ABSTRACT
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States; they will owe their origin, not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions. This chapter reviews on the mainstream economic analysis, and examines the less well-developed class perspective. It explores the model of stratification which emerges from the Marxian paradigm and offers an alternative to concepts of class which merely aggregate individuals having certain common cultural characteristics. Discrimination involves denial of equal access to markets and paying persons less than the value of their marginal product simply because of their membership in some pariah group. The neo-classical model assumes workers are paid the value of their marginal product. The chapter discusses the job characteristics of the major strata groups in US society, as is the relationship between job characteristics and personal attributes of workers at different segments of the labor market.
