Minorities and the Process of Stratification

Abstract

Data concerning educational and occupational achievement, and the influence thereon of social and national origin, are presented for a 1962 sample of native American non-Negro males, ages 25-64, whose family heads had been pursuing a nonfarm occupation when the respondent was 16. There are substantial differences among national-origin groups with respect to both educational and occupational achievement. Allowance for inter-group differences in social origin, by partial regression techniques, reduces the range of difference with respect to educational achievement, and with respect to occupational achievement, by about one-third. The national-origin classification is much less important as an explanation of the variance among respondents with respect to their education and occupation than with respect to the education and occupation of their family heads. In this sense a melting-pot phenomenon obtains in America. Once equated with respect to starting point in the social structure and educational attainment, the occupational achievement of one national-origin group differs little from that of another. The experience of non-Negro minorities, as revealed by these data, would argue against the existence of pervasive discrimination on purely ethnic grounds. The notion of equal opportunity irrespective of national origin is a near reality, the outstanding exceptions being the over-achievement of Russian-Americans and the under-achievement of Latin-Americans. This finding contrasts sharply with the evidence, based on the same mode of analysis, of discrimination against the American Negro.