SPECIAL FEATURE

The BeelinfngSignf/f"anee

William Julius Wilson

Race relations in the United States have undergone funda-mental changes in recent years, so much so that how the

life chances of individual blacks have more to do with theireconomic class position than with their day-to-day encoun-ters with whites. In earlier years the systematic efforts ofwhites to suppress blacks were obvious to even the mostinsensitive observer. Blacks were denied access to valuedand scarce resources through various ingenious schemes ofracial exploitation, discrimination, and segregation, schemesthat were reinforced by elaborate ideologies of racism.

But the situation has changed. However determinativesuch practices were in the previous "efforts of the blackpopulation to achieve racial equality, and however signifi-cant they were in the creation of poverty-stricken ghettoesand a vast underclass of black proletarians-that massivepopulation at the very bottom of the social class ladderplagued by poor education and low-paying, unstable jobs-they do not provide a meaningful explanation of the lifechances of black Americans today. The traditional patterns ofinteraction between blacks and whites, particularly in thelabor market, have been fundamentally altered.

New and Traditional Barriers

In the pre-CiviI War period, and in the latter half of thenineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century, thecontinuous and explicit efforts of whites to construct racialbarriers profoundly affected the lives of black Americans.Racial oppression was designed, overt, and easilydocumented. As the nation has entered the latter half of thetwentieth century, however, many of the traditional barriershave crumbled under the weight of the political, social, andeconomic changes of the civiI rights era. A new set ofobstacles has emerged from basic structural shifts in theeconomy.

These obstacles are therefore impersonal, but may prove tobe even more formidable for certain segments of the blackpopulation. Specifically, whereas the previous barriers wereusually designed to control and restrict the entire black popu-

Reprinted from The Declining Significance of Race by William JuliusWilsonby arrangement with the Universityof ChicagoPress. Copyright©1978by the Universityof Chicago. All rights reserved.

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»t Baeelation, the new barriers create hardships essentially for theblack underclass; whereas the old barriers were basedexplicitly on racial motivations derived from intergroup con-tact, the new barriers have racial significance only in theirconsequences, not in their origins. In short, whereas the oldbarriers portrayed the pervasive features of racial oppression,the new barriers indicate an important and emerging form ofclass subordination.

It would be shortsighted to view the traditional forms ofracial segregation and discrimination as having essentiallydisappeared in contemporary America; the presence ofblacks is still firmly resisted in various institutions and socialarrangements, for example, residential areas and private so-cial clubs. However, in the economic sphere class has be-come more important than race in determining black access toprivilege and power. It is clearly evident in this connectionthat many talented and educated blacks are now enteringpositions of prestige and influence at a rate comparable to or,in some situations, exceeding that of whites with equivalentqualifications. It is equally clear that the black underclass isin a hopeless state of economic stagnation, falling further andfurther behind the rest of society.

Three Stages of American Race Relations

American society has experienced three major stages ofblack-white contact, and each stage embodies a differentform of racial stratification structured by the particular ar-rangement of both the economy and the polity. Stage onecoincides with antebellum slavery and the early postbellumera and may be designated the period of plantation economyand racial-caste oppression. Stage two begins in the lastquarter of the nineteenth century and ends at roughly the NewDeal era, and may be identified as the period of industrialexpansion, class conflict, and racial oppression. Finally,stage three is associated with the modern, industrial, post-World War II era which really began to crystallize during the1960s and 1970s, and may be characterized as the period ofprogressive transition from race inequalities to class in-equalities. The different periods can be identified as thepreindustrial, industrial, and modern industrial stages ofAmerican race relations, respectively.

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Although this abbreviated designation of the periods ofAmerican race relations seems to relate racial change tofundamental economic changes rather directly, it bears re-peating that the different stages of race relations are struc-tured by the unique arrangements and interaction of theeconomy and the polity. More specifically, although therewas an economic basis of structured racial inequality in thepreindustrial and industrial periods of race relations, thepolity more or less interacted with the economy either toreinforce patterns of racial stratification or to mediate variousforms of racial conflict. Moreover, in the modem industrialperiod race relations have been shaped as much by importanteconomic changes as by important political changes. Indeed,it would not be possible to understand fully the subtle andmanifest changes in race relations in the modem industrialperiod without recognizing the dual and often reciprocalinfluence of structural changes in the economy and politicalchanges in the state. Thus different systems of productionand/or different arrangements of the polity have imposeddifferent constraints on the way in which racial groups haveinteracted in the United States, constraints that have struc-tured the relations between racial groups and that have pro-duced dissimilar contexts not only for the manifestation ofracial antagonisms, but also for racial group access to re-wards and privileges.

In contrast to the modem industrial period in which fun-damental economic and political changes have made theeconomic class position of blacks the determining factor in

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their prospects for occupational advancement, the preindus-trial and industrial periods of black-white relations have onecentral feature in common: overt efforts of whites to solidifyeconomic racial domination (ranging from the manipulationof black labor to the neutralization or elimination of blackeconomic competition) through various forms of juridical,political, and social discrimination. Since racial problemsduring these two periods were principally related to groupstruggles over economic resources, they readily lend them-selves to the economic class theories of racial antagonismsthat associate racial antipathy with class conflict.

Although racial oppression, when viewed from the broadperspective of historical change in American society, was asalient and important feature during the preindustrial andindustrial periods of race relations in the United States, theproblems of subordination for certain segments of the blackpopulation and the experience of social advancement forothers are more directly associated with economic class in themodem industrial period. Economic and political changeshave gradually shaped a black class structure, making itincreasingly difficult to speak of a single or uniform blackexperience. Although a small elite population of free,propertied blacks did in fact exist during the pre-Civil Warperiod, the interaction between race and economic class onlyassumed real importance in the latter phases of the industrialperiod of race relations; and the significance of this relation-ship has grown as the nation has entered the modem indus-trial period.

Each of the major periods of American race relations hasbeen shaped in different measure both by the systems ofproduction and by the laws and policies of the state. How-ever, the relationships between the economy and the statehave varied in each period, and therefore the roles of bothinstitutions in shaping race relations have differed over time.

Antebellum South

In the preindustrial period the slave-based plantationeconomy of the South allowed a relatively small, elite groupof planters to develop enormous regional power. Thehegemony of the southern ruling elite was based on a systemof production that required little horizontal or vertical mobil-ity and therefore could be managed very efficiently with asimple division of labor that virtually excluded free Whitelabor. As long as free white workers were not central to theprocess of reproducing the labor supply in the southern plan-tation economy, slavery as a mode of production facilitatedthe slaveholder's concentration and consolidation of eco-nomic power. And the slaveholders successfully transferredtheir control of the economic system to the political and legalsystems in order to protect their class interest in slavery. Ineffect, the polity in the South regulated and reinforced thesystem of racial caste oppression, depriving both blacks andnonslaveholding whites of any meaningful influence in theway that slavery was used in the economic life of the South.

In short, the economy provided the basis for the develop-ment of the system of slavery, and the polity reinforced andperpetuated that system. Furthermore, the economy enabled

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the slaveholders to develop a regional center of power, andthe polity was used to legitimate that power. Sincenonslaveholding whites were virtually powerless both eco-nomically and politically, they had very little effect on thedeveloping patterns of race relations. The meaningful formsof black-white contact were between slaves and slavehol-ders, and southern race relations consequently assumed apaternalistic quality involving the elaboration and specifica-tion of duties, norms, rights, and obligations as they per-tained to the use of slave labor and the system of indefiniteservitude.

Old barriers portrayed the pervasivefeatures of racial oppression. New barriers

reflect an important emerging form ofclass subordination

In short, the pattern of race relations in the antebellumSouth was shaped first and foremost by the system of produc-tion. The very nature of the social relations of productionmeant that the exclusive control of the planters would bederived from their position in the production process, whichultimately led to the creation of a juridical system that re-flected and protected their class interests, including theirinvestment in slavery.

Workers' Emerging Power

However, in the nineteenth century antebellum North theform of racial oppression was anything but paternalistic.Here a more industrial system of production enabled whiteworkers to become more organized and physically concen-trated than their southern counterparts. Following the aboli-tion of slavery in the North, they used their superior resourcesto generate legal and informal practices of segregation thateffectively prevented blacks from becoming serious eco-nomic competitors.

As the South gradually moved from a plantation to anindustrial economy in the last quarter of the nineteenth cen-tury, landless whites were finally able to effect changes in theracial stratification system. Their efforts to eliminate blackcompetition helped to produce an elaborate system of JimCrow segregation. Poor whites were aided not only by theirnumber but also by the development of political resourceswhich accompanied their greater involvement in the South'seconomy.

Once again, however, the system of production was themajor basis for this change in race relations, and once againthe political system was used to reinforce patterns of raceemanating from structural shifts in the economy. If the raciallaws in the antebellum South protected the class interests ofthe planters and reflected their overwhelming power, the JimCrow segregation laws of the late nineteenth century re-flected the rising power of white laborers; and if the politicalpower of the planters were grounded in the system of produc-tion in a plantation economy, the emerging political power ofthe workers grew out of the new division of labor that accom-panied industrialization.

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Class and Race Relations

Except for the brief period of fluid race relations in theNorth between 1870 and 1890 and in the South during theReconstruction era, racial oppression is the single best termto characterize the black experience prior to the twentiethcentury. In the antebellum South both slaves and free blacksoccupied what could be best described as a caste position, inthe sense that realistic chances for occupational mobilitysimply did not exist. In the antebellum North a few freeblacks were able to acquire some property and improve theirsocioeconomic position, and a few were even able to makeuse of educational opportunities. However, the overwhelm-ing majority of free northern Negroes were trapped in menialpositions and were victimized by lower-class white an-tagonism, including the racial hostilities of European immi-grant ethnics (who successfully curbed black economic com-

petition). In the postbellum South the system of Jim Crowsegregation wiped out the small gains blacks had achievedduring Reconstruction, and blacks were rapidly pushed out ofthe more skilled jobs they had held since slavery. Accord-ingly, there was very little black occupational differentiationin the South at the tum of the century.

Just as the shift from a plantation economy to an industri-alizing economy transformed the class and race relations inthe postbellum South, so too did industrialization in theNorth change the context for race-class interaction and con-frontation there. On the one hand, the conflicts associatedwith the increased black-white contacts in the early twentiethcentury North resembled the forms of antagonism that souredthe relations between the races in the postbellum South.Racial conflicts between blacks and whites in both situationswere closely tied to class conflicts among whites. On theother hand, there were some fundamental differences. Thecollapse of the paternalistic bond between blacks and thesouthern business elite cleared the path for the almost totalsubjugation of blacks in the South and resulted in whatamounted to a united white racial movement that solidifiedthe system of Jim Crow segregation.

However, a united white movement against blacks neverreally developed in the North. In the first quarter of thetwentieth century, management attempted to undercut whitelabor by using blacks as strikebreakers and, in some situa-tions, as permanent replacements for white workers whoperiodically demanded higher wages and more fringe bene-fits. Indeed, the determination of industrialists to ignoreracial norms of exclusion and to hire black workers was oneof the main reasons why the industrywide unions reversedtheir racial policies and actively recruited black workersduring the New Deal era. Prior to this period the overwhelm-ing majority of unskilled and semiskilled blacks werenonunionized and were available as lower-paid labor or asstrikebreakers. The more management used blacks to under-cut white labor, the greater were the racial antagonismsbetween white and black labor.

Moreover, racial tension in the industrial sector oftenreinforced and sometimes produced racial tension in thesocial order. The growth of the black urban population

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Militia and crowd, Chicago race riot (1919)

created a housing shortage during the early twentieth centurywhich frequently produced black "invasions" or ghetto"spillovers" into adjacent poor white neighborhoods. Theracial tensions emanating from labor strife seemed to heigh-ten the added pressures of racial competition for housing,neighborhoods, and recreational areas. Indeed, it was thiscombination of racial friction in both the economic sector andthe social order that produced the bloody riots in East SaintLouis in 1917 and in Chicago and several other cities in 1919.

In addition to the fact that a united white movement againstblacks never really developed in the North during the indus-trial period, it was also the case that the state's role in shapingrace relations was much more autonomous, much less di-rectly related to developments in the economic sector. Thus,in the brief period of fluid race relations in the North from1870 to 1890, civil rights laws were passed barring discrimi-nation in public places and in public institutions. This legisla-tion did not have any real significance to the white masses atthat time because, unlike in the pre-Civil War North and thepost-Civil War South, white workers did not perceive blacksas major economic competitors. Blacks constituted only asmall percentage of the total population in northern cities;they had not yet been used in any significant numbers ascheap labor in industry or as strikebreakers; and their earlierantebellum competitors in low-status jobs (the Irish andGerman immigrants) had improved their economic status inthe trades and municipal employment.

Polity and Racial Oppression

For all these reasons liberal whites and black profession-als, urged on by the spirit of racial reform that had developed

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during the Civil War and Reconstruction, could pursue civilrights programs without firm resistance; for all these reasonsracial developments on the political front were not directlyrelated to the economic motivations and interests of workersand management. In the early twentieth century the indepen-dent effect of the political system was displayed in an entirelydifferent way. The process of industrialization had signifi-cantly altered the pattern of racial interaction, giving rise tovarious manifestations of racial antagonism.

Although discrimination and lack of training preventedblacks from seeking higher-paying jobs, they did competewith lower-class whites for unskilled and semiskilled factoryjobs, and they were used by management to undercut thewhite workers' union movement. Despite the growing impor-tance of race in the dynamics of the labor market, the politicalsystem did not intervene either to mediate the racial conflictsor to reinforce the pattern of labor-market racial interactiongenerated by the system of production. This was the casedespite the salience of a racial ideology system that justifiedand prescribed unequal treatment for Afro-Americans. (In-dustrialists will more likely challenge societal racial norms insituations where adherence to them results in economic los-ses.)

If nothing else, the absence of political influence on thelabor market probably reflected the power struggles betweenmanagement and workers. Thus legislation to protect therights of black workers to compete openly for jobs wouldhave conflicted with the interests of management. To repeat,unlike in the South, a united white movement resulting in thealmost total segregation of the work force never really devel-oped in the North.

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But the state's lack of influence in the industrial sector ofprivate industries did not mean that it had no significantimpact on racial stratification in the early twentieth centuryNorth. The urban political machines, controlled in largemeasure by working-class ethnics who were often in directcompetition with blacks in the private industrial sector, sys-tematically gerrymandered black neighborhoods and ex-cluded the urban black masses from meaningful politicalparticipation throughout the early twentieth century. Controlby the white ethnics of the various urban political machineswas so complete that blacks were never really in a position tocompete for the more important municipal political rewards,such as patronage jobs or government contracts and services.Thus the lack of racial competition for municipal politicalrewards did not provide the basis for racial tension andconflict in the urban political system. This political racialoppression had no direct connection with or influence on racerelations in the private industrial sector.

In sum, whether one focuses on the way race relationswere structured by the system of production or the polity orboth, racial oppression (ranging from the exploitation ofblack labor by the business class to the elimination of blackcompetition for economic, social, and political resources bythe white masses) was a characteristic and important phe-nomenon in both the preindustrial and industrial periods ofAmerican race relations. Nonetheless, and despite the preva-lence of various forms of racial oppression, the change from apreindustrial to an industrial system of production did enableblacks to increase their political and economic resources. Theproliferation of jobs created by industrial expansion helped

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generate and sustain the continuous mass migration of blacksfrom the rural South to the cities of the North and West. Asthe black urban population grew and became more segre-gated, institutions and organizations in the black communityalso developed, together with a business and professionalclass affiliated with these institutions. Still, it was not untilafter World War II (the modem industrial period) that theblack class structure started to take on some of the charac-teristics of the white class structure.

Class and Black Life Chances

Class has also become more important than race in deter-mining black life chances in the modem industrial period.Moreover, the center of racial conflict has shifted from theindustrial sector to the sociopolitical order. Although thesechanges can be related to the more fundamental changes inthe system of production and in the laws and policies of thestate, the relations between the economy and the polity in themodem industrial period have differed from those in previousperiods. In the preindustrial and industrial periods the basisof structured racial inequality was primarily economic, andin most situations the state was merely an instrument toreinforce patterns of race relations that grew directly out ofthe social relations of production.

Except for the brief period of fluid race relations in theNorth from 1870 to 1890, the state was a major instrument ofracial oppression. State intervention in the modem industrialperiod has been designed to promote racial equality, and therelationship between the polity and the economy has been

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much more reciprocal, so much so that it is difficult todetermine which one has been more important in shapingrace relations since World War II. It was the expansion oftheeconomy that facilitated black movement from the rural areasto the industrial centers and that created job opportunitiesleading to greater occupational differentiation in the blackcommunity (in the sense that an increasing percentage ofblacks moved into white-collar positions); and it was theintervention of the state (responding to the pressures of in-creased black political resources and to the racial protestmovement) that removed many artificial discrimination bar-riers by municipal, state, and federal civil rights legislation,and that contributed to the more liberal racial policies of thenation's labor unions by protective union legislation. Andthese combined political and economic changes created apattern of black occupational upgrading that resulted, forexample, in a substantial drop in the percentage of blackmales in the low-paying service, unskilled laborer, and farmjobs.

However, despite the greater occupational differentiationwithin the black community, there are now signs that theeffect of some aspects of structural economic change hasbeen the closer association between black occupational mo-bility and class affiliation. Access to the means of productionis increasingly based on educational criteria (a situationwhich distinguishes the modern industrial from the earlierindustrial system of production) and thus threatens to solidifythe position of the black underclass. In other words, a conse-

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quence of the rapid growth of the corporate and governmentsectors has been the gradual creation of a segmented labormarket that currently provides vastly different mobility op-portunities for different segments of the black population.

Economic and political changes haveshaped a black class structure. It is

increasingly difficult to speak of a uniformblack experience

On the one hand, poorly trained and educationally limitedblacks of the inner city, including that growing number ofblack teenagers and young adults, see their job prospectsincreasingly restricted to the low-wage sector, their unem-ployment rates soaring to record levels (which remain highdespite swings in the business cycle), their labor force par-ticipation rates declining, their movement out of povertyslowing, and their welfare roles increasing. On the otherhand, talented and educated blacks are experiencing unpre-cedented job opportunities in the growing government andcorporate sectors, opportunities that are at least comparableto those of whites with equivalent qualifications. The im-proved job situation for the more privileged blacks in thecorporate and government sectors is related both to the ex-pansion of salaried white-collar positions and to the pressuresof state affirmative action programs.

In view of these developments, .it would be difficult toargue that the plight of the black underclass is solely aconsequence of racial oppression, that is, the explicit andovert efforts of whites to keep blacks subjugated, in the sameway that it would be difficult to explain the rapid economicimprovement of the more privileged blacks by arguing thatthe traditional forms of racial segregation and discriminationstill characterize the labor market in American industries.The recent mobility patterns of blacks lend strong support tothe view that economic class is clearly more important thanrace in predetermining job placement and occupational mo-bility. In the economic realm, then, the black experience hasmoved historically from economic racial oppression experi-enced by virtually all blacks to economic subordination forthe black underclass. And as we begin the last quarter of thetwentieth century, a deepening economic schism seems to bedeveloping in the black community, with the black poorfalling further and further behind middle- and upper-incomeblacks.

Shift of Racial Conflict

If race is declining in significance in the economic sector,explanations of racial antagonism based on labor-marketconflicts, such as those advanced by economic class theoriesof race, also have less significance in the period of modernindustrial race relations. Neither the low-wage sector nor thecorporate and government sectors provide the basis for thekind of interracial job competition and conflict that plaguedthe economic order in previous periods. With the absorptionof blacks into industrywide labor unions, protective union

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legislation, and equal employment legislation, it is no longerfeasible for management to undercut white labor by usingblack workers. The traditional racial struggles for power andprivilege have shifted away from the economic sector and arenow concentrated in the sociopolitical order. Although poorblacks and poor whites are still the main actors in the presentmanifestations of racial strife, the immediate source of thetension has more to do with racial competition for publicschools, municipal political systems, and residential areasthan with the competition for jobs.

Traditional patterns of black-whiteinteraction have been altered. The center

of racial conflict has shifted from theindustrial sector to the sociopolitical order

To say that race is declining in significance, therefore, isnot only to argue that the life chances of blacks have less to dowith race than with economic class affiliation, but also tomaintain that racial conflict and competition in the economicsector-the most important historical factors in the subjuga-tion of blacks-have been substantially reduced. However, itcould be argued that the firm white resistance to public schooldesegregation, residential integration, and black control ofcentral cities all indicate the unyielding importance of race inthe United States. The argument could even be entertainedthat the impressive occupational gains of the black middleclass are only temporary, and that as soon as affirmativeaction pressures are relieved, or as soon as the economyexperiences a prolonged recession, industries will return totheir old racial practices.

Both of these arguments are compelling if not altogetherpersuasive. Taking the latter contention first, there is littleavailable evidence to suggest that the economic gains ofprivileged blacks will be reversed. Despite the fact that therecession of the early 1970s decreased job prospects for alleducated workers, the more educated blacks continued toexperience a faster rate of job advancement than their whitecounterparts. And although it is always possible that aneconomic disaster could produce racial competition forhigher-paying jobs and white efforts to exclude talentedblacks, it is difficult to entertain this idea as a real possibilityin the face of the powerful political and social movementagainst job discrimination. At this point there is every reasonto believe that talented and educated blacks, like talented andeducated whites, will continue to enjoy the advantages andprivileges of their class status.

My response to the first argument is not to deny the currentracial antagonism in the sociopolitical order, but to suggestthat such antagonism has far less effect on individual or groupaccess to those opportunities and resources that are centrallyimportant for life survival than antagonism in the economicsector. The factors that most severely affected black lifechances in previous years were the racial oppression andantagonism in the economic sector. As race declined inimportance in the economic sector, the Negro class structure

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became more differentiated and black life chances becameincreasingly a consequence of class affiliation.

Furthermore, it is even difficult to identify the form ofracial contact in the sociopolitical order as the source of thecurrent manifestations of conflict between lower-incomeblacks and whites, because neither the degree of racial com-petition between the have-nots, nor their structural relationsin urban communities, nor their patterns of interaction consti-tute the ultimate source of present racial antagonism. Theultimate basis for current racial tension is the deleteriouseffect of basic structural changes in the modem Americaneconomy on black and white lower-income groups, changesthat include uneven economic growth, increasing technologyand automation, industry relocation, and labor market seg-mentation.

Fighting Class Subordination

The situation of marginality and redundancy created by themodern industrial society deleteriously affects all the poor,regardless of race. Underclass whites, Hispano Americans,and Native Americans all are victims, to a greater or lesserdegree, of class subordination under advanced capitalism. Itis true that blacks are disproportionately represented in theunderclass population and that about one-third of the entireblack population is in the underclass. But the significance ofthese facts has more to do with the historical consequences ofracial oppression than with the current effects of race.

Although the percentage of blacks below the low-incomelevel dropped steadily throughout the 1960s, one of thelegacies of the racial oppression in previous years is thecontinued disproportionate black representation in the under-class. And since 1970 both poor whites and nonwhites haveevidenced very little progress in their elevation from theranks of the underclass. In the final analysis, therefore, thechallenge of economic dislocation in modern industrial so-ciety calls for public policy programs to attack inequality on abroad class front, policy programs-in other words-that gobeyond the limits of ethnic and racial discrimination bydirectly confronting the pervasive and destructive features ofclass subordination.O

READINGS SUGGESTED BY THE AUTHOR:

Freeman, Richard B. Black Elite: The New Market for HighlyEducated BlackAmericans. NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

Friedlander, Stanley L. Unemployment in the Urban Core. NewYork: Praeger Publishers, 1972.

Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World theSlaveholders Made. New York: Pantheon Books, RandomHouse, 1974.

Katznelson, Ira. Black Men, White Cities: Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1976.

O'Connor, James. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St.Martin's Press, 1973.

William Julius Wilson is professor of sociology at the UniversityofChicago . Formerly he taught at the University ofMassachusettsat Amherst, where he received the Distinguished Teacher of theYear Award in 1970. He is the author of Power, Racism, andPrivilege and the coeditor of Through DifferentEyes.

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