“Enobong Hannah Branch and Caroline Hanley have written an insightful book that documents just how fragile the American Dream is and always has been for Black workers. Anyone who wants to understand the complex, nuanced relationship between race, gender, and economic insecurity needs to pick up Work in Black and White immediately.”
—ADIA WINGFIELD, vice dean of faculty development and diversity, professor of sociology, Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

“Work in Black and White deftly weaves Black and White workers’ sense making of their labor market insecurities with clear historical and demographic analyses. ‘Stories have the power to make inequality legitimate,’ the authors write and go on to document the commonalities and divergence in stories told by educated men and women. While Black and White workers share aspirations for security, they part ways on how to understand the barriers to achieving it. Black workers recognize continuities in racism and White nepotism but also tend to believe they have some control over their own futures. Whites misperceive their precarity as a loss of racial privilege, while being blind to their advantaged reliance on White networks to get and keep jobs. Both groups embrace myths around hard work, education, and meritocracy and so are unable to imagine, much less generate, a political agenda to deal with the profound structural weaknesses of the U.S. economy. Read this book.”
— DONALD TOMASKOVIC-DEVEY, professor of sociology and director, Center for Employment Equity, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Work in Black and White reminds us that leaving school is just the beginning of the struggle for economic security. Many workers experience recessions as new threats and recoveries as challenges to their past accomplishments. And, of course, nothing works the same for women and men or Blacks and Whites. Enobong Hannah Branch and Caroline Hanley build a case for employment policy that goes beyond credentials and self-reliance; America needs to reset the imbalance between workers and employers.”
—MICHAEL HOUT, professor of sociology and director, Center for Advanced Social Science Research, New York University

The ability to achieve economic security through hard work is a central tenet of the American Dream, but significant shifts in today’s economy have fractured this connection. While economic insecurity has always been a reality for some Americans, Black Americans have historically long experienced worse economic outcomes than Whites. In Work in Black and White, sociologists Enobong Hannah Branch and Caroline Hanley draw on interviews with 79 middle-aged Black and White Americans to explore how their attitudes and perceptions of success are influenced by the stories American culture has told about the American Dream – and about who should have access to it and who should not.

Branch and Hanley find that Black and White workers draw on racially distinct histories to make sense of today’s rising economic insecurity. White Americans have grown increasingly pessimistic and feel that the American Dream is now out of reach, mourning the loss of a sense of economic security which they took for granted. But Black Americans tend to negotiate their present insecurity with more optimism, since they cannot mourn something they never had. All educated workers bemoaned the fact that their credentials no longer guarantee job security, but Black workers lamented the reality that even with an education, racial inequality continues to block access to good jobs for many.

The authors interject a provocative observation into the ongoing debate over opportunity, security, and the American Dream: Among policymakers and the public alike, Americans talk too much about education. The ways people navigate insecurity, inequality, and uncertainty rests on more than educational attainment. The authors call for a public policy that ensures dignity in working conditions and pay while accounting for the legacies of historical inequality.

Americans want the game of life to be fair. While the survey respondents expressed common ground on the ideal of meritocracy, opinions about to achieve economic security for all diverge along racial lines, with the recognition – or not – of differences in current and past access to opportunity in America.

Work in Black and White is a call to action for meaningful policies to make the premise of the American Dream a reality.

ENOBONG HANNAH BRANCH is Senior Vice President for Equity and Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University

CAROLINE HANLEY is Associate Professor of Sociology, William & Mary

This 1925 pamphlet, published by the Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, gathers suggestions for organizing May Day festivals. An appendix of May Day songs, speeches, and games is included.

Elizabeth Burchenal was inspector of athletics for girls in New York public schools.

This book examines the Work Projects Administration, previously known as the Work Progress Administration, as well as other national relief policies. The WPA was the name applied to the federally operated and financed program inaugurated in the summer of 1935 in which as many as fifty federal agencies cooperated in providing jobs for workers meeting prescribed conditions of eligibility.

Donald S. Howard was assistant director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.

A survey of amateur and community theatrical productions and activity in the early twentieth century, in particular dramatics for children through public and private schools, playground and community centers, and various voluntary organizations. With a selected bibliography for amateur workers in drama.

Clarence Arthur Perry was the author of Wider Use of the School Plant, Housing for the Machine Age, and The Rebuilding of Blighted Areas.

The final volume of the Small Loan Series of the Russell Sage Foundation, this 1935 book is a summary of previous publications of the series and the foundation of an independent study related to regulation of small loans. The historical background of lending, the beginning of the small loan business, character and technique of unregulated lending, small loan legislation, characteristics of borrows, and the question of the maximum rate of charge are discussed.

Louis N. Robinson was professor of economics at Swarthmore College. Rolf Nugent was director of the Department of Remedial Loans at the Russell Sage Foundation.

This is the first of a series of volumes dealing with the changing pattern of men’s aspirations for their society during a long and critical period in the history of western Europe. The present volume is an essay commenting on the subject and presenting conclusions drawn from a considerable mass of available evidence. Topics include the decline of the Middle Ages and the emergency of endemic poverty in the sixteenth century, the gradual assumption of national responsibility for the poor, the evolution of the charitable trust, the literature of exhortation, and the changing structure of class aspirations.

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan was president of Radcliffe College and professor of history at Harvard University.