Racial/Ethnic Hierarchy and Urban Labor Market Inequality: Four Poignant Historical Cases

Abstract

The sociological literature, although rich on the topic of racial/ethnic hierarchy, often overlooks its spatially varying nature relative to group tensions and inequality. In this article, we address this gap by drawing on and analyzing four historically important U.S. urban cases (i.e., Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City) that reflect both compositional diversity and significant variation in racial/ethnic group sizes. Our analyses, which draw on U.S. Census microdata and content‐coded newspaper reports (1910–1930), demonstrate considerable consistency in racial/ethnic labor market hierarchies, yet divergences in levels of labor market inequality. Specifically, our aggregate analyses and cross‐city comparisons of sectoral representations and occupational returns reveal the importance of place‐specific processes—processes consistent with what spatially sensitive queuing perspectives suggest about the bolstering of minority prospects in contexts where subordinated groups come to numerically dominate. As suggested by competition/threat perspectives, however, such gains from queuing are undermined at least to some extent by city‐specific racial/ethnic antagonisms, industry‐level segregation, and group closure. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for various streams of research on group inequality, labor market hierarchies, and spatial understandings of how they unfold across urban spaces.

Race in representative bureaucracy theory: A problematizing review

“…To elucidate the fact that these classification schemes were socially constructed, it is necessary to acknowledge ambiguity and uncertainty about the classification scheme(s) used in the analysis, which was the case for articles that received a rating of 3, such as Mendez and Grose (2018). The next step is to ask under what context certain racial constructs became associated with a specific social order, which was demonstrated by articles that received a rating of 4, including Restifo et al (2019) who traced the shifting boundaries of whiteness to understand social processes that produced racialized labor market hierarchies. Although the terminal goal of reflexivity is to develop knowledge that can be instrumental in disrupting taken-for-granted racialized hierarchies, it is important to practice reflexivity and question scholarship at different levels.…”

“…Liang et al (2020) examined how European Christian ideology constructed Blackness as inherently bad and sinful during the formative years of the nation that codified racial hierarchy and emphasized the enduring importance of White supremacy in the United States. Restifo et al (2019) traced the shifting boundaries of whiteness over the course of the 20th century in relation to the social integration or exclusion of different immigrant groups that included “English, Irish, Germans, Swedes, Austro‐Hungarians, Czechs, Italians, Poles, Russian Jews, Mexicans, Japanese, and African American” (668). In contrast, Storer et al (2020) focused on the internalization of racialized social scripts by interviewing students who self‐identified as African American within the specific context of two public charter high schools in New Orleans, Louisiana to identify community‐ and societal‐level processes that contribute to increased risks of dating violence.…”

Perspective Chapter: Behind the Exceptional Educational Pathways of Canadian Youth from Immigrant Background - Between Equality and Ethnic Hierarchy

“…These different types of segregation form part of a larger world of hidden, indirect systemic discrimination [23]. In another words, there is a kind of ethnic hierarchy as elsewhere like in U.S. [53].…”

Viewing anti-immigrant hate online: An application of routine activity and Social Structure-Social Learning Theory

“…As such, unless satisfaction with the direction of the country is controlled for, the relationship between economic engagement and exposure to hate is suppressed. This might suggest that much of the dissatisfaction with the current direction of the country expressed by some study participants is tied to perceived labor market threats, especially from immigrants (see Restifo et al 2019;Wallace and Figueroa 2012).…”

“…Even so, disparaging stereotypes and prejudice against immigrants have in many respects remained constant. Nativist hyperbole past and present routinely centers on and equates the foreign born with violent crime, job competition, and politico-cultural insurgency (Restifo et al 2019;Schrag 2010). Since the 1990s, such rhetoric has increasingly fixated upon unauthorized immigration from Latin America and the perceived terrorist threat of Arab and Muslim arrivals (Chavez 2013;Edgell et al 2016).…”