Institute for Social Science Research

In the introduction to this volume, Johnson and Oliver (1988) discuss the importance of exploring questions of ethnicity and ethnic group behavior in a comparative context and highlight a specific set of "ethnic dilemmas" requiring immediate attention and remediation. Answers to the types of comparative ethnic questions they raised would ideally require the collection of primary data via large scale social surveys. Because the design and conduct of a social survey is a time consuming and costly undertaking, especially for the lone researcher, social scientists have traditionally attempted to circumvent the problem by undertaking secondary analysis of previously conducted surveys. Given this longstanding research tradition, Stephenson (1988) has compiled an INDEX OF MACHINE-READABLE DATA FILES FOR USE IN COMPARATIVE ETHNIC RESEARCH. The index contains references to UCLA's holdings of surveys, public opinion polls, and both historical and current enumerative data. It will be significantly useful in comparative ethnic research on such topics as: Ethnic assimilation, segregation, and neighborhood change; Labor markets and entrepreneurship; Political and electoral behavior; Health and well-being; Crime; and, Education.

The purpose of this essay is to encourage future comparative ethnic research by highlighting potential uses and limitations of machine-readable data files, such as those referenced in the INDEX (Stephenson 1988). Toward this end, background details are provided on the organizations and agencies that collect or archive publicly available data and describe in detail selected data files. A second section will focus on data collection policies, sampling deficiencies and inherent limitations for research on comparative aspects of ethnicity and ethnic group behavior. In the concluding section the discussion focuses on, among other salient issues, the social scientist's role in future government decisions regarding the collection of data on ethnic groups in America.

For several decades an argument has raged over the determinants of minority mobility. This paper reviews competing theses in this argument. It then relates hypotheses deriving from the competing theses to empirical findings on West Indians and the Chinese population of Los Angeles County.

The exponential growth in selected Sunbelt cities since 1960 is now well documented, and metropolitan Miami is recognized as one of the acknowledged targets of Sunbelt growth and development. What is less often acknowledged, is the impact of the transformation of such places on segments of the residential population. In this paper, primary attention will be directed at two subpopulations -- Blacks and Cubans residing in metropolitan Miami just prior to the takeoff era. At the time of takeoff, Blacks represented a quasi-caste population whose role in the Miami economy was typical of that of Blacks in the economy of the urban South, a peripheral one. Cubans, on the other hand, were just beginning to enter the metropolitan economy in substantial numbers and the first wave of migrants from Cuba had yet to make its impact felt. After the passage of almost a generation it is fitting to examine how well metropolitan miami's two primary ethnic minorities have fared in penetrating, and/or altering the metropolitan economy.

Immigration into the U.S. from countries in Latin and Asia is rapidly changing the ethnic and demographic composition of American cities. In Los Angeles alone, the Hispanic 1 population grew from 18 percent of the city's total population in 1970 to 28 percent in 1980. The Asian population, while smaller in total size, rose from 5 percent in 1970 to 7 percent in 1980. As the new wave of immigrants grows in size, much attention in both the academic community as well as the mass public is being devoted to their impact on the social and political composition of the communities in which they reside.

In terms of political development, the new wave immigrants pose new questions for research on ethnic politics. Most salient of these are the following: what form of political empowerment will take place in these ethnic communities? How adequate is the political assimilation model posed by Robert Dahl (1961) or the political incorporation model posed by Browning, Tabb and Marshall (1984) in explaining the political behavior of these ethnic groups? Moreover, given that new wave immigration is highly concentrated in American cities where Black Americans have come to constitute both sizeable proportions of the population and political office holding , what impact will the growing presence of new immigrants have on Black political development?

In order to address some of these concerns, this paper examines the political behavior of the Asian, Black, and Hispanic communities of Los Angeles in a comparative context. Attention is focused on the following issues: 1) the extent to which each group forms an ethnic voting bloc in the city 2) differences in comparative levels of local political involvement and the forces responsible, and 3) the potential for inter-ethnic coalition building among Asians, Blacks and Hispanics. Moreover, the work assesses the adequacy of the Dahl ethnic political assimilation model in explaining the political experiences of these new wave immigrants and discusses the nature and level of political incorporation developing within each group.

This paper focuses on educational mobility, particularly racial or ethnic minority group access to institutions of higher learning in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In America education determines opportunities for jobs and income, and therefore is the principal avenue through which the tremendous inequalities among groups in the population can be reconciled. If all people have equal access to education, then the present racial or ethnic group based inequalities will not persist. To the extent that inequalities would continue to exist, they would not be based on race or ethnicity but increasingly on actual differences in merit. If, on the other hand, the opposite were true, that is, there was no equal opportunity for schooling and discrimination persisted even when non-Whites dedicated themselves to education, then the idea of equal opportunity would give way to questions about the legitimacy of the entire system. Instead of offering a genuine chance, the educational process would be a part of a self-perpetuating cycle of inequality, all the more damaging because it encouraged people within it to believe that they were being prepared for an equal chance,leaving them to blame themselves when they failed.

Our research in large American metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles,suggests that equal educational opportunity does not exist across racial lines and that most Black and Hispanic students are educated in ways that are much closer to self-perpetuating cycles of inequality than to genuine preparation for mainstream opportunities for college or jobs. If this is true, the full potential of most of the young people in metropolitan Los Angeles is not being developed and the long-term potential for social and political conflict from the groups that are excluded is very severe.

Published government statistics and social science research have documented employment trends for the 1960-1980 period. During the 1960s, the percentage of Black, White, and other men who worked full-year (48 or more weeks per year) increased, and the gap between Blacks and Whites, and Whites and others narrowed (Smith and Welch 1986; Sandefur and Pahari 1987). This improvement did not continue in the 1970s, however, and the percentage of Black, White and other men who worked full-year declined while the percentage who worked none at all increased. Further, the gap in the employment of Whites and Blacks increased.

Most observers attribute the gains of the 1960s to economic growth and to improvements in the average level of education of minority group members (Smith and Welch 1986). The 1970s, on the other hand, was a period of inflation, recessions, and little growth in jobs. In addition, the ranks of those seeking employment increased with the coming of age of the baby boom generation and the increase in job-seeking among women. This made finding employment much more difficult than it had been during the 1960s. The evidence also suggests that Blacks, because of their over-representation in marginal jobs, were hurt more by the problems of the 1970s than were Whites (Wilson 1987).

Most of the research on these trends in employment has concentrated on Blacks and Whites, because these are the two largest racial groups in American society and because data on these groups is more readily available. The limited amount of research on other groups such as Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans indicates that their experiences diverge from those of both Blacks and Whites (see, for example, Hirschman 1988; Sandefur and Pahari 1987). The purpose of this paper is to examine racial differences in trends in employment more carefully. We address two major questions: (1) Have the racial/ethnic differences in employment increased or declined since 1970? and, (2) Have differences in employment across educational groups increased or declined since 1970?

If we consider Marx an economist, then Weber and Simmel were the first major sociologists to devote considerable attention to the causes and consequences of the economic behavior of religious and ethnic groups. As is known, one of Weber's major interests was the part played by different religious groups in the development of rational capitalism in the West (Weber 1958). Weber concluded that adherents of Calvinism and other Protestant sects were possessed of a worldly asceticism which was highly consonant with the requirements of modern capitalism. Elsewhere, Weber pondered a related issue, to wit, why "no modern and distinctively industrial bourgeoisie of any significance emerged among the Jews" (1964, p. 249). Weber's answer adduced, among other things, that a serious study of Jewish law was more compatible with such pursuits as moneylending and that the institution of the dowry "favored the establishing of the Jewish groom at marriage as a small merchant" (1964, p. 255). Another reason why, in Weber's view, industrial production was not a favored activity among Jews was the dual ethic: "what is prohibited in relation to one's brothers is permitted in relation to strangers" (1964, p. 250). As a result of the dual ethic, the Jew, unlike the Calvinist, found it "difficult... to demonstrate his ethical merit by means of characteristically modern business behavior" (1964, p. 252).

As for Simmel, he saw the European Jews' tendency to engage in trade as being inextricably related to their status as "strangers" in society. As he put it (1964, p. 403): Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger... Trade can always absorb more people than primary production; it is, therefore, the sphere indicated for the stranger, who intrudes as a supernumerary, so to speak, into a group in which the economic positions are actually occupied -- the classical example is the history of European Jews.

The impact of Weber's and, especially, Simmel's pioneering ideas regarding ethnicity and economic behavior is discernible early in U.S. sociology. The notion of the "trader as a stranger" is found in the work of Park (1950a, 1950b), Wirth (1928), and Stonequist (1937). Becker's book (1956) devoted an entire chapter to "middleman trading peoples," in which he discusses, among other things, the concept of the "dual ethic." For reasons not entirely clear, interest in the sociology of ethnic economic behavior remained dormant for a while, but reappeared in the 1950's (Cahnman 1957; Rinder 1958; Stryker 1959; Blalock 1967). This interest persists today under the leadership of Bonacich, Light, and Portes, among others. As a result, a considerable body of writings has emerged. Although this literature has added to our knowledge, it suffers from some problems. There are issues which have not been explored sufficiently, discrepancies regarding important concepts, contradictions, and dubious assumptions. In brief, the field of study seems to be in need of careful reexamination. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate such a reasses- sment.

Accounts of the economic circumstances of various population subgroups since 1960 indicate increased inequality between majority and selected minority populations, and increased polarization within these minority populations (see Wilson 1987; Farley 1984; Allen and Farley 1986; Hirschman 1988; Hernandez 1983). Specifically, recent studies reveal that the Black-White gap in unemployment (in both absolute and relative terms) has increased, and levels of labor force nonparticipation rose, with the latter appearing to be almost entirely a minority phenomenon (Hirschman 1988; Allen and Farley 1986; Lichter 1988). This paper continues this line of research via analyses of trends in employment and an assessment of the effect of migration on employment among Blacks, Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and non-Hispanic White Americans. Specifically, the questions we wish to address are whether the level of employment of these groups changed since 1965 and whether migrating between 1975 and 1980 affected the likelihood of being employed in 1980.

In focusing on the association of employment with migration, our objective is to determine whether the opportunity enhancement function of migration apply equally to each of the ethnic groups included in the analysis. Results from previous works suggest that migration might possibly offer a solution to the chronic joblessness observed among some ethnic populations concentrated in the nation's largest cities. In the analysis presented below, this assertion is subjected to an empirical test.

In the past decade there has been a growing literature focused on explaining the patterns of residential separation in U.S. metropolitan areas. The research of two decades ago which focused on the locational structure of the mono-centric city represented by studies by Alonso (1964), Mills (1967), Muth (1969) and Wingo (1961) was mostly concerned with the way in which land uses as a whole are structured in the city. There was much less attention directed to the issues of residential separation, especially the separation of ethnic areas within metropolitan areas.

In the last dozen years at least three research streams have developed to explore the issue of residential patterning and neighborhood change. One of these streams considers neighborhood change as the outcome of a set of exogenous factors such as income, population growth, changing job locations and housing change.

A second research stream also includes exogenous economic factors additionally includes the role of racially biased household preferences, racial discrimination in the functioning of the housing market and by extension in the transition of neighborhoods.

The third research stream specifically examines the way in which discrimination affects the patterns of separation.

Paralleling the debates about the factors which influence the nature of residential change and residential separation are empirical studies of residential change itself. An important aspect of understanding residential change is residential behavior and the resulting changes in residential separation. Much of the emphasis has been on the role of tipping and explanations of tipping.

In reaction to current emphasis upon internal, supply-side causes, some entrepreneurship researchers have recommended a balancing stress upon the neglected demand-side. Thus, Waldinger, Ward and Aldrich (1985, p. 589) observe that a "common objection to cultural analysis" is its lack of attention to "the economic environment in which immigrant entrepreneurs function." Instead of this lop-sided treatment, they recommend "an interactive approach" which looks at the "congruence between the demands of the economic environment and the informal resources of the ethnic population."Since they wrote, this reaction has achieved the strength of a movement of thought in the entrepreneurship literature (see Morokvasic, Phizacklea, and Waldinger, 1987, p. 6). In principle, a compensatory reaction to cultural analysis is appropriate as a complete explanation of immigrant or ethnic entrepreneurship demands attention to both the demand side and the supply side. Lop-sided explanations must be partial, incomplete, and to that extent wrong.