Through the success of the civil rights movement and affirmative action, African Americans have become an integral part of the workforce. Blatant displays of racism such as racial slurs, demeaning comments and segregation no longer occur in the workplace. In fact, some African American executives have succeeded in moving steadily towards the upper echelons of major corporations. However, these images of progress belie the fact that throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the wage gap between whites and African Americans has grown increasingly wider, even when the educational differences are factored into the analysis (Tilly 5; Cancio, Evans and Maume 554-6). Even though African Americans constitute about 12 percent of the U.S. population, only five percent of African Americans acquired executive and managerial positions and 0.6 percent obtained senior executive positions in 1996, according to the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission (Brief et al. 60; Hayes 107).
Many research studies have indicated that whites are treated better on the job than African Americans in many areas. First, African Americans are paid less than their white counterparts at all levels of the work hierarchy, regardless of the qualifications. According to U.S. Census Bureau, the real income of white families increased by nine percent from 1979 and 1993 while the real income of African American families stayed the same during this period (Brief et al. 60). Similarly, the findings of the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission reveal that African American men in management positions earn 79 percent of their white counterparts' wages and the African American women in the same positions earn 60 percent of the wages of their white male counterparts (Hayes 111).
Second, African Americans usually occupy low-level positions of organizational hierarchies, thus limiting their potential for career advancement (Brief et al. 60). At the same time, highly qualified African Americans encou...