An important change occurred in African American family structure during the era of racialized managerial capitalism: a major increase in the fraction of men and women in the 20s and 30s who were never-married. A fall in marriage-eligible men is a major factor responsible for this change. As per the Darity-Myers index of African American male marginalization, there will be an increase in the fraction of marriage-eligible men (and, therefore, increased marriage) with an increase in their earnings and employment, reducing premature deaths and disability, increasing college enrollment, reducing contact with the criminal legal system and reducing incentives for criminal behavior, and reducing premarital births and dissolution of unions when children are present. This perspective suggests that it is changes in economic well-being that cause changes in family structure, not the reverse. Family functioning is different from family structure. The empirical data suggests that, on average, African American families have strong family functioning.

There are racial differences in treatment by police. As the percent minority increases within a jurisdiction, racial threat effects cause more intense policing against Blacks and Latinx. In response, racial and ethnic minorities use the political process to increase own-group representation and better treatment by police. Police respond to Black protests against abuse of authority with more aggressive policing. There are backlash (more shootings) and diversity (fewer shootings) effects by police in response to affirmative action lawsuits forcing the agency to hire more ethnic and racial minority police. Abuse of force increases when: an officer’s peer has been injured on the job, officers know the race of a civilian prior to interaction, White officers interact with Black citizens, and White officers are dispatched to a Black neighborhood. Police abuse of force has negative academic and behavioral effects on Black and Latinx youth. Mass incarceration has deleterious effects on Black families: reducing the probabilities of marriage and attending college and increasing racial inequality and the probability a child is born to an unmarried mother. Hate crimes are instrumental actions, increasing with racial economic competition. Increases in hate crimes increase racialization among the targeted social group.

Africans were commodities during chattel capitalism, producing that was appropriated by Whites. This was instrumental discrimination: racially differential treatment because it was profitable. Chattel capitalism was ended by government policy, during the US civil war. White control of Black citizenship was the core element of structural racism during servitude capitalism. Instrumental discrimination included convict leasing, debt peonage, sharecropping, and the chain gang: policies that held down black wages and wealth accumulation, reduced public expenditure on services to the African American community, and public infrastructure that transferred wealth from Blacks to Whites. Lynching was used to enforce racial identity norms. Labor market discrimination increased during the Nadir, even as Blacks closed the skills gap with Whites. Black self-help was also expressed in The Great Migration and Urbanization (1914–1965). African American self-help, President Roosevelt’s New Deal, World War II era changes in federal hiring and the utilization of Black troops, and President Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to racialized managerial capitalism. Thereafter, exclusion is expressed as differential socioeconomic opportunities due to racial wealth disparity and identity norms governing access to resources, especially managerial power, along with relatively greater injustice in the criminal legal system and greater exposure to hate crimes.

African American family income is 63 percent of White family income. African American family wealth is 4–14 percent of White family wealth. African American women and men earn 84 percent and 68 percent, respectively, of the weekly wages earned by White women and men; both ratios are lower than during the mid-1970s. It is a multi-decade truism that the African American unemployment rate is twice the White unemployment rate.

The recessions of 1974–1975, 1981–1982, and 2007–2009 were impediments to African American relative and absolute progress after the end of servitude capitalism. In the Non-South, median African American family income stagnated and declined during 1967–2018, and the poverty rate increased during 1967–2018, especially during 1967–1989. Within the South, median African American family income rose during 1967–2018, though median income stagnated during 1974–2000, and the poverty rate declined from 36 percent to 21 percent during 1967–2018, even if there was stagnation during 1974–1989.

Structural racism requires racialized economic agents. Racial identities are a strategically determined social norm, designed for governing differential access to resources, especially wealth, power, and information, as well as protection from other-group antagonism. When applied to the labor market, the differential power of racial groups means that racial identity is a sorting mechanism, such that persons of otherwise equal productive capacity will have racially differential access to employment, compensation, promotion, training, and the probability of layoff according to the manager–worker identity match. Racial identity norms evolve from social interactions between and among persons of alternative ancestral groups. Within these interactions persons select strategies that strengthen or weaken racial identity norms. These social interactions increase the productivity of persons if they are mutually altruistic. Mutually antagonistic social interactions reduce each person’s productivity. Racialization is an ongoing process of social and economic evolution. Self-identification and labeling conventions are social norms that emerge to distinguish social groups. Both actual and perceived skin shade and other physical differences are imprecise and subjective.

Experimental data, observational data, and analyses using automatic association data show that the manager–worker racial identity match influences hiring, pay, and access to managerial resources. Explanations of racial inequality in labor market outcomes depend on the wage–productivity relationship. The manager–worker racial identity match may affect productivity and wages in two ways: managers may use higher pay and better promotion opportunities to raises the productivity and wages of own-group workers; and, managers provide time, assistance, or other resources to own group workers and thereby increase their productivity, employment stability, and opportunities for promotion. Stratification economists link persistent discrimination to job competition. Equally skilled workers may receive different pay for doing the same work because they are employed at firms that are differentiated by the capacity to pay and by the capacity of workers to make firms pay. Equally skilled workers who perform the same job at firms with less competitive characteristics, or who are part of a workforce with lower bargaining power, will receive lower pay.

Similar to changes that occurred during the Nadir, for the decades since the 1973–1975 recession, African American – White wage and family income inequality has remained stagnant, despite unambiguous progress in the average quantity and quality of African American education relative to White Americans. This progress was due do African American self-help, school desegregation, and increase in the years of free education. But, the Black–White college degree gap has increased since the demise of Jim Crow; this increase is explained by racial wealth differences.

The labor market progress of African Americans men and women has been concentrated in the South: 1974–1989 was a period of weekly wage decline for males, especially African Americans. For men and women, racial wage and employment inequality increased consistently during 1974–1989 and 2008–2019.

Structural racism arose with European exploration, enslavement and colonization of Africans, triangular trade, and the historical development of capitalism as a world system. Structural racism consists of public policies and institutional practices with persistently racially disparate outcomes, cultural representations that continuously encourage invidious comparisons across racial groups, and norms of social interactions that encourage the reproduction of racialized social identities. Structural racism then is distinct from personal racial prejudice, that is, racially biased decisions, and from personal racial bigotry, that is, racially hostile actions or values based on irrational opposition towards those perceived as different. Structural racism allows “privileges associated with ‘Whiteness’ and disadvantages associated with ‘color’ to endure and adapt over time. … (Aspen Institute, 2004).” In addition to the formation of racial identity as a social norm, wealth inequality, involuntary unemployment, and the exploitation of labor are economic mechanisms that create the conditions for permanent structural racism. Racial differences in wealth, initially created by chattel and servitude capitalisms, reproduce racial disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes. These disparities embed a disproportionately large fraction of Whites in positions of power and authority within hiring institutions.

The mean African American family wealth is 6–8 percent of mean White family wealth. About 1 of every 3 African American families are bankrupt. Both numbers were unchanged during 1984–2017. The African American savings rate is at least as high as the White savings rate for families with the same level of earnings (income). Racial differences in inheritances and in vivo transfers explain the greatest portion of racial wealth disparity.