William Darity

It's not a black thing : Understanding the burden of acting white and other dilemmas of high achievement

For two decades the acting white hypothesis—the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of racialized peer pressure—has served as an explanation for the black-white achievement gap. Fordham and Ogbu proposed that black youths sabotage their own school careers by taking an oppositional stance toward academic achievement. Using interviews and existing data from eight North Carolina secondary public schools, this article shows that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools. The analysis also shows important similarities in the experiences of black and white high-achieving students, indicating that dilemmas of high achievement are generalizable beyond a specific group. Typically, highachieving students, regardless of race, are to some degree stigmatized as “nerds” or “geeks.” The data suggest that school structures, rather than culture, may help explain when this stigma becomes racialized, producing a burden of acting white for black adolescents, and when it becomes class-based, producing a burden of “acting high and mighty” for low-income whites. Recognizing the similarities in these processes can help us refocus and refine understandings of the black-white achievement gap.

From Dark to Light: Skin Color and Wages among African-Americans.

This paper develops and tests a theory, referred to as “preference for whiteness,” which predicts that the interracial (white-black) and intraracial wage gap widens as the skin shade of the black worker darkens. Using data drawn from the Multi City Study of Urban Inequality and the National Survey of Black Americans, we report evidence largely consistent with the theory. Moreover, we decompose the estimated interracial and intraracial wage gaps, and find that favorable treatment of lighter-skinned workers is a major source of interracial and intraracial wage differences as predicted by the theory.

Latino racial choices: the effects of skin colour and discrimination on Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial self-identifications

Abstract Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets – the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors’ claims that Latinas’ and Latinos’ skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.

Unemployment, joblessness, psychological well-being and self-esteem: Theory and evidence

Abstract Social psychologists Erikson (1959), Jahoda (1979, 1981, 1982) and Seligman (1975) believe that exposure to events such as joblessness are capable of impairing an individuals psychological well-being. Psychological well-being is a multidimensional concept. Therefore, the impact of unemployment on mental health is likely to be manifest in many forms, including denigration of self-worth or self-esteem. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between joblessness and its component parts, unemployment and dropping out of the labor force, on self-esteem using data drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The NLSY is well suited for such an investigation since it contains detailed information on the personal characteristics of individuals in the sample, as well as their labor force experiences and measures of self-esteem. Two additional issues will be addressed. First, we examine the psychological counterpart of Ellwoods (1982) hypothesis that joblessness may scar an individual. Second, we shed new light on the debate between Clark and Summers (1979) and Flinn and Heckman (1982, 1983) over whether being out of the labor force (OLF) and being unemployed should be thought of as distinct states. We find that joblessness damages self-esteem for female youths; however, the damage is akin to a blemish. Surprisingly, prior labor force experiences generally fail to influence perceptions of self-worth on the part of young men. However, we do find that for both young men and women who in the past spent time out of the labor force, the greater the duration of their exposure to this form of joblessness, the lower their level of self-esteem. We also offer psychological evidence on the relative emotional wellbeing of the unemployed and labor force drop outs that largely supports the position of Clark and Summers that these conditions are essentially indistinguishable.

The psychological impact of unemployment and joblessness

Abstract Economists have identified two principal adverse effects of unemployment. One is the output foregone that could have been produced if unemployed workers had been productively employed. The second is the psychological damage suffered by unemployed workers and their families. Psychologists have offered theories to explain how experiences such as Joblessness may lead to a deterioration in mental health. They also have designed and validated survey instruments capable of measuring various aspects of emotional health. Unfortunately, their efforts to document the psychological impact of unemployment have been plagued by data limitations, while economists largely have ignored this task. The purpose of this study is three-fold. First, we discuss why unemployment and Joblessness are likely to influence an individuals perception of personal efficacy, locus of control, and hence psychological well-being. Second, we discuss and critique existing efforts to examine the relationship between labor force experiences and locus of control. Third, we investigate the relationship between Joblessness and its component parts—unemployment and dropping out of the labor force—on personal locus of control, using observations from the NLSY and an alternative methodological framework. The NLSY is a longitudinal data set that contains detailed information on the personal characteristics of individuals in the sample, their labor force experiences and a specific personal locus of control. In discussing the results we also attempt to shed some new light on the debate between Clark and Summers (1979) and Flinn and Heckman (1982, 1983) over the question of whether being out of the labor force and being unemployed should be thought of as distinct states. We add further insight into this issue by examining whether there are psychological differences, as measured by locus of control, between otherwise comparable members of these two groups. Finally, we reconsider the Ellwood and Ruhm exchange over whether joblessness and unemployment lead to “psychological” scarring. We find that labor force experiences fail to influence personal locus of control for male youths. There is evidence, however, that perception of personal efficacy is altered by joblessness among young women. As the duration of a current unemployment spell lengthens, the likelihood of holding beliefs of personal efficacy decline for young women. There is also some evidence of scarring among women. For females who in the past have spent time both unemployed and out of the labor force, the greater the duration of their joblessness the more likely is a reduction in feelings of personal efficacy and more aggravated ones self-perception of helplessness. We also offer psychological evidence on the relative emotional well-being of the unemployed and labor force drop outs that largely supports the position of Clark and Summers that these conditions are largely indistinguishable.

Employment Discrimination, Segregation, and Health

The author examines available evidence on the effects of exposure to joblessness on emotional well-being according to race and sex. The impact of racism on general health outcomes also is considered, particularly racism in the specific form of wage discrimination. Perceptions of racism and measured exposures to racism may be distinct triggers for adverse health outcomes. Whether the effects of racism are best evaluated on the basis of self-classification or social classification of racial identity is unclear. Some research sorts between the effects of race and socioeconomic status on health. The development of a new longitudinal database will facilitate more accurate identification of connections between racism and negative health effects.

The formal structure of a gender-segregated low-income economy

Abstract Based upon insights drawn from research concerning the nature of the gender-based division of labor in agrarian regions of developing countries, a formal model is advanced of the interactions that take place in such a setting. Males are characterized as seeking to maximize their income from production of an exportable cash crop by drawing women out of household/social maintenance activities, by dint of coercion, cooperation and compensation. The paper also explores repercussions on the efficiency and output of the social maintenance or “subsistence” sector due to the loss of female laborpower to the male-controlled export sector. Finally, the impact of an International Monetary Fund mandated currency devaluation on an economy of this type is considered as well.

IS-LM: An Inquest

Whether the IS-LM framework is to be vilified for its elusive, chameleonlike character or to be cherished for its flexibility remains an open question. What is not open to question is that its development and widespread adoption as the central mode of analytical expression for macroeconomists in the post-World War I1 era was linked intimately to the endeavor to give mathematical structure to Keynes’s General Theory (1936). In his book, Interpreting MK Keynes: The IS-LM Enigma (1987), one of the coauthors of this article, Warren Young, has examined the social and intellectual interactions among the principal figures involved in the creation of the IS-LM approach. The current essay has a different emphasis. Our focus here is on the tools rather than on the toolmakers. Therefore, we explore the content of the various models purporting to represent Keynes’s message below in comparative fashion, rather than the personalities who developed the models. There is surprising diversity in these early models. What places a macroeconomic model in the IS-LM tradition now seems to be its amenability to inclusion of equations that equate sav-

The Human Capital Approach to Black-White Earnings Inequality: Some Unsettled Questions

The persistence of earnings differences between blacks and whites in the United States has been a topic that has received a substantial amount of attention in both theoretical and empirical research in economics. The differential in earnings typically is tied to racial differences in human capital accumulation. This paper advances a systematic critique of the human capital approach to black-white inequality. Inadequacies are identified in human capital theory as a general theory of inequality as well as a specific theory of racial inequality. The critique suggests that a serious analysis of the black-white earnings gap will require an entirely new approach to the study of racial income inequality.

Working hard for the money? Efficiency wages and worker effort

This paper oAers a test of the relative wage version of the eAciency wage hypothesis ‐ that firms are able to improve worker productivity by paying workers a wage premium. Psychologists believe work eAort reflects motivation that is governed by a feature of personality referred to as locus of control. Measures of locus of control are available in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Using data drawn from the NLSY in 1992 we simultaneously estimate structural real wage and eAort equations. We find that receiving an eAciency wage enhances a person’s eAort and that person’s providing greater eAort earn higher wages. ” 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.