ABSTRACT

By the year 2000, African Americans and Latinos will constitute together nearly one-fourth of the nation's population, and an even larger share of the population in major urban areas. While the ongoing economic crisis of urban areas, particularly the dismantling of social programs, has created a basis of common interest, the ability of these two groups to engage in joint interethnic action may prove elusive. In part, this is because they have experienced the economic transformations of the past decade in different ways: deindustrialization has eliminated the usual paths of upward mobility for working class African Americans and second- and third-generation Latinos, while reindustrialization has fed a tremendous demand for low-wage, immigrant, often Latino labor. The ensuing sense of labor market competition has fueled the division between African Americans and Latinos.