Sociology 4949: Outline--Week Seven
I. Waldinger: "When the Melting Pot Boils Over: The Irish, Jews, Blacks, and Koreans of New York"
"The story of ethnic progress in America can better be thought of as a collective search for mobility, in which the succession of one migrant group after another ensures a continous competitive conflict over resources."
A good fit with "LA is Burning," as well as with Blumer and also with Lieberson (A Piece of the Pie)
A. Major Irish immigration, beginning in the 1840s... moved initially into domestic work (women) and unskilled labor (men)... eventually came to dominate city politics and public sector jobs... Tammany Hall
B. Period of Jewish immigration beginning around 1890... by 1920, 2 million Jews... world's largest Jewish city... initially in the clothing industry and small business... little overlap with Irish... LaGuardia election as mayor in 1933 broke the Tammany Hall political machine and Great Depression made city jobs more attractive to highly educated workers, including Jews, and occasioned Jewish-Irish conflict
C. Major black migration, beginning in early 20th century... by 1920, black population of 150,000... by 1960, 1,088,000... initially confined to domestic service... manufacturing jobs not really open to African Americans until World War II...Jews owned many of the stores in Harlem and this was a major issue in the riot of 1943... by 1950, 25,000 African Americans in garment industry, but Jews retained union leadership... Jews also held many of the teaching positions in Jewish neighborhoods... strength of the private sector in the 1980s drew many whites out of government jobs and by 1990, blacks constituted 25% of the population but held 35% of the jobs in city government...
D. Major Korean immigration beginning with the Immigration Reform Act of 1965... 1st wave highly educated but language and licensing requirements kept them out of the professional jobs... high proportion moved into small business, relying on kin and fellow ethnics for working capital and labor... often providing ethnic products to their fellow Koreans, but also many Korean stores in black neighborhoods (compare with "LA is Burning"), leading to protests and a boycott in 1981
Waldinger's summary: "The ethnic division of labor has been the central division of labor in modern New York City."
III. Schools and Race: the politics of integration and resegregation (Soc 3901). Major source. Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton: Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown vs Board of Education, 1996
A. Brown vs Board of Education.
1. Integration proceeded very slowly. Orfield: "By 1964, only one-fiftieth of Southern black children attended integrated schools." (that's 10 years after the Supreme Court ordered integration to proceed)
2. But in the years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court established much stiffer standards for southern schools, and by 1970, southern schools were more integrated than schools in other areas of the country.
B. Resegregation: Nixon, Reagan, Bush and the Supreme Court. Nixon's political strategy from the first involved capturing the white southern vote. Note his appointment of Chief Justice Rehnquist, who believed that Brown v Board of Education had been a mistake and had said so at the time.
1. A series of subsequent Supreme Court decisions provided means for resegregating southern schools. The key was the concept of "unitary status:" any school system where segregation had been "remedied" was viewed as having achieved unitary status and was therefore freed from court supervision and could move dramatically in the direction of resegregation, provided they didn't announce that intention.
a. e.g. Austin, Texas, declared unitary in 1983 and district court relinquished jurisdiction in 1986. School board redrew attendance zones and created neighborhood schools. By 1983, one third of elementary schools had minority enrollments over 80%, in a district with a white majority
b. The resegregation of the southern schools has proceeded rapidly. "We have a system of residential segregation in most of our metropolitan areas that often approaches the level of segregation produced by the old apartheid laws. This system, together with the policies and practices of the school systems, produces highly segregated and increasingly unequal education for most minority students." Orfield, p. 50
2. By 1995, 60% of sitting federal judges at all levels had been appointed by Reagan and Bush and the dominant narrative said that the effort to create equality through integrated schools had been a failure and that you couldn't overcome what Justice O'Connor called "natural, if unfortunate, demographic forces." (2009: 2 appointments by George W. Bush, 2 appointments by Clinton, 1 appointment by Obama--still leaving a court whose solid majority was appointed by Republican presidents)
C. What about schools in those parts of the U.S. that were never part of the confederacy?
1. White flight and the segregation of schools in our largest cities outside the South, as whites moved to the suburbs
2. Milliken v. Bradley, 1974. Supreme Court disallowed urban/suburban integration for Detroit. ("By 1991, African Americans in Michigan were more segregated than in any other state." Orfield) 4 of the 5 votes were Nixon appointees.
3. Supreme Court's decisions about affirmative action at the University of Michigan... referenda in California, Texas, Michigan
4. Supreme Court Decisions in June, 2007, declaring racial school integration programs in Seattle and Louisville unconstitutional, but suggesting that integration based on social class would be acceptable
D. Kozol, The Shame of the Nation ... Latinos and the Los Angeles schools
IV. Groups: Discussion of questions from Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege
V. Race and jobs. Katherine Newman, No Shame in My Game: the Working Poor in the Inner City, 1999... two-year study of some 200 workers in 4 fastfood restaurants in Harlem
A. Background... In the 1990s, the national focus on welfare families and welfare reform obscured the fact that the majority of poor families in the United States have at least one more or less full-time worker in the paid workforce... Particularly true for people's image of the innner city. Many Americans visualized the "underclass" as a group of people who had lost or never had the work ethic. Yet as she traveled through Harlem, she saw a community teeming with impatient people trying to get to work.
1. The research team: Newman plus a large group of doctoral students--African-American, Puerto Rican, and white--who "crisscrossed class and color lines to learn about people who lived near our Columbia University neighborhood but were a world apart... interviews but also worked in the Burger Barns for a time
2. Also interviewed a comparison group made up of people who had applied for fast food jobs but didn't get them.
B. Your reading: Emphasis on the stigma associated with fast food jobs and how Burger Barn workers handle the pressures, both at the job site and in the neighborhood (Comments?)
C. Working lives
1. Jamal's world.
a. Jamal and his partner, Kathy, live in what looks like an ordinary house but in fact it is a six-plex, with six families sharing a single kitchen and very limited bathroom facilities
b. Jamal, a large black man, age 22, gets up at 4.30 a.m. to catch a bus to a Burger Barn where he sometimes gets a full eight-hour shift.e. Began work at a corner grocery at age 13 to get things he could never get from his crack addicted mother. "Over the two years I got to know him, the Jamal I came to see was bright, perceptive beyond his years... and very, very depressed." Kept a diary for this project and impressed Newman as someone who in other circumstances could have been one of her graduate students... (inner city as a permanent economy of depression?)
c. Lost custody of their child after an episode of abuse. Can only get Tammy back if they find an apartment with a separate bedroom for Tammy and if Kathy stays home with the toddler. Absolutely beyond their means to rent a two-bedroom apartment on Jamal's earnings. His top earnings for any month were $680 before taxes.
Quote, p. 12
2. Carmen's World. A Dominican immigrant, living in a bustling colonia , with her father and stepmother. A studio apartment for five, costing $700 a month; her father works two jobs and while a sophomore in high school, Carmen began to work full-time at a Burger Barn.
a. Burger Barn supportive of her schooling; managers did whatever they could to make her schedule compatible with school. Burger Barn job obtained with a referral from her counselor. Extremely demanding schedule(Q, p. 17)
b. After graduation, married Salvador and got pregnant; as a result of health problems during pregnancy and at Salvador's urging, dropped her job... very bright and determined to go to college
3. Kyesha's world. Puerto Rican. Contrast of Tyron and Kyesha, who grew up in the same housing project. Q, p. 24
a. Kyesha started work to be able to buy clothes, but work soon became and still remains the absolute center of her life
b. Her mother encouraged this whole process; insisted on abortions when Kyesha got pregnant twice during high school and Kyesha went along to be able to hold onto her job.
c. Kyesha now 21, with a "love child," and she is able to hold onto her job in part because her mother Dana, a long time welfare recipient, is actually a full-time child-minder for her own kids and a collection of neighborhood children.
d. Kyesha still lives with her mother in the projects. She very much wants a place of her own, but can't afford it on the money she earns after 5 years at Burger Barn. And now "welfare" is coming after Dana, as a result of the welfare reform law of 1996 Q, p. 30
(Q for class: Why are wages so low at these Burger Barns? This after all was the boom economy of the late 1990s, and in the suburbs, fast food restaurants were advertising constantly for workers and paying $7 an hour or more, while Kyesha after five years was making barely more than $5. Why are rents so high? And why do these families stay in an area where rents are high, jobs scarce, and wages low?)
D. Central Harlem and the four Burger Barns
1. Community mostly black, with 30 percent of its households collecting public assistance in 1990 and a 40% poverty rate (what about now, many years after TANF?)
2. The workforce at these four Burger Barns half black, 1/4 Dominican; and the other 1/4 miscellaneous Latino groups
3. 70% of Burger Barn workforce 19 or older; 35% 23 or older.
4. Among the 19-22-year-olds, 56% high school graduates; 25% high school dropouts; 18% some education beyond high school.
5. Nearly half of the workers were men.
6. Family status
a. 1/3 living with single parent, usually mother
b. 1/3+ parents trying to support families
7. Jobs. Largest employers in the community two large hospitals, which have been shedding jobs in large numbers for years; many women being pushed into job market by welfare reform
8. Health and healthcare. Most jobs in Harlem do not include health insurance, and rates of illness are much higher than in more affluent neighborhoods.
E. Getting a Job
1. Among Harlem's fast food establishments, ratio of applicants to jobs is 14/1
2. Majority of 200 workers in her study had begun their work lives when they were 13-15.... bagging groceries , "summer youth," "walking all over town, calling in at every place that looks likely, can indeed produce job possibilities...but not as many as most job-seekers hope. Harlem's Burger Barn owners have whole closets full of applications completed by the walk-in trade, so many in fact that they cannot review more than a fraction of them, even when they are hiring."
3. Social networks... e.g. "People in my family find jobs mostly through my grandmother." (She's worked at the same daycare center for 17 years).... those with large families advantaged, and if they work out well, can often bring in siblings or cousins.... but at the same time, they have to protect their own credibility (which is why networks are so useful to employers)
F. The nonmonetary benefits of working at Burger Barn
1. The time squeeze... you don't have time to hang out with your nonworking peers... (Travis Hirschi, control theory)
2. Your friends apt to become your co-workers for a variety of reasons... and these are people who are committed to the values of work.
"I've been working at Burger Barn for a little more than a year now. The best thing that's happened there is that almost all my friends--no, all my friends--are from work." Q, p. 116
Often friendship across race and ethnic lines.
3. Romantic relationships may also grow out of this setting. e.g. Kyesha and Ron both worked at Burger Barn, and between them make about $9/hr... though their relationship didn't last, they both contribute to the care of their son
4. The impact of scheduled work, as it affects personal organization and motivation. Q, 123.
5. Burger Barn employees attending high school, graduating high school, attending post-secondary education, in greater numbers than their unemployed peers. Employers and managers very explicitly promote school achievement... the owners of these businesses were themselves minorities, with a "missionary zeal" about schooling and hard work... they visit schools for career days, they want to see report cards.
There's also the negative lesson; you don't want to be doing this kind of work all your life and you see older folks without the schooling doing exactly that (Newman's follow-up studies with this same group)
In the case of Burger Barn employees attending college, Newman cites incidents of managers advancing pay to meet tuition deadlines and rearranging schedules each term.
G. Getting stuck, moving up
1. Newman's belief that these jobs should be treated as teaching some major lessons that could generalize to better paid and more prestigious jobs, but the public image of these jobs gets in the way.
Workers themselves don't see what Newman sees. When she asks them to explain the skills involved in their jobs, they look surprised and say something along the lines of "Any fool could do this job."
2. Constant search for better jobs. Civil service tests, putting in applications.
3. Wilson, When Work Disappears. Chapter on attitudes of employers toward inner city applicants, including many minority employers
4. Networks: crucial for getting their fast food jobs in the first place or getting another job if their job ends.
a. Others in their networks apt to be poor themselves and therefore not a point of contact for better jobs.
b. Also quite a few with grandparents, parents or other relatives in better paying (often unionized jobs--factories, hospitals) but in industries experiencing lots of layoffs and limited ability to help.
5. Advancement in the workplace. Burger Barn mostly promotes from within, but many more low level workers than managers. Still, for workers who show extra initiative and leadership, they may be able to move up.
6. Work ethic. Newman thinks these Harlem Burger Barn employees may well work harder and younger, for less pay, than their suburban counterparts... in some cases, their parents are themselves models of hard work in lowly jobs... in other cases, it's more of a negative example and shows the teen what s/he doesn't want.
7. Availability of jobs: the jobseekers' sample (a random sample of about 100 workers who had tried to get jobs at Burger Barns in central Harlem)
a. 73% of those who applied for jobs at Burger Barns were unemployed one year later, when Newman's team tracked them down... and many of them had been looking for jobs all over the city... had to add pages to their questionnaire to list all the places
b. Dominicans and other Latinos more often successful in their job search (at least partly the product of employer preference not to hire locals)
c. The younger job seekers having an increasingly hard time (How about now, in the midst of the biggest economic downturn since the 1930s?)
d. The network-poor job seeker stands little chance.
e. The longer you've been here (the U.S.), the harder it gets. 25% of the native-born had found jobs; 40% of the foreign born
f. Do job applicants have unreasonable expectations? No, on average willing to accept minimum wage, even when they'd worked for more in the past.
g. Very few of these job seekers have never worked, and they have worked at jobs that are low in prestige and low in pay.
"To maintain, as many political figures anxious to cut welfare rolls do, that anyone who wants a job can get one is clearly to ignore the facts."
II.