. Note- how there isn't an open racist rule- but systematically rigging the deck through contract provisions, work procedures etc to ensure that blacks were cut out of the action, by the same people who in high dudgeon make pious pronouncements about "merit."
Even "non-racial" laws were manipulated by whites to make sure blacks did not benefit. The GI Bill for WW2 veterans for example was supposed to apply equally to everybody, but in practice whites sandbagged blacks who attempted to take advantage of it- for example some could only attend "colored" colleges with their GI Bill, but many of these same colleges were so small and under-funded, they could not offer a curriculum that would benefit the black veterans in the same way as whites. In other instances whites delayed college applications, refused to pass on information, and used a variety of other methods to sandbag blacks, particularly in the South. The New Deal, supposedly more liberal saw the same discriminatory methods. Whites made sure blacks got the minimum. (See for example: 'When Affirmative Action Was White" by Ira Katznelson, 2005)
Other government programs sought to cut or freeze blacks out. Social Security was used as a blocking mechanism- white southern congressmen made sure that agriculture workers and domestic workers were excluded from coverage. Since a huge number of people in these categories were black, the whites ensured that mostly whites would benefit, all the while speaking the soothing language of New Deal liberalism (Sowell 2004, 2005).
White corporations sometimes used the same tactics North and South. In the 1960s for example, some auto plants refused to let black people enter the premises to make job applications for other than "low-level "colored" jobs. They said blacks had to have knowledge of a SPECIFIC job opening to make an application. Since these were often not advertised publicly the black applicant had no way of know what was open, and what was not. He could not go to Personnel and ask, because armed guards blocked his way. Meanwhile however, white applicants were waved right on through. See Gavin Wright- Sharing the Prize for detail. These were the kind of sandbagging, and blockading tactics used by whites on into the 1960s and into the 1970s before EEOC lawsuits exposed them and brought penalties
.
5h. When the above laws and restrictions did not work, whites used massive violence, from lynchings, to race riots, to ambush murders of black railroadmen to force them out ot certain jobs so whites could take their place.
{QUOTE}
[i]"The FEPC [Fair Employment Practices Commission] detailed in its summary, findings and directives the consequences for the negro workers of the agreement that was finally signed:
Under the [union] agreement.. it is apparent that the situation is only slightly less serious than that intended to be created by the Brotherhoods [unions].. white firemen are virtually guaranteed at least 50% of the jobs in each class if service, regardless of seniority, whereas there is no floor whatever under the number of Negro firemen. Secondly, the Agreement ended the employment of Negro firemen wherever their numbers exceeded 50% of the total, and despite the existing firemen shortage. The carriers and the union have preferred to struggle along with insufficient and inexperienced men rather than utilize the services of experienced Negro firemen ready and willing to work... the percentage rule and the provisions relating to vacancies and new runs have so greatly impaired the seniority rights of Negro firemen and inflated those of junior white firemen that the better jobs have become or are rapidly becoming the monopoly of the white firemen...
A Negro fireman's complaint against the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company stated... My bid [for an open job] was not recognized and the run was given to a junior white fireman. I was compelled to remain on my night job. I was not allowed to exercise my seniority against a white fireman no matter how short the period or term of his service."[/i]
{ENDQUOTE}
--Herbert Hill, 1985, Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law. pp 348-351
[b]During the Depression, white quotas and special preferences fiercely imposed- [/b]
QUOTE:
"In cities such as Atlanta, whites formed groups to ensure that whites received preference over blacks in service jobs that whites once disdained as "Negro work." By 1932, more than one half of black job seekers in the urban south were unable to obtain employment. To exacerbate the situation, local and state relief rarely extended to desperate African Americans. Even churches and charitable organizations sometimes refused blacks a meal in their soup kitchen or any other type of aid... Southern contractors and labor unions opposed the employment of blacks in Public Works Administration (PWA) contracts. Many of the programs wre operated at the local level, where officials felt free to discriminate against black applicants.. Even the Social Security Act of 1935 excluded farmers and domestic workers from its old-age pension program; a large percentage working in those occupations were African Americans. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which aimed to provide relief to farmers, initially turned out to be one of the most detrimental programs for southern blacks. The AAA program sought to raise the dismal price of cotton by reducing the number of acres in production. This resulted in a mass eviction of as many as a half million black farmers..
Other New Deal agencies also maintained policies harmful to blacks. The Federal Housing Administration created under the 1934 National Housing Act, boosted the ailing construction industry while simultaneously encouraging residential segregation.. The agency also refused to grant African Americans mortgages on homes purchased in white communities. Agencies providing direct work on government-funded projects excluded blacks as well. The employment rolls of the rural electrification project of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) were less than 1% African American, and vocational schools and training programs of the TVA excluded blacks. In the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the most prominent government programs in the rural South, only 5% of those enrolled were black in 1933. By 1935 a conference held in Washington titled "The Position of the Negro in the Present Economic Crisis" gathered prominent equality advocates.. The outcome of the conference was a resounding condemnation of every program of the New Deal as antagonistic to African Americans."
--Encyclopedia of African American History: 1896 to the Present, Volume 1. 2009.
edited by Paul Finkelma. pg 322-325
The income gap between whites and black men has fluctuated, but overall, since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it has showed a positive outcome, even as the stagnant economy of the 1970s and early, impacted all Americans negatively. This overall positive trend debunks attempts to poo-poo the positive impact of civil rights laws AND enforcement. As one credible economic history (COnrad et al 2005) notes:
"For example, during the years 1964–1973, African American men earned an average weekly wage of $447. By the period 1974–1980, this average had grown to $531, but the average weekly wage of African American men declined to $515 during the 1981–1990 period. Finally, during the years 1991–2000, the weekly wage of black men increased substantially, to $568... In the years just after the end of Jim Crow—that is, 1964–1973—African American men earned sixty-five cents in weekly wages for every dollar received by white men. By the 1974–1980 period, African American men earned seventy-two cents for every dollar received by white men."
--Conrad, Mason, Whitehead, Stewart. eds. 2005. African Americans in the U.S. Economy. pp. 141-152
FOr black women the same fluctuating trend occurs, with the same vulnerability to periods of economy-wide declines and recessions as in the 1970s, but again, compared to where blacks were before the Civil Rights Act, solid gains have been registered. Again, credible analysts note- Quote:
"During the 1964–1973 period, African American women earned just sixty-two cents for every dollar earned by African American men. By the 1990s, this ratio was seventy-nine cents. The average weekly wage of African American women increased from $277 to $451 between 1965 and 2000. Mean weeks worked increased from twenty-four weeks to thirty-one weeks, with all of the growth occurring between the periods 1974-1980 and 1991-2000. The nonparticipation rate declined from 47 percent to 32 percent. The increase in labor force participation led to a large increase in the employment: population ratio and a modest increase in the unemployment:population ratio."
--Conrad, Mason, Whitehead, Stewart. eds. 2005. African Americans in the U.S. Economy. pp. 141-152
"Within the South, in the years immediately following the end of Jim Crow (1964–1973),African American men were paid nearly 38 percent less than observationally identical white men, and African American women were paid 39 percent less than their respective counterparts. During the 1974–1980 period, the weekly wage penalty of the African American male of the South declined to 25 percent and that of the African American female of the South to just 7 percent. Clearly, the success of the civil rights and black power movements in eliminating Jim Crow had a dramatically positive effect on the relative wages of African Americans. However, since the years 1974–1980 the wage penalty of the African American male of the South has grown from 25 percent to 27 percent (1981–1990) before dropping to 22 percent (1991–2000)."
"Within the South, in the years immediately following the end of Jim Crow (1964–1973),African American men were paid nearly 38 percent less than observationally identical white men, and African American women were paid 39 percent less than their respective counterparts. During the 1974–1980 period, the weekly wage penalty of the African American male of the South declined to 25 percent and that of the African American female of the South to just 7 percent. Clearly, the success of the civil rights and black power movements in eliminating Jim Crow had a dramatically positive effect on the relative wages of African Americans. However, since the years 1974–1980 the wage penalty of the African American male of the South has grown from 25 percent to 27 percent (1981–1990) before dropping to 22 percent (1991–2000)."
"An alternative explanation focuses on the role of power in determining labor market outcomes. Specifically, we may explain the changes presented in Tables 15.1 and 15.2 by arguing that the bargaining power of the average worker declined after the severe recession of 1974–1975, with the sharpest drops in bargaining power occurring for the least educated workers. The high levels of unemployment from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, combined with the foreign penetration of many domestic industries, greatly reduced the bargaining power of the least educated workers. Further, racial and ethnic discrimination increased as affirmative action among federal contractors was severely crippled after 1980, when antidiscrimination law enforcement became considerably lax. As the non-Hispanic white male unemployment rate increased in the wake of the 1974–1975 recession, racial job competition increased, and many African Americans were driven out of good jobs and stable employment. There is not much evidence to support the skill-biased technological change explanation of racial inequality. I have presented evidence (Mason 2000) that the progress toward racial wage equality came to a halt by the mid-1970s; that is, there was declining racial wage discrimination within the labor market from the mid-1960s to the early or mid-1970s. However, the rising premium for skill did not begin until sometime between 1979 and 1983.
Hence, one cannot say that increasing racial inequality is simply a reflection of an increasing premium for skill. Rodgers and Spriggs (1996) also find that skill-biased technological progress cannot explain much of the increasing racial wage inequality, though it can explain increasing inequality within racial groups. The difficulty with the skill-biased technical change explanation of increasing racial inequality is that the racial skills gap has declined dramatically since 1974; hence, one would expect that racial inequality would also have declined. But it has increased.
Audit studies and skin-shade studies also provide compelling evidence of racial discrimination in the labor market. Skin-shade studies take advantage of the fact that African Americans and Latinos have a variety of skin shades and phenotypes, ranging from dark complexions and African or Native American features to light complexions and European facial features. To the extent that there is racial discrimination in the labor market, we would expect that African Americans and Latinos with the darkest and most non-European phenotype would obtain lower income, employment, and occupational status than African Americans or Latinos with the lightest and most European phenotype. Audit studies are labor market experiments where carefully matched pairs of individuals (black–white or Hispanic–non-Hispanic white) who are otherwise equal, except for their racial identity, are sent into the labor market to obtain employment at the same set of businesses. Typically, audit studies find rates of employment discrimination against African Americans and Latinos in excess of 25 percent (Riach and Rich) found that mulattoes have more than two-and-a half times greater odds of attaining a white-collar job than blacks do. Further, he found that differences in the social origins of blacks and mulattos are responsible for only 10 to 20 percent of the color gap in adult occupational attainment."
--Conrad, Mason, Whitehead, Stewart. eds. 2005. African Americans in the U.S. Economy. pp. 141-152
"ARE IMMIGRANTS A SOURCE OF LABOR MARKET DISCRIMINATION AGAINST BLACKS?
"Recent empirical studies have tried to examine the impact of immigration on the socioeconomic status of African Americans. There is little substantiation of the conventional wisdom that immigrants lower the earnings and income of African Americans. Borjas (1998) estimates that immigration has reduced the income of the typical African American worker by about one hundred dollars per year, even as immigration may have raised the overall level of American income. There is a popular belief that “immigrants take undesirable jobs that native-born Americans are unwilling to take.” Hamermesh (1998) shows this is a misconception. According to Hamermesh, immigrants and natives of similar characteristics—education, experience, gender, region of the country, and so forth—tend to hold equally desirable jobs. However, when compared to immigrants and native-born workers, African Americans are more likely to work in jobs with evening and night shifts, in jobs with a greater risk of injury, and in jobs where injuries are longer lasting when they do occur; and they are also less likely to report other amenities that increase the unpleasantness of work. In short, Hamermesh reports that African American workers take jobs that otherwise similar nativeborn whites, native-born Hispanics, and immigrants are unwilling to take.Reimers (1998) adds an important bit of evidence that shows how unskilled immigrants compete most directly with the highest-earning native-born high school dropouts. Specifically, Reimers finds that a 1 percent increase in the fraction of unskilled immigrants in the local labor force will lead to a 4 percent reduction in earnings for the highestpaid black high school dropouts."
--Conrad, Mason, Whitehead, Stewart. eds. 2005. African Americans in the U.S. Economy. pp. 141-152
LINKS TO SIMILAR POSTS:
Railroaded 3: white violence and intimidation imposed quotas
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2013/06/railroaded-3-white-violence-and.html
Railroaded 2: how white quotas and special preferences blockade black progress...
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2013/06/railroaded-2-thow-white-quotas-and.html
Railroaded 1: How white affirmative action and white special preferences destroyed black railroad employment...
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2013/06/railroaded-how-white-affirmative-action.html
Affirmative action: primary beneficiaries are white women...
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2011/04/quick-regime-kill-hopes-in-libya.html
7 reasons certain libertarians and right-wingers are wrong about the Civil Right Act
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2012/05/7-reasons-libertarians-may-be-wrong.html
Social philosophy of Thomas Sowell
http://nilevalleypeoples.blogspot.com/2011/07/social-philosophy-of-thomas-sowell.html
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