Search

The article analyzes merchant behavior in ghetto marketplaces. For this purpose, the article presents two position papers taking different perspectives in regard to a possible explanation for the racial-ethnic differences found through previous research. Walter E. Williams, research economist with the Urban Institute, criticizes previous articles on the grounds that they fail to suggest a behavioral model of merchant behavior and because they fail to suggest effective policy measures to modify this behavior. Williams suggests a rational behavior model: that minorities are characterized by more unemployment, higher residential mobility, and lower income, and that merchants use this readily accessible information to determine creditworthiness. Frederick D. Sturdivant, Meshulam Riklis Professor of Business and Its Environment at the Ohio State University, suggests that the economic model employed by Williams is outdated and inappropriate, that the behavioral model encourages racist stereotyping.

The article focuses on the racial segregation by playing position in sports. The paper suggests that involvement in specific sport roles by members of minority groups may be self-induced, rather than due to overt or subtle discrimination by white leaders within the sport system. The socialization process for individuals in minority groups appears to have a differential pattern and outcome. That is, differences in socializing agents, social structure and group-influenced personal traits and expectations exist and should be considered in any attempt to describe and explain black involvement in white social institutions such as sport. With their entrance into amateur and professional athletics, blacks were extremely successful in a wide variety of sports, especially baseball, basketball, boxing, football and track and field. Anthropologists, physical educators and psychologists, who compared blacks and whites on anthropometric and motor performance measures, generally concluded that there are few, if any, physical differences which could account for this supremacy. Alternatively, investigators have suggested that the success of the black in athletic competition is related to either environmental forces, cultural influences, or sociological and psychological differences.

The article focuses on whether racial "stacking" in professional football is the result of discrimination. One area of discrimination against blacks and other minorities are in opportunities, salaries and other forms of remuneration. Another alleged area of discrimination is racial segregation by playing position. The paper demonstrates that there is racial stacking by position in professional football. Black positions are not considered leadership and thinking positions. A playing career at a non-leadership position is, therefore, assumed to be inadequate training for a career in coaching, providing at least one factor that keeps blacks out of this occupation. Racial segregation by playing position also minimizes the number of blacks who can be on the field at one time. It aids in achieving a quota system whether management intends one or not. Blacks thus compete with each other for a limited number of positions, reducing the possibility of racial conflict among team members and relieving coaches of decisions that might be interpreted as racist if a white player of equal or inferior ability were selected over a black player.

The article focuses on the relationship between city characteristics and racial violence in the U.S. Previous research examining the impact of city characteristics on racial violence has generally failed to support most commonly asserted hypotheses, and/or has not systematically treated complex theories requiring multivariate controls. These ambiguous findings strengthen earlier explanations which deemphasize intercity differences in the condition of blacks and attribute primary importance to societal determinants, notably institutionalized deprivation of blacks and white racism. Although the emphasis is perhaps warranted, it is easy to overemphasize deprivation and racism as societal causes when such factors can be conceptualized as varying by cities. An unresolved issue, which can only be verbally addressed in this paper, concerns qualitative variations in racial violence. Those incidents occurring early in this century were characterized by white attacks on blacks and set against the background of black competition in the white labor markets of the North.

The article presents the profiles of the differential statuses of the major ethnic and racial elements of the population of the United States with reference to a convenient norm and in comparison with each other. It also provides, a basis for conjecture about the relative salience of the different statuses for different populations, a special case of consistency analysis. The focus on racial problems has recently diverted attention from the substantial immigrant population in the U.S. In absolute terms the foreign-born population is still quite large. Admission of refugees around World War II and displaced persons under the Act of 1948 undoubtedly changed the characteristics of European migrants. These historical events are reflected in the Russian and German samples, for example, but census data do not permit us to disentangle their influence on the composition of the subsamples. In this paper, the author reports as a whole for African Americans, Mexican Americans, selected foreign born of significant numbers and for the native born of like foreign parentage.