"The Declining Significance of Race" is an article by William Julius Wilson, (reprinted from Society Jan./Feb. 1978) written in 1978. In this article he stresses that the economic sphere, class has become more important than race. He acknowledges that the traditional forms of racial segregation and discrimination still exist in contemporary America and that when the article was written blacks still were not welcomed into some private institutions and social arrangements like residential areas or private social clubs. Therefore, the black underclass still had the same problems, but privileged blacks came into a zone were the rules of economy were stronger than the rules of class.
Wilson therefore defines three stages of American class relations to explain how this was made possible. In those three stages the relationship of whites and blacks in America changed due to historical, political and economical events: The three stages of American class relations in short:
- 1, The Preindustrial Stage: This is the period of plantation economy and racial-caste oppression; it coincides with antebellum slavery and the early postbellum era.
- 2. The Industrial Stage: This is the period of industrial expansion, class conflict, and racial oppression. It begins in the last quarter of the 19th century and lasts roughly until the New Deal Era.
- 3. The Modern Industrial Stage: This is the period of progressive transition from race inequalities to class inequalities. It lasts during the modern, industrial, post–World War II era and really begins to crystallize during the 1960s and 1970s.[22]
Criticism: According to Darryl Pinckney, this thesis that in the modern industrial system the economic position had much more influence on a black person's life than his race was not well received by black critics: it failed to address institutional racism and systemic inequality. The season of extreme black rhetoric may have coincided with the doubling of the size of white middle class, because of new laws mandating equal employment. Still in order to be considered middle class, black families needed two incomes compared to whites with one. Black women could enter white-collar jobs like secretarial and clerical work, since they were also jobs exclusively for women. A black man, to earn a comparable income to a white man, needed more education and needed also to be in a higher occupation than a white man.[4
Notice how much of the criticism is out of date... like 1 vs 2 incomes and the systemic racism of DEI policies
