NEA presidential address, 1992: Policy issues in the postsecondary education of African Americans

Few goods and services are as important to socioeconomic outcomes as education. Participation rates of African Americans in postsecondary education are much lower than those for whites. The disparities in college attendance and graduation rates have potentially grave consequences for African Americans and for the larger society. This article addresses some of the policy influences that determine educational outcomes for this population subgroup and raises some of the issues that should be addressed if proportionate participation rates are to be generated.     

Immigration and African American Wages and Employment: Critically Appraising the Empirical Evidence

This paper critically assesses the empirical evidence on the relationship between immigration and African American employment. Studies using various methodologies and data are reviewed: natural experiments, time series, and cross-sectional studies of local labor markets and intertemporal changes in the national labor market. We find that for African Americans as a whole, immigration may have little effect on mean wages and probability of employment. However, there is some evidence that immigration may have had an adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of African Americans belonging to low education-experience groups. However, even this modest conclusion must be qualified: the literature has many unresolved econometric issues that might easily undermine the received wisdom.     

Race-Conscious Policy Analysis and the Healthcare Reform Debate

There is an inherent tension between cost containment and expansion of coverage for the uninsured. African Americans disproportionately benefit from expanded health care options but they also bear a disproportionate burden in attempts to control costs. This recognition justifies a race-conscious analysis of health policy changes that appear race-neutral on their face.     

Privatization in Africa: An appraisal

In spite of spirited efforts over a decade, only a few African countries can boast of any appreciable success in the privatization and/or reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This paper argues that previous studies have not paid adequate attention to identifying and addressing the factors that affect the outcome of privatization and/or SOE reforms in Africa. After highlighting some flaws in these studies, the paper focuses on the absence of the prerequisites for successful SOE reform. It then suggests policy issues that need to be addressed first, and, the role of interested parties, including the multilateral and bilateral financial institutions, in enhancing the success of SOE reform efforts in Africa.     

The impact of the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) on university and professional school admissions and the implications for the California Economy

Using data from the University of California and results from previously published research on the returns to higher education, this article presents a preliminary evaluation of the impact of ending affirmative action in admissions at a large, publicly funded university. At the undergraduate level, eliminating race as a factor in the admissions process will redistribute African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans away from the most competitive campuses (UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego) towards the less competitive campuses in the California State University system. This redistribution will lower the returns to schooling for those affected groups and could have a negative impact on the educational environment for all students. Affirmative action will, in the short run, reduce the number of African American, Mexican American, and Native American students admitted and, in the long run, will have an adverse effect on the delivery of legal and health care services to those racial and ethnic groups.     

Labor market segmentation: African American and Puerto Rican labor in New York City, 1960–1980

This study examines the determinants of wage differences between African Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York City. The empirical analysis, conducted on census data for 1960, 1970, and 1980, highlights two important patterns. Changes in returns to human capital have been more important for Puerto Ricans than for African Americans; and changes in group segmentation structure have had a positive effect for African Americans, a negative effect for Puerto Ricans. The results are suggestive of the notion that the two groups are pursuing different paths of economic mobility.     

The horns of a dilemma: Economic discipline and economic development in South Africa

Economic debate exploded across the South African policy landscape during the last two years. However, the discussion and many of the emergent policy recommendations seem constrained by old paradigms and confined to incremental changes. A fundamental shift of paradigm is urgently needed, to one based on a holistic view of South African society and economic realities, one which integrates macro‐economic discipline with developmental restructuring interventions. Ultimately, a democratized economy built around widespread participation of all peoples is essential to underpin democratic political processes. A framework for macro‐economic policy reforms is presented in the form of an agenda — issues that must be addressed to restore economic health. By themselves, these reforms are essential but will not be sufficient. Equally important are interventions to rebalance economic participation, closing employment and income gaps and beginning the process of stimulating growth and redistribution simultaneously. Key strategies are identified and placed in the context of a three phase economic policy approach extending into the next century.     

Race,Quality of Care and Patient Outcomes: What Can We Learn from the Department of Veterans Affairs?

The large and persistent differences in health outcomes between African Americans and whites have sometimes been attributed to differences in the quality of the facilities in which they receive care. A large body of literature documents systematically worse performance by facilities which serve a larger share of black patients. However, these estimates may be biased by unobserved variables which correlate with the racial profile of the clinic and also affect outcomes. This paper uses a unique dataset from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs system to examine the relationship between the quality of health care and the racial profile of the patient population in an equal-access health care system. An instrumental variable is used to overcome the omitted variable bias in the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates. Both the OLS and IV estimates show that increasing the proportion of visits by African–American patients results in improved outcomes for all patients treated at the clinic. The OLS results significantly underestimate the effect of increasing the proportion of black patients. Holding the overall clinic load constant and adding one hundred outpatient visits by African Americans in a year would result in a 0.5 percentage point decrease in 1-year mortality for the average patient in the clinic. Thus, contrary to results from the private health care sector, increasing clinic racial integration in an equal access system would benefit all patients.     

African Americans in southern rural regions: The importance of legacy

This analysis reassesses the importance of the combined legacies of race, class, and culture by using the concentration of African Americans in a county as a general measure of this phenomenon for thirteen Southern states. Explanatory variables associated with labor force structure, social well-being and region provide evidence that those areas of the South with the highest concentrations of African Americans continue to be the most disadvantaged. These results suggest little change for metropolitan counties with increased concentrations of African Americans. The analyses point toward the need for a focused assessment of the efficacy of existing public and private programs to provide a foundation for overcoming the negative dimensions of the regional legacy.     

The Subprime Crisis and African Americans

There is a long history of unfair housing and lending practices in the United States and generally, African Americans have been disproportionately negatively impacted by these activities. In order to understand the current economic crisis and its impacts on African Americans, one must first explore the historical spectrum of discriminatory actions leveled against blacks in housing and mortgage lending. This paper discusses the recent subprime mortgage crisis and identifies the ways that African Americans were impacted. It provides an historical review of mortgage lending and housing discrimination and the role that public policy played in these practices. It then chronicles the subprime mortgage crisis and connects the consequences of lending policy run amok by targeting minority communities.     

Crime, Incarceration, and Employment in Light of the Great Recession

This paper analyzes the impact of the 2007 recession on the incarceration of African–Americans. It begins with a brief examination of incarceration, followed by a look at the literature on the relationship between work, crime, and incarceration. Finally, it concludes with the implications of these findings for African–Americans as it relates to the current economic crisis.     

Aid,development and politics in Southern Africa: A critical look at new conditionalities in official development assistance

Development aid totalling more than 25 billion rand a year is currently flowing from the North to the Southern African region. Several countries in the region are extremely de pendent on these financial transfers and foreign donors have become important players in domestic decision making. In recent years, Northern donors have increasingly demanded major political and administrative reforms in recipient countries as a condition for con tinued aid. This article examines these new political conditionalities, drawing on data from sub‐Saharan and Southern Africa to illustrate certain key issues.     

Housing, Race, and Recovery from Hurricane Katrina

The destruction of private and public housing in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina was greatest among African Americans due to historic settlement patterns. Data for 13 planning districts within Orleans Parish (the city of New Orleans proper) that document the extent of housing destruction, the distribution of population by race, and the share of returned population at 2 and 5 year points across these planning districts are evaluated using correlation analysis. The finding is that the return of African Americans to New Orleans is significantly less than that of other groups and is associated with the greater housing destruction in neighborhoods with the highest percentages of African Americans. An analysis of the structure and impact of the Road Home program for private housing and of the initiatives of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans provides evidence of racial discriminatory policies and practices that contributed to the racial disparity in the African American return to New Orleans. It is suggested that political leaders paid more attention to the interests of developers and big businesses in the restoration of New Orleans than to the interests of the predominantly black working class in the city.     

Race and the Dynamics of Men’s Mobility into Management from Working Class Jobs

Within the context of the “particularistic mobility thesis” we examine African American/White differences in the incidence, determinants and timing of mobility into management at a refined level, namely, when groups share similar “rank and file” and “elite blue collar” working class jobs. Findings from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics sample of men support theory and indicate that from both job categories, African Americans, relative to Whites, have lower rates of mobility, reach management through a route that is relatively formal and structured by a traditional range of stratification-based causal factors and take longer to reach management. Further, as predicted by theory, racial disadvantage experienced by African Americans are greater among those tracked from rank and file than elite blue collar jobs. Discussed are implications of the findings for understanding African American disadvantage in the American labor market on both an intra-and inter-generational basis.     

Support for Economic Reform? Popular Attitudes in Southern Africa

Do ordinary people support programs of economic reform? If so, why? If not, why not? This article breaks new ground by reporting and comparing public opinion from seven Southern African countries based on systematic Afrobarometer surveys. It finds that people support some adjustment policies (such as price reforms) but oppose others (such as institutional reforms). An eclectic explanation is offered for these attitudes that draws on structural factors (especially poverty), cultural values (such as self-reliance), and exposure to mass media. The most formative influence on mass economic opinion in Southern Africa, however, is the institutional legacy of settler colonialism as expressed through race and nation.     

Crime and Race: A Plea for New Ideas

A review of the economics of crime literature provides an unsatisfactory explanation of the higher crime rates among African Americans compared to crime rates for whites in the US. This address challenges economists, particularly African American economists, to come up with new and credible ideas to explain the observed crime differential that could influence policies to decrease crime in the African American community.     

Can Cultural Competency Speak to the Race Disparities in Methadone Dosage Levels?

Although national methadone treatment trends have improved substantially from 1988 to 2001, current research has found that African Americans still receive lower dosages of methadone treatment than their white and Hispanic counterparts, which has significant public health concerns. We sought to empirically examine whether the degree of cultural competency within an outpatient substance abuse treatment (OSAT) organization has influence on the methadone dosage levels received by African Americans in 1995 and in 2005. The 1995 and 2005 National Drug Abuse Treatment System Survey (NDATSS) provided a nationally-representative, stratified sample of 618 and 566 OSAT organizations, respectively, of which 121 and 140 affiliated methadone maintenance treatment programs, respectively, were analyzed. The organizations’ director and clinical supervisor were surveyed. Fixed-effects linear regression models were fitted with measures of cultural competency, client, and organizational characteristics to assess methadone dosage levels. Culturally-competent units have smaller numbers of methadone clients, greater percentages of clients who receive methadone dosages of less than 40 mg/d, smaller percentages of clients who receive methadone dosages of 80 mg/d or more, and provide a larger number of therapeutic and ancillary services during treatment than non-culturally-competent units. OSAT units with more African Americans are significantly more likely to have clients who receive dosages of less than 40 mg/d and are significantly less likely to have clients who receive dosages of 80 mg/d or more. There is no racial difference among culturally-competent unit clients who receive dosages of less than 40 mg/d, between 40 and 59 mg/d, between 60 and 79 mg/d, and 80 mg/d or more. However, among non-culturally-competent units, a racial difference exists among African Americans and other clients who receive these various dosage levels. Research indicating that African Americans receive lower dosages of methadone than their White and Hispanic counterparts may now be explained by whether these clients receive treatment in culturally competent organizations, rather than solely by arguments related to organizational differences in resources, experience and training of staff, staff bias and/or racism. Culturally competent organizations may seek a method of treatment that dissuades “replacing one drug for another,” while simultaneously treating the root cause of the addiction through the provision of comprehensive therapeutic and ancillary support services. Further research is needed to determine if cultural competency results in better substance abuse treatment outcomes for African Americans.     

Competitive Swimming and Racial Disparities in Drowning

This paper provides evidence of an inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and drowning rates using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on fatal drowning rates and membership rates from USA Swimming, the governing organization of competitive swimming in the United States. Tobit and Poisson regression models are estimated using panel data by state from 1999 to 2007 separately for males, females, African Americans and whites. The strong inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and unintentional deaths through fatal drowning is most pronounced among African Americans males.     

Not Black-Alone: The 2008 Presidential Election and Racial Self-Identification among African Americans

This paper estimates a reduced form racial identity equation for a sample of African American survey respondents. The change in a state’s fraction of white votes for Obama in 2008 relative to Kerry in 2004 provides an empirical proxy for a change in white antagonism toward African Americans. Using Current Population Survey data from 2003 to 2013, this paper finds that there is a positive and statistically significant Obama-effect on African American self-identification as mixed-race rather than as black-alone.     

The Subprime Crisis and African Americans—Response

These remarks constitute a response to Sandra Philip’s consideration of the subprime mortgage crisis and African Americans. While Philip’s analysis of the recent collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and its impact on African Americans is insightful and poignant, the scope of the analysis does not consider the role that race, inequality, political economy and stratification may have had. This response considers Philip’s treatment of the subprime crisis within a broader political economy context whereby the legacy of race, inequality and stratification may have provided incentives for financial institutions to engage in racially predatory lending practices that increased the level of risk—which ultimately caused the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, and the attendant financial crisis.