This paper examines two peer-reviewed analyses of the relative rise in Black male earnings compared to white male earnings from the post-World War II era through 1980. It presents James P. Smith's argument that improvements in Black educational attainment — particularly among younger cohorts — were the primary driver of narrowing income ratios. The paper then introduces James J. Heckman's rebuttal, which disputes the education thesis and instead attributes Black economic progress, concentrated in the South, to federal antidiscrimination policies enacted after 1964 and the resulting shift in southern manufacturing employment practices.
The paper demonstrates source-to-source synthesis: rather than summarizing Smith and then summarizing Heckman separately, it uses Heckman's argument to interrogate and complicate Smith's claims. This comparative approach — identifying what one scholar "missed" according to another — is a core technique in academic review and analytical writing.
The paper opens by framing the shared premise (income convergence through 1980), then develops Smith's education-centered explanation with historical context. It pivots to Heckman's critique, presenting his southern manufacturing thesis alongside specific wage data and his rejection of the schooling quality argument. The conclusion reinforces Heckman's position that federal civil rights policy, not education, drove the labor market shift. The structure follows a problem–explanation–counterargument–resolution arc.
Both James P. Smith and James J. Heckman — the authors of the two peer-reviewed articles examined here — agree that the earnings of Black males rose relative to the earnings of white men up until 1980. The central question this paper addresses is how Smith explains why income ratios first began to converge in the 1960s, and what factor Heckman argues Smith missed in his analysis.
According to Morton Zeman's studies (and those of others), in the 1950s, a few years after World War II, the relative economic situation for Black men had, if anything, deteriorated (Smith, 1984). Racial differences and lower levels of educational attainment for Black Americans apparently factored into this uneven economic situation, according to Smith's article.
In the 1960s and 1970s, new surveys of census information revealed that the rates at which Black Americans were utilizing educational opportunities had been "significantly understated" — and moreover, incomes for Black males did not trail those of "comparable whites as their careers evolved" (Smith, 686).
Interestingly, the rise in incomes for Black males — which began "suddenly during the mid-1960s" — is "roughly coincident" with the legislative success of the Civil Rights Act, Smith notes (687). Trends in education across the twentieth century show that Black Americans' access to a high school education gradually increased, even though in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South, far more was spent on white schools and white students than on Black schools and Black students as late as 1910 (Smith, 690). It was not until after the Great Depression of the 1930s that a high school education became what Smith calls "a realistic goal" for Black Americans (690).
Part of the delay in Black Americans gaining access to quality employment was the lack of educational opportunity. According to Smith, it took 75 years for Black Americans to "equal the basic literacy rate" that whites had achieved immediately after the Civil War (Smith, 691).
Smith draws on extensive data and historical comparisons to explain why Black Americans struggled for so long to reach a point where decent income was achievable, and education stands out as one of the most important factors. In 1900, approximately 45% of working Black men could not read or write, which, Smith concludes, "depressed their income by 15%" (693).
After examining this data, Smith addresses the central question directly. He notes that while income ratios rose after 1960, they had also risen between 1920 and 1940 — but the ratio after 1960 was "clearly larger" than that achieved between 1920 and 1940 (694). He argues that the explanation for this acceleration could not have been affirmative action alone. Instead, he suggests that the gains were related to "younger cohorts" receiving better education (695). In other words, Black Americans were obtaining quality education at younger ages, giving them the qualifications needed for better-paying jobs and making them competitive in the broader labor market.
Heckman's rebuttal to Smith is made very clear in the final paragraph of his paper: the quality of schooling theory cannot explain "the large cross-cohort improvement" in the economic status of Black workers in the South during the 1970–1980 era (245). What does make sense as an explanation, Heckman argues, is that the "labor market shifted favorably toward Blacks" — a shift that is best accounted for by federal civil rights policies and laws (245). In Heckman's view, it was the legislative and regulatory environment created by the civil rights movement, not improvements in schooling quality, that drove the most significant gains in Black male earnings relative to white male earnings during this period.
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