Reaching the Top

This study uses data from the 1988 to 1992 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to assess predictions from the particularistic mobility thesis concerning how African American and White males reach the Managers-Administrators and Professional-Technical census-based occupational categories. The findings provide support for the particularistic mobility thesis. In particular, African Americans, relative to Whites, attain both occupational categories on the basis of a narrow and circumscribed route: for African Americans, the acquisition of significant human capital credentials and experience at a similar level in the occupational structure in next-to-last job with the same employer are important prerequisites for moving into privileged occupations. Furthermore, analyses indicate that particularistic employment practices are more pronounced in the private than the public sector. The implications of the findings for explaining racial differences in representation in the two occupational categories are discussed.

[1]  T. Pettigrew.  Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle- , 1999 .

[2]  J. Fitzmaurice.  Economy and Society , 1998 .

[3]  S. Baldi,et al.  Do the Determinants of Promotion Differ for Blacks and Whites? , 1997 .

[4]  J. Logan,et al.  Racial Submarkets in Government Employment: African American Managers in New York State , 1997 .

[5]  G. Wilson.  Pathways to Power: Racial Differences in the Determinants of Job Authority , 1997 .

[6]  Sharon M. Collins.  Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle Class , 1996 .

[7]  S. Morgan.  Trends in Black-White Differences in Educational Expectations: 1980-92. , 1996 .

[8]  F. Dobbin.  Review of William P. Bridges and Wayne J. Villemez, The Employment Relationship: Causes and Consequences of Modern Personnel Administration , 1994 .

[9]  C. Herring,et al.  Discrimination Over the Life Course: A Synthetic Cohort Analysis of Earnings Differences Between Black and White Males, 1940-1990 , 1994 .

[10]  J. Quadagno,et al.  The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty , 1994 .

[11]  M. Thomas.  Race, Class, and Personal Income: An Empirical Test of the Declining Significance of Race Thesis, 1968-1988 , 1993 .

[12]  Sharon M. Collins.  Blacks on the Bubble: The Vulnerability of Black Executives in White Corporations , 1993 .

[13]  Thomas A. DiPrete,et al.  Industrial restructuring and the mobiliby response of american workers in the 1980s , 1993 .

[14]  R. Wong.  Research in Social Stratification and Mobility , 1993 .

[15]  D. Lavin,et al.  Higher education and challenging work: Open admissions and ethnic and gender differences in job complexity , 1992 .

[16]  T. Edsall,et al.  Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics , 1991 .

[17]  Lois Benjamin.  The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the Twentieth Century , 1991 .

[18]  Malcolm Hill,et al.  The Panel Study of Income Dynamics , 1991 .

[19]  S. Nkomo,et al.  Factors affecting the upward mobility of black managers in private sector organizations , 1990 .

[20]  Sharon M. Collins.  The Marginalization of Black Executives , 1989 .

[21]  G. Fisher,et al.  Polarization and progress in the black community: Earnings and status gains for young black males in the era of affirmative action , 1989 .

[22]  B. Landry,et al.  The New Black Middle Class. , 1988 .

[23]  T. Pettigrew,et al.  Shaping the organizational context for Black American inclusion. , 1987 .

[24]  James M. McPartland,et al.  How Minorities Continue to Be Excluded from Equal Employment Opportunities: Research on Labor Market and Institutional Barriers , 1987 .

[25]  R. Crain,et al.  APPLICANT RACE AND JOB PLACEMENT DECISIONS: A NATIONAL SURVEY EXPERIMENT , 1986 .

[26]  Gillian Stevens,et al.  Socioeconomic indexes and the new 1980 census occupational classification scheme , 1985 .

[27]  T. Pettigrew.  New Black-White Patterns: How Best to Conceptualize Them? , 1985 .

[28]  R. Kaufman.  A Structural Decomposition of Black-White Earnings Differentials , 1983, American Journal of Sociology.

[29]  Sharon M. Collins.  The Making of the Black Middle Class , 1983 .

[30]  R. Hodson,et al.  Economic Dualism: A Critical Review , 1982 .

[31]  R. Hauser.  On "Stratification in a Dual Economy" , 1980 .

[32]  E. M. Beck,et al.  Stratification in a Dual Economy: A Sectoral Model of Earnings Determination. , 1978 .

[33]  J. R. Kluegel.  The Causes and Cost of Racial Exclusion from Job Authority. , 1978 .

[34]  Mary Anne Devanna.  Men and Women of the Corporation , 1978 .

[35]  Kenneth L. Wilson,et al.  Black-White Differences in Educational Attainment. , 1976 .

[36]  John P. Fernandez,et al.  Black managers in white corporations , 1975 .

[37]  O. D. Duncan,et al.  The American Occupational Structure , 1967 .

[38]  T. Pettigrew.  A Profile of the Negro American , 1965 .

[39]  G. Becker,et al.  Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition , 1993 .

[40]  J Tudor-Hart,et al.  On the nature of prejudice. , 1961, The Eugenics review.

[41]  R. Turner.  Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System , 1960 .