Advancing Equal Employment Opportunity, Diversity, and Employee Rights

One of the most controversial issues in labor policy since the 1970s has been the extent to which black economic progress toward equality with whites was due to government intervention in the workplace, to advances in education, or to the persistent forces of competitive markets (see Bloch 1994; Donohue and Heckman 1991; Freeman 1973; Heckman and Paynor 1989; and Smith and Welch 1984). In the context of this volume, the question is whether progressive (nondiscriminating) employers became prevalent enough to enable blacks to secure employment without suffering the effects of the discriminating employers that remained. A more difficult question is whether this would have occurred even in the absence of government intervention.