Changes in the American Occupational Structure and Occupational Gains of Negroes During the 1940's

Some aspects of the relationship of occupational gains of American Negroes durilng the 1940's to general chainges in the occupational structure were investigated to throw light upoIn the hypothesis that the structural changes were necessary for the large Negro gains. If was found that Negroes made their greatest gains in rapidly expaindinig occupatioils, ill occupations of intermediate and declininig desirability, and in occupatioIns much more desirable to Negroes than to whites. It was concluded that the large Negro gains would not have been possible without the great expanisioni in inumbers of workers in the highly and moderately desirable occupations. For seventy years after the Civil War, the general occupational status of American Negroes did not change greatly in relation to that of whites. In 1940 the degree of occupational (lifferentiation of Negroes from whites was almost as great as it was in 1890 wlhen the Census Bureau first gathered data on Negro occupations.1 Between 1940 and 1950, k A revised version of a paper read at the meetings of the Ohio Valley Sociological Society in Cleveland, Ohio, in April 1961. The data are from Norval D. Glenin, The Negro Popilatioit in the Amnerican System of Social Stratification; An Analysis of Recentt Trenids, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, The University of Texas, 1961, chapter 3. I wish to express my appreciation to Richard J. Hill of The University of Texas for a critical reading of an earlier draft. 1 DiffereInces in the occupational categories used in the census reports for 1890 and for 1940 make it impossible to compare with precision the degrees of Negro-white occupational differentiatioin for the two years. OInly oIne broad category in the top portion of the occupational hierarchy, that of professional workers, is comparable from 1890 to 1940. The proportion of all Negro workers in that category in 1890 was 27 percent of the proportion of all native-borni white workers in the same catevorv_ This content downloaded from 207.46.13.172 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 04:24:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE AND OCCUPATIONAL GAINS 189 lhowever, Negroes took a giant step toward occupational equality with whites. This gain was very large relative to the gains of previous decades, and the preliminary reports on occupations for 1960 indicate that it was large relative to the Negro gain during the 1950's.2 It is known that World War II and various conditions associated with the war were to a large extent responsible for this pronounced occupational advancement of Negroes during the forties. Many of the specific mechanisnms b'y which the Negro gains came about also lhave beeni iclentified and expounded.3 However, the relationship of the Negro gains to general clhainges in the occupational structure has not been explicitly treated and fully investigated. The purpose of this article is to investigate some aspects of this relationship, with view to thlrowing light upon the hypothesis that the general occupational changes were a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the large Negro gains. This lhypothlesis derives from a belief that Negro-wlhite power relations in the United States are such that little Negro upward mobility can take place if it must be at the expenlse of whites. Although whites do not necessarily act in unison against Negroes to protect the interests of any and all whites, there is reason to believe that any large segment of the white population has a power advantage over Negroes. Institutionalized discrimination, which can be perpetuated more easily than changed, favors the whites. White workers are able to control the policies of most trade unions; white patrons, with their greater buying power,. are more able than Negroes to influence the employment practices of most business firms; and, with local exceptions, any sizeable segment of the white population can exert more political influence than Negroes. In turn, Negro occupational advanceinent can take place without its entailing a downward disBy 1940, the proportion of nonwhite workers in professional occupations was 36 percent of the proportion of white workers in those occupations. This change may be roughly indicative of the extent of over-all change in the occupational status of Negroes relative to whites from 1890 to 1940. One index of the degree of occupational differentiation of Negroes from whites is the percentage of Negroes who would have to change occupational categories in order for the Negro distribution to equal the white. This is a crude index in that it fails to reflect much important intracategory differentiation of Negroes from whites, but it probably is as adequate as any index which could be devised with the data available. Perhaps the mose serious weakness of this index is that its values are to a large extent a function of the number and type of categories used, and therefore it can be used only to compare Negro-white occupational differentiation for census years for which the same occupational categories were used. The same categories were used for 1890 and 1900, and the index values for these years are 29.2 and 30.1 respectively. This indicates that Negro-white occupational differentiation remained about the same from 1890 to 1900. The same categories were used for 1910, 1920, and 1930, and the index values for these years are 35.8, 34.8, and 36.9 respectively. This indicates that little change occurred in the degree of Negro-white occupational differentiation from 1910 to 1930. Most of the broad occupational categories in the 1930 and in the 1940 census reports are not comparable, but a careful examination of Negro representation in the detailed occupations reveals that very little change in the Negro's relative occupational status occurred during the 1930's. 2 The detailed occupations used in the 1940, 1950, and 1960 census reports can easily be grouped into ten comparable broad categories or "occupational groups" and the degrees of white-nonwhite occupational differentiation among these categories for the three years can be compared. The percentages of nonwlhite workers who would have had to change occupational categories in order for the nonwhite to have equaled the white distribution were 47.8, 40.9, and 39.9 respectively for 1940, 1950, and 1960. 3 Treatments of the effects of World War II upon the economic position of the Negro include Victor Perlo, "Trends in the Ecoinomic Status of the Negro People," Science anid Society, 16 (1952), pp. 115-150; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemna: The Negro Problem and Modern Demtocracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), pp. 409-423; Robert C. Weaver, Negro Labor: A Nationtal Problem (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1946); E. Franiklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States, rev. ed. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1957), pp. 613-618; and John A. Davis and Cornelious L. Golightly, "Negro Employment in the Federal Government," Phylon (fourth quarter, 1945), pp. 337-346. Specific factors which have been identified as aiding Negro occupational advancement during World War II include the efforts by the wartime federal FEPC to prevent discrimination (Myrdal, Frazier) ; a wartime revitalization of the American creed (Myrdal); an increase in the number of jobs available in the federal governmeint (Davis and Golightly) ; and the labor shortage which made it impossible for employers to fill many jobs with whites (Perlo, Myrdal, Weaver, Frazier). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.172 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 04:24:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms