Labor and Class Factors for Prejudice

¶ … American Labor Market Darrick Hamilton's assessment of discrimination and how discrimination is measured in the U.S. labor market reveals a number of variables that play a part in determining the nature and extent of inequality in the U.S. What the study does show is that class dichotomies are apparent and that economic disparity essentially ensures that the two classes remain divided by socio-economic barriers, which prevent the lower class from ever rising beyond the class ceiling that keeps them within their socio-economic status.

Class is an obvious issue in America: classism interacts with racism in various ways but the exact manner of the interaction -- or how it is interpreted -- depends on some degree to the manner in which the interaction is measured. As Hamilton notes, "An individual may experience discrimination and not interpret it as such, or an individual may not experience discrimination but perceive that they were subjected to discrimination" (98).

In other words, the way in which interpretation of inequality, of class, and of bias, is as much a variable as any other factor in a discussion of how class and classism impacts American society. Class, therefore, is an issue that requires both quantitative and qualitative analysis. It could stand to be assessed using a phenomenological approach so that one could even more accurately understand it. What Hamilton does in his study of discrimination and the labor market is to reveal how the interaction between various factors takes place.

For instance, he shows that "employers equated black and Hispanic with low class, black with Chicago residence, and whit with middle class and suburban residence" (99). Thus, behind perspectives on race were assumptions about class and classist beliefs. Class, it could be argued, is really the main driver of beliefs about other people in society and what is decried as racism may actually be a case of classism when the layers of why people view others in specific manners are peeled back and better understood.

Even among researchers and scholars there remains a controversy regarding discrimination in the labor force and how it should be interpreted -- whether the "wage gap" is the result of a racial bias, socio-economic factors, or class variables (Hamilton 105). The fact is that all of these variables contribute to the existence of the "wage gap" and each interacts with the other so as to create the environment that allows the conditions for the "wage gap" among workers to exist in the first place.

However, there are even more factors that exist below the surface of the "class" variable -- such as psychology, culture, and subjective perceptions based on experience, fear, social/peer pressure and social values (even if they contradict with personal values). Ideas about how "class" causes one to treat others, for example, in the labor market -- by giving lower wages to persons of lower class (or of minority race) can be indicative of a cultural prejudice that impacts individual choice-making.

This issue is one that can infiltrate an entire corporate culture and dominate it on a top-down.