The Question of discrimination : racial inequality in the U.S. labor market /

This comprehensive, clear, well-documented, and provocative collection focuses on earnings and discrimination against blacks. The studies include historical surveys of discrimination and affirmative action, especially of the discriminatory behavior of the unions; empirical assessments of discrimination to date; discussions of moral and philosophical aspects of equality in the marketplace; voluntary and involuntary unemployment; occupational mobility; class bases of discrimination; and the evident failure of neoclassical economic theory to explain the persistence of discrimination in the US, the most market-oriented economy in the world. Several myths and apparently accepted conclusions about discrimination are challenged and rendered highly questionable. For example, a popular explanation of neoclassical economists is challenged and severely damaged--namely, that discrimination has been a result of cultural rather than race differences and biases. Neoclassical theory is shown to be deficient in explaining how cultural differences can stand the force of the equalizing market while racial biases cannot. On the other hand, the argument that racism has been a result of capitalism seems to be accepted and reaffirmed by at least one of the studies, though with little new information or any evaluation of the defective evidence on which that argument is based. Futhermore, while class-based discrimination is accepted as a fact, there is little attempt to explain the persistence of racial discrimination within classes. These critical observations notwithstanding, this is a major contribution to the literature on discrimination which should be carefully studied by students, scholars, and policymakers. -E. H. Tuma, University of California, Davis