[WS:] That is right on target. Patricia Roos, my professor at Rutgers who studied labor market segmentation, claimed that this process is at work in occupations with intense competition for jobs, e.g. by opening certain skilled occupations to women. In such situations, labor market segmentation develops for "skilled" and "less skilled" jobs, in which credentials played a crucial role. The fact that this segmentation coincided with conventional gender roles could lead to a mistaken conclusion that sexism was responsible. Roos found that it was competition for jobs rather than sexism that was at work there. The fact that some male workers she studied were sexist was largely irrelevant, because the process also operated without sexist attitudes. Credentials required for different positions set certain expectations for job applicants, as a result of which they tended to apply for certain positions and avoided applying for other. While this statistically coincided with gender, the purpose of the whole process was to reduce job competition rather than to "reproduce patriarchy" as some feminists claimed. Both men and women participated because they felt it worked to their advantage - for example women felt that competing with men put them at a disadvantage so they avoided to apply for positions that required credentials favoring men, such as length of work experience.
Another example: my wife tells me that vocational training for hair stylists in her school district requires knowledge of chemistry and biology, deemed "necessary" to preform these jobs. In other words, in order to be a barber you need to first be a chemist and a biologist - which is bullshit on its face. The real reason for these steep requirements is to create entry barriers to these vocational programs.
The conclusion from this diagnosis of the problem is that the right way to open economic opportunities is not to "fight sexism or racism" - but rather to reduce competition for jobs. Simple measures, such as shortening of the work week or public works program would travel a long way on this road.
Contrary to Marv's opinion - many credentials are unnecessary for effective job performance - they are put in place as artificial entry barriers to reduce competition. Reducing competition by other means - e.g. increasing demand for labor by shortening work week and public work opportunity would eliminate the need for these unnecessary credentials. Of course, the necessary credentials attesting to job-specific skills would still remain in place to some degree - although some of those skills could be taught on the job so they would not create undue entry barriers.
Of course, any serious attempt to reduce competition for jobs will be met with fierce resistance from owners and bosses, who use this competition as an effective means of labor control. The fierce resistance of French businessmen to the shortening of the work week there is a good illustration of that. The owners and bosses may even go "on strike" and reduce hiring to show that this measure is ineffective. However, in a long run the law of supply and demand will overcome their resistance.
In sum, shortening of the work week, public works and - in case of the US - opening of vocational and technical education aiming to develop job skills instead of general education required for college entry (which is less of a problem in other countries) - would do much more to put Blacks - and other disadvantaged groups - in good professional or semi professional jobs than "fighting racism" , which is tantamount to fighting windmills.
My suspicion, however, is that for many lefties and liberals this approach is DOA and they prefer to "fight racism and white supremacy" instead.
Based on my observations, many lefties and liberals tend to have a certain personality trait that needs guilt to feel good about oneself. This heightened sense of guilt also allows these folks to make a career by lecturing and admonishing others about their guilt. They are - in fact - secular preachers, just as Glen Beck and Co are secular preachers of the holly rollers and fire and brimstone variety. The "white supremacy" trope offers a perfect vehicle for guilt tripping - and these lefties and liberals defend that trope with the same zeal as religious believers defend their faith. The fact that "fighting racism" - or any other -ism - is pretty ineffective in changing material conditions on the ground is an advantage rather than disadvantage, as it allows more guilt tripping, more preaching, and more self flagellation for harboring wrong attitudes, not being ready to give up privilege, not fighting hard enough, and similar sin-babble straight from the religious martyrdom repertoire.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."