Blacks and the Quest for Economic Equality: The Political Economy of Employment in Southern Communities in the United States

Appendixes

Municipal Employment We used multiple indicators, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore the changes in black city employment in the police, fire, recreation, and public works departments. Our assumption was that no single method of investigation seemed adequate and that a battery of research strategies, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, would provide greater confidence in our ultimate conclusions. To chart African American jobholding from 1960 to 2000, we relied on city records, newspaper reports, and interviews with department heads every fifth year from 1975 to 2000. To assess current employment issues, we relied heavily on in-depth interviews with a sample of city employees. These interviewees were selected randomly from a list of departmental workers, with an oversampling of black employees and of workers with more than a brief tenure in the department. The authors and well-trained graduate students carried out these interviews between May 2000 and September 2001. One hundred seventy municipal employees were interviewed; table A.1 details the numbers by department, race/ethnicity, and gender. With a letter of support from the mayor and the approval of our proposed interviews from each department head, we encountered almost no resistance to this research approach . Appendix B provides the questionnaire used in these interviews. Face-to-face, open-ended interviews with the promise of anonymity for respondents generated rich, detailed information about both public and private sector employment. The informal, conversational tone of the interviews helped to gain the involvement and interest of interviewees. The structure and tone of the interviews, which were held in a private setting, created an atmosphere in which respondents often spoke freely about sensitive issues such as race. A p p e n d i x A 178 h appendixes Focus Groups To gain insights on employment issues from workers in the private sector, we carried out focus groups in Lake City and Daytona Beach. Resources did not allow us to do this in every city, so we selected one Deep South and one New South community, where the black population was roughly equivalent to that in other southern cities (20–45 percent African American). In each city, we hired a labor consultant, usually from a job-training or employment agency, to recruit workers to participate in the focus groups. Participants were primarily selected from the kinds of businesses that we had surveyed, including retail stores, restaurants, industries, financial institutions, motels and hotels, and recreational establishments. Each participant received $25 in remuneration. Focus groups offer several advantages in addressing sensitive issues such as race. Unlike most surveys, focus groups allow participants to explain in detail not only what they think but also how and why they hold such beliefs. Focus groups also afford the opportunity for interaction among those involved, often creating a synergy that generates new perceptions. The result is a richness of information that adds much to our understanding of controversial topics (Krueger 1994). Community Respondents In addition to interview surveys of businesses and in-depth analyses of municipal departments, we interviewed citizens who were identified as well informed generally about issues of race and employment. Names of such citizens were chosen based on newspaper reports and those nominated by business and municipal leaders. Community respondents, 60 percent of whom were white and 40 percent black, averaged ten per city and consisted primartable a.1 Number of Municipal Department Employee Interviews by Race/Ethnicity and Gender Employee Groups Police Department Fire Department Recreation Department Public Works Department Black males 13 11 15 14 Black females 7 1 6 2 White females 9 9 11 7 White males 19 19 8 13 Hispanics 2 3 0 1 Total 50 43 40 37 appendixes h 179 ily of major business owners, high-level city officials, including council members , employment agency directors, heads of the Chamber of Commerce, the NAACP, and other black interest group leaders, and educators. Business Employment The questionnaire used with employers in the private sector was pretested in several businesses in a nearby community. Appendix C provides this questionnaire. OLS regressions and path analysis were used to test predictors of black employment. On the basis of literature review in chapter 3, we developed the hypothesized path model shown below (fig. A.1). CUSTOMERS LOCATE SIZE MANAGER % BLACK TYPE CULTURE KIND UNQUALIFIED METHODS TRAITS % BLAPP SUPPORTS AA % BLACK EMPLOYMENT figure a.1 Hypothesized Path Model: Explaining Black Employment [18.119.135.202] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...