IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v53y2015i2p351-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Racial Realism: A Review Essay on John Skrentny's After Civil Rights

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Lang

Abstract

In his valuable contribution, After Civil Rights, John Skrentny shows that in many sectors of the labor market, race is used in ways that were unanticipated when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted. With separate chapters on the professions and business, the public sector, media and entertainment, and the low-skill market, he demonstrates that the new racial realism is widespread, generally has some justification from social scientific research, and is usually inconsistent with judicial decisions. I review the racially realistic practices (racial matching, increasing diversity, racial signaling, and racial characteristics) and discuss their implications for labor economics and for policy. (JEL J15, J24, J71, J81, K31)

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Lang, 2015. "Racial Realism: A Review Essay on John Skrentny's After Civil Rights," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 351-359, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:53:y:2015:i:2:p:351-59
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jel.53.2.351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.53.2.351
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/ds/5302/jel.53.2.351_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Lang, 1986. "A Language Theory of Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 363-382.
    2. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, December.
    3. Johanne Boisjoly & Greg J. Duncan & Michael Kremer & Dan M. Levy & Jacque Eccles, 2006. "Empathy or Antipathy? The Impact of Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1890-1905, December.
    4. Neal, Derek A & Johnson, William R, 1996. "The Role of Premarket Factors in Black-White Wage Differences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 869-895, October.
    5. Aldrich Eric M & Arcidiacono Peter S. & Vigdor Jacob L, 2005. "Do People Value Racial Diversity? Evidence from Nielsen Ratings," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-24, February.
    6. Lazear, Edward P, 1999. "Globalisation and the Market for Team-Mates," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(454), pages 15-40, March.
    7. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "The economic value of cultural diversity: evidence from US cities," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 7, pages 187-222, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Thomas S. Dee, 2004. "Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 195-210, February.
    9. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    10. Coate, Stephen & Loury, Glenn C, 1993. "Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1220-1240, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Canyon Bosler & Mary C. Daly & John G. Fernald & Bart Hobijn, 2017. "The Outlook for US Labor-Quality Growth," NBER Chapters, in: Education, Skills, and Technical Change: Implications for Future US GDP Growth, pages 61-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Corrado Giulietti & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 5537, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    2. Dale-Olsen, Harald & Finseraas, Henning, 2020. "Linguistic diversity and workplace productivity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    3. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    4. David Neumark & Harry Holzer, 2000. "Assessing Affirmative Action," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 483-568, September.
    5. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Racial Discrimination and White First Name Adoption: Evidence from a Correspondence Study in the Australian Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 13208, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Frijters, Paul & Shields, Michael A. & Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos & Wheatley Price, Stephen, 2003. "Testing for Employee Discrimination Using Matched Employer-Employee Data: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 807, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Costas Cavounidis & Kevin Lang, 2015. "Discrimination and Worker Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 21612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3143-3259 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2017. "Racial discrimination and white first name adoption: a field experiment in the Australian labour market," Working Papers 2017-15, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    10. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2021. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 143, pages 105-136.
    11. Bond, Timothy N. & Lehmann, Jee-Yeon K., 2018. "Prejudice and racial matches in employment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 271-293.
    12. Haile, Getinet Astatike, 2013. "Are You Unhappy Having Minority Co-Workers?," IZA Discussion Papers 7423, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario & Sala, Davide, 2016. "Ethnic diversity and firms' export behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 248-263.
    14. Audrey Light & Alita Nandi, 2007. "Identifying race and ethnicity in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 26(2), pages 125-144, April.
    15. Stephen L. Ross, 2005. "The Continuing Practice and Impact of Discrimination," Working papers 2005-19, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2006.
    16. Sander Hoogendoorn & Mirjam van Praag, 2012. "Ethnic Diversity and Team Performance: A Field Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-068/3, Tinbergen Institute, revised 01 May 2014.
    17. Lehmann, Jee-Yeon, 2011. "Job assignment and promotion under statistical discrimination: evidence from the early careers of lawyers," MPRA Paper 33466, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Kevin Lang & Michael Manove, 2011. "Education and Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1467-1496, June.
    19. Hirsch, Boris & Jahn, Elke J. & Zwick, Thomas, 2019. "Birds, Birds, Birds: Co-Worker Similarity, Workplace Diversity, and Voluntary Turnover," IZA Discussion Papers 12333, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Jonathan B. Berk, 1999. "Statistical Discrimination in a Competitive Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 6871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Haile, Getinet Astatike, 2009. "Unhappy Working with Men? Workplace Gender Diversity and Employee Job-Related Well-Being in Britain: A WERS2004 Based Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 4077, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:53:y:2015:i:2:p:351-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.