EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

At a Loss for Words: Measuring Racial Inequality in America

Major G. Coleman
Additional contact information
Major G. Coleman: State University of New York

The Review of Black Political Economy, 2016, vol. 43, issue 2, 177-192

Abstract: Abstract Scholars of race tend to measure racial inequality in either absolute or relative terms. How much Blacks have advanced from their historical antebellum status is an absolute measure. How the status of Blacks compares with that of Whites is a relative measure. A more revealing measure might be how much racial equality will be strategically necessary to avoid a major politico-economic crisis like the ones that occurred during the civil war and the 1960s. Though it is easier to measure absolute or relative equality, measures of strategic equality yeild more important information. Using the Current Population Survey, General Social Survey, Center for Education Statistics, Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, and Census Bureau estimates, I find that, strategically, America is actually declining in racial equality, not advancing.

Keywords: Racial inequality; Racial equality; Wage inequality; Strategic equality; Racism; Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12114-015-9229-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:blkpoe:v:43:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s12114-015-9229-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12114

DOI: 10.1007/s12114-015-9229-y

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Black Political Economy is currently edited by C. Conrad

More articles in The Review of Black Political Economy from Springer, National Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:blkpoe:v:43:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s12114-015-9229-y