Socio-economic Integration Research Articles

Baseball in Cuba

While futbol (soccer) has long been the favorite sport in most of Latin America, baseball holds sway in the circum‐Caribbean region in countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. It is perhaps surprising that revolutionary Cuba, with its strong anti‐American foreign policy, should continue to hold dear this sport that was born and nurtured in the United States. Yet Fidel Castro himself, who regularly issues anti‐Yankee attacks, is also proud of demonstrating his skill with the bat andglove. Eric Wagner gives us a valuable overview of the development of baseball on the island, Cuba's singular success in international competition and the game's role in contemporary Cuba. With this background and analysis, it is easy to see why the revolutionary government has not tampered with a sport that is so firmly rooted as a popular national pastime. Regarding baseball in Cuba after 1959, Wagner discusses how it has become an integral part of the new social system in factories, villages, towns, urban neighborhoods and schools. Competition is fierce on both the local and national levels because of its wide appeal among the popular classes, who brought baseball with them when they assumed power in 1959. It is likely to continue to play an essential role in the country's socioeconomic integration.

Racial Stratification and Socioeconomic Change in the American North and South

Recent change in the life-cycle processes of educational, occupational and earnings attainments is analyzed among black men native to the South, those native to the North, and black male migrants from the South to the North. Native northerners begin from relatively superior social origins and are better able to capitalize on these in the attainments of education and occupation than are either southern-born group. Between 1962 and 1973 the stratification experiences of the northern-born blacks rapidly converged with those of the white majority, so that by 1973 their system of stratificaion was more like that of whites than that of southern-born blacks. The processes of status allocation among the southern-born in 1973 were like those of northern natives in 1962. In this sense the integration of blacks into the majority stratification system began first and has proceeded furthest among blacks born in the North. Men living in the North, regardless of nativity, enjoy higher earnings than men living in the South. Migrants to the North earned about $400 more in 1972 than did comparable northern natives. This advantage is not accounted for by longer schooling or higher returns to education, occupation, or number of weeks worked, since the natives are equal or superior to the migrants in these factors. In all, changes over the recent decade have supported the internal differentiation of the black population, the development of more distinct socioeconomic strata, the greater stability of inequalities between generations of black men, and gains toward socioeconomic integration. These changes have been more characteristic of the North than of the South.

Open Enrollment and Fiscal Incentives

In the 1960s many large-city school systems adopted policies permitting students to transfer from their neighborhood schools to others they found more desirable, if the second school was not overcrowded. The adoption of these open-enrollment plans was motivated in part by the desire to eliminate racial segregation in the schools resulting from residential segregation and in part to allow students with special educational needs and interests to take advantage of specialized curricula offered only in certain schools.' While these programs did accomplish the second goal, they did not much alter patterns of segregation. Apparently, an effort that relies on voluntary integration little hope of success. In a 1973 survey of techniques used by urban schools, G. Foster concluded that open enrollment has never accounted for a significant amount of desegregation (1973). There been general skepticism among policymakers about the potential for accomplishing by voluntary means. Before there was even much evidence to indicate what its impact might be and before any efforts were made to significantly influence voluntary actions, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights expressed its skepticism in a delineation of six major limitations of such plans (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 1967). Yet the policy of open enrollment as a means to desegregate the schools still offers a handsome alternative to mandatory busing, which stirred such intense controversy and perhaps even increased racial tension; and its potential needs to be explored further. What mainly needs to be explored is whether some incentive program that heightens the attractiveness of a transfer plan can accomplish what not been accomplished by simply offering the option to transfer. In particular, it seems urgent to examine how selected fiscal incentives for open enrollment might help to achieve greater racial and socioeconomic integration.

Native American Urbanization and Socio-Economic Integration in the Southwestern United States

Comparison of settlement patterns on the San Carlos, Ft. Apache, Cocopah, Walapai, Havasupai and Kaibab Paiute Indian reservations reveals that lumbering, cattle husbandy and other business not only federal payrolls generate agency town nucleation and growth. The timing of federal protection of natural resources for Indian entrepreneurs to exploit has proved to be a crucial factor in urbanization. The formation of modern nations has involved varying degrees of political, social and economic integration of different, once autonomous ethnic groups. The United States obtained citizens by attracting voluntary immigrants from Europe, by granting citizenship to involuntary immigrants from Africa and their descendants in mid-nineteenth century, and by bestowing citizenship in 1924 upon surviving Native Americans conquered and enclaved on lands reserved for them. Granting them U.S. citizenship did not, however, in itself integrate Native Americans into the national economy and society. Such integration results from numerous mechanisms of cultural change. At the same time that the United States pursued a policy of domestic colonialism toward Native American peoples, it transformed itself from a rural farming country into an urban industrial nation. One measure of Native American socio-economic integration is, therefore, the degree of concurrent urbanization of this portion of the population. The 1960 and 1970 censuses show that Native American population has been rapidly urbanizing only at this relatively late period in United States history. The major process of Native American urbanization has been internal reservation-to-city migration. This recent migratory current raised the urban portion of the Native American populace from 27.8 percent in 1960 to 44.9 percent in 1970 (Wax 1971:37; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1972:281). Twenty-five U.S. cities in 155 ETHNOHISTORY 22/2 (Spring 1975) This content downloaded from 207.46.13.118 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 06:01:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 156 HENRY F. DOBYNS, RICHARD W. STOFFLE, and KRISTINE JONES OREGON IDAHO * IDAHO FALLS

National Integration and Insurgency in Venezuela: an Exercise in Causation

IN THE less developed nations guerrilla insurgency is an ubiquitous indicator of the lack of political stability. Several theories have been proposed to explain high incidence of insurgency within the Third World. A common theory which links insurgency with economic underdevelopment and traditional social structure coupled with a conspiratorial trigger fails to explain those nations experiencing insurgency which are relatively more developed than their insurgencyfree neighbors. Lucian Pye has suggested an alternative theory: insurgency as a consequence of the lack of national integration. We have tried to test this theory in a case study of one nation, Venezuela, which has experienced considerable guerrilla activity in the 1960's. Venezuela seems well-suited for such an investigation because it ranks higher on most indicators of socioeconomic development than other nations within the Third World and has been experiencing one of the highest rates of urbanization, considered by some to be the most significant measure of national integration. Socioeconomic integration in Venezuela is a recent phenomenon and largely due to the discovery, exploration, and expanded production of oil. Following the discovery of oil during the 1920's and 1930's, large population migrations began to result in the emergence of a maldistribution in literacy, income, and urbanization characteristics. However, as the oil industry has matured, economic growth has spread to other sectors of the economy with a resulting decrease in inequality in terms of urbanization and literacy on a state-by-state basis. The picture with regard to political integration is not nearly so optimistic. Kalman Silvert places Venezuela in the next to last group on his four-part scale of integration along with Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, and Peru. This group is characterized by super-ordinate groups split by value disagreement concerning the desirability of national values and integration, again in coexistence with large groups alienated for class and ethnic reasons.' Guerrilla activity has occurred in six states of Venezuela, mostly in the extreme mountainous areas: Anzoategui, Falcon, Lara, Portuguesa, Tachira, and Trujillo. Except for Tachira, these states are on the perimeter of the core area which, by and large, includes the most significant urban areas and economic productivity in Venezuela. Our method ranked each state in terms of various indicators of national integration (literacy, urbanization, internal migration, and voting) on a ten-part scale. The rankings were then compared with the states that have had serious guerrilla activity. Literacy has increased dramatically in Venezuela as a natural result of urbanization and deliberate government effort to eradicate illiteracy. In 1961, literacy of

The Negro in the American City: A Review

Abstract This paper presents a review and summary of recent research on the position of the Negro in the American city. It is emphasised that urban Negroes in the United States have a higher natural growth rate than Whites. In addition, Negroes in American cities are below White standards in their educational and socio-economic standards. Improvements are being made, but they are slow. One of the causes of this peculiar role of the urban Negro in the United States is his relatively recent rural-urban migration. Also responsible is a certain discriminatory behaviour of many Whites: Negroes are de facto confined to live in so-called “ghettos” or slums in the cores of cities; also the Negroes education and socio-economic integration often collides with the de facto “unequal opportunity” policy of many Whites.