IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecdequ/v13y1999i4p321-338.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Has Discrimination Disappeared? A Response to William Julius Wilson

Author

Listed:
  • Susan Turner Meiklejohn

    (Hunter College of the City University of New York)

Abstract

William Julius Wilson, in his book , When Work Disappears, notes that 80% of interviewed Black employers (and 74% of Whites) who provided comments on “job skills, basic skills, work ethic, dependability, attitudes and interpersonal skills†expressed negative views of inner-city Blacks. The author suggests that there are problems in Wilson’s research methodology that may too quickly lead to his notion that inner-city joblessness is far more apt to be the result of “unflattering behaviors†of poor Blacks rather than the persistently discriminatory assumptions and hiring practices of employers. Wilson’s findings are compared with those from the author’s own employer interview study. Only 4 of the 44 employers interviewed felt that Black workers had poorer work ethics and attitudes than Whites. Reasons are presented for the differences, and the article concludes with a brief discussion of the policy implications of these findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Susan Turner Meiklejohn, 1999. "Has Discrimination Disappeared? A Response to William Julius Wilson," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 13(4), pages 321-338, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecdequ:v:13:y:1999:i:4:p:321-338
    DOI: 10.1177/089124249901300405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124249901300405
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/089124249901300405?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Doeringer, Peter B., 1992. "Turbulence in the American Workplace," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195064612.
    2. Chinhui Juhn, 1992. "Decline of Male Labor Market Participation: The Role of Declining Market Opportunities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 79-121.
    3. James Johnson & Elisa Bienenstock & Jennifer Stoloff, 1995. "An empirical test of the cultural capital hypothesis," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 23(4), pages 7-27, June.
    4. William A. Darity & Patrick L. Mason, 1998. "Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 63-90, Spring.
    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. Robert P. Giloth, 2000. "Learning from the Field: Economic Growth and Workforce Development in the 1990s," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 14(4), pages 340-359, November.

    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. Randall Akee & Mutlu Yuksel, 2012. "The Decreasing Effect of Skin Tone on Women's Full-Time Employment," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 398-426, April.
    2. Stephen L. Ross, 2003. "What Is Known about Testing for Discrimination: Lessons Learned by Comparing across Different Markets," Working papers 2003-21, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2003.
    3. Leora Friedberg, 2003. "The Impact of Technological Change on Older Workers: Evidence from Data on Computer Use," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(3), pages 511-529, April.
    4. Omar Arias & Gustavo Yamada & Luis Tejerina, 2004. "Education, family background and racial earnings inequality in Brazil," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(3/4), pages 355-374, April.
    5. Javier Cano-Urbina & Patrick L. Mason, 2016. "Acculturation and the labor market in Mexico," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-29, December.
    6. Emmanuel K. Yiridoe, 2021. "Fostering a culture of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the Canadian agricultural economics profession," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 69(1), pages 5-15, March.
    7. Gabriel Montes-Rojas & Lucas Siga & Ram Mainali, 2017. "Mean and quantile regression Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions with an application to caste discrimination," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(3), pages 245-255, September.
    8. repec:wyi:journl:002164 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Jeffrey R. Kling & Jens Ludwig & Lawrence F. Katz, 2005. "Neighborhood Effects on Crime for Female and Male Youth: Evidence from a Randomized Housing Voucher Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 87-130.
    10. Martin Nordin & Dan‐Olof Rooth, 2009. "The Ethnic Employment and Income Gap in Sweden: Is Skill or Labor Market Discrimination the Explanation?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(3), pages 487-510, September.
    11. Paraskevi Salamaliki & Ioannis Venetis, 2014. "Smooth transition trends and labor force participation rates in the United States," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 629-652, March.
    12. Sudipto Banerjee & David Blau, 2016. "Employment Trends by Age in the United States: Why Are Older Workers Different?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(1), pages 163-199.
    13. David Card & Francis Kramarz & Thomas Lemieux, 1999. "Changes in the Relative Structure of Wages and Employment: A Comparison of the United States, Canada, and France," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 32(4), pages 843-877, August.
    14. Francis Dania V. & de Oliveira Angela C. M. & Dimmitt Carey, 2019. "Do School Counselors Exhibit Bias in Recommending Students for Advanced Coursework?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(4), pages 1-17, October.
    15. Vendrik, M.C.M. & Cörvers, F., 2009. "Male and female labour force participation: the role of dynamic adjustments to changes in labour demand, government policies and autonomous trends," Research Memorandum 036, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    16. O'Neill, Donal & Sweetman, Olive & Van de gaer, Dirk, 2006. "The impact of cognitive skills on the distribution of the black-white wage gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 343-356, June.
    17. Kuhn, Peter J. & Shen, Kailing, 2010. "Gender Discrimination in Job Ads: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 5195, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Olga Alonso-Villar & Coral del Río, 2017. "The Occupational Segregation of African American Women: Its Evolution from 1940 to 2010," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 108-134, January.
    19. Michelacci, Claudio & Pijoan-Mas, Josep, 2016. "Labor supply with job assignment under balanced growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 110-140.
    20. Murphy, Kevin M. & Topel, Robert H., 2014. "Human Capital Investment, Inequality and Growth," Working Papers 253, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    21. Dickerson, Andy & Ratcliffe, Anita & Rohenkohl, Bertha & Van de Sijpe, Nicolas, 2024. "Anticipated labour market discrimination and educational achievement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 375-393.

    More about this item

    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:sae:ecdequ:v:13:y:1999:i:4:p:321-338. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.