Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-2rsb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-13T12:03:23.074Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Promoting racial diversity at work: Challenges and solutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2010

William T. Bielby
Affiliation:
Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois Chicago
Arthur P. Brief
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Get access

Summary

From social stratification to workplace discrimination: Six decades of sociological inquiry

Studies of social class, social stratification, and social mobility – inquiries into how aspects of one's social origins facilitate or limit one's career success as an adult – have a long and distinguished history in American sociology, dating back to the 1940s (Davis and Moore, 1945; Warner, Meeker, and Bells, 1949; Gordon, 1949; 1958; Lipset and Bendix, 1959; Blau and Duncan, 1967). However, sociological scholarship on how workplace policies and practices limit or promote equal employment opportunity (“EEO”) is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the discipline all but ignored workplace racial bias prior to the 1970s.

It should be no surprise that American sociologists began to take notice of racial bias in employment around the same time as the rest of the country. The counts in Figure 3.1 are based on 80% or higher relevancy scores in a JSTOR search in the discipline's premier journals, American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology for the terms “race or racial” and “discrimination or bias” and “employment or jobs or careers” and “organization or firm or workplace.” Similar patterns to those in Figure 3.1 are evident when I include other journals or somewhat broader search terms. The civil rights and student movements, urban unrest, and landmark legislation of the 1960s motivated sociological inquiry in much the same way it shaped political discourse.

Information

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×