The Crack in the Glass Ceiling

Many Democrats insist that prejudice is keeping women and minorities out of politics and business. In this frame, their presidential candidates are appealing. If Senator Barack Obama wins the nomination, racism will recede from the inner city. If Senator Hillary Clinton wins, sexism will exit the boardroom. According to these ideologues, economic success is tied to political success, and one must occur for the other to follow.

History, however, suggests the opposite. Political success is separate from economic success, and culture causes many of the gender and racial divides in our country.

But racism makes for a much scarier bogeyman. In his recent speech on race in in Philadelphia, Obama warned, “…many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

Unfortunately, Obama’s track from 1863 to 2008 railroads the facts. Economist Thomas Sowell recounts reality in his book, “Economic Facts and Fallacies.” Today, African Americans have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the country, and lower labor force participation rates than whites. At the turn of the 20th century, however, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites. They also had higher labor force participation rates than whites in every census from 1890 to 1950. The problems that Obama cites are recent trends, not ancestral legacies.

Still, these trends are troubling. At the end of the twentieth century, only ten percent of two-parent African-American households lived below the poverty rate, but an absolute majority of single-parent African-American households did. Married couples share certain qualities that make them more likely to succeed. Indeed, the breakdown of the family is one reason for the recent lag in economic progress among African Americans. And the fewer African Americans who are working, the less likely that greater numbers of them will rise out of poverty.

Moreover, African Americans made greater economic progress before they jumped political hurdles. The percentage of African American families below the poverty line dropped 40 percentage points between 1940 and 1960, before Congress passed any important civil rights legislation.But from 1960 to 1980, the poverty rate among African American families fell only 18 percentage points, even after social programs like the War on Poverty and affirmative action took root. The restoration of African Americans’ civil rights wasn’t responsible for their economic standing.

Racism doesn’t always prevent minorities from prospering, as Sowell explains in another book, Ethnic America. When Japanese immigrants arrived in California at the end of the nineteenth century, the state government forbade them from owning land. In 1942, the federal government forced over 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. During the upheaval, Japanese Americans lost many of their belongings, worth around $400 million in 1942 dollars.

Despite these political setbacks, Japanese Americans worked longer and harder than their white counterparts in menial, low paying jobs. They insisted that their children graduate from school to capitalize on these initial gains. As a result, Japanese Americans today earn higher annual incomes than whites, though they hold only several hundred political offices nationwide. Their economic success doesn’t rely on political power. Political success doesn’t always translate into economic success either. The Irish, for example, controlled the police forces and fire departments of most major American cities by the late nineteenth century. For years, they governed capitals like Boston and New York, and blackballed Jews and Italians from their political machines. Still, Sowell notes, “…[in America,] the Irish were the slowest rising of the European ethnic groups.”

Racism exists, but it doesn’t explain many of the economic disparities among minorities. Sexism is the other scapegoat that Democrats fleece. Clinton often sobs that women earn “just 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes.” But those 23 cents aren’t lining some sexist employer’s pockets. Because women are the only ones who can have children, they are more likely to take time off to care for those children, losing experience and seniority. To devote more time to family, many women choose fields that allow greater flexibility in their schedules, and, consequently, pay less.

The earlier women have children, the less likely they are to earn a doctorate or land a high-paying job. After World War II, the baby boom began a boost in the birth rate and a drop in the median age of marriage. In return, women’s share of doctorates declined. Before World War II, however, women earned larger shares of doctorates than they did during the 1950s or 60s. In fact, women’s share of doctorates hit a record high in 1972—the same percentage it had reached in 1932.

Most importantly, we must compare apples to apples. According to one study that Sowell cites, “Among college-educated, never-married individuals with no children who worked full-time and were from 40 to 64 years old—that is, beyond child-bearing years—men averaged $40,000 a year in income, while women averaged $47,000.” Lifestyle choices are behind the “gender gap,” not sexism. Unless Clinton outlaws pregnancy, I doubt her presidency will affect women any differently than Obama’s. Most Americans can succeed regardless of their race or gender. In many cases, culture makes all the difference. If Obama and Clinton want to make history, they could acknowledge this fact. But if they did, they’d be Republicans.


Brian J. Bolduc ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is an economics concentrator in Winthrop House.