The Misshapen Playing Field: Labor Force Participation and Mobility among Black and White Immigrants in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Amon Emeka, University of Southern California

The Post-Civil Rights Era in America has been marked by increasingly egalitarian legal structures and increasingly Black immigration flows. While overshadowed by the much larger Asian and Latino immigrant groups, those from Africa, the Caribbean and Europe are important because they provide for a unique test of our Civil Rights advances. This paper uses Current Population Survey data to compare the labor force experiences of Black and White immigrants as well as their American-born children with their Native-born (third generation+) counterparts. Findings suggest that despite a great deal of socioeconomic similarity in the first generation, second generation Black and White men differ substantially in terms of labor force participation and employment—to the detriment of the Black men. It is argued that this finding is reflective of a twenty-first century occupational queue that places Black immigrant men ahead of other Black American men but well behind White immigrant and White American men.