Black Occupational Change and Education
A study of census data shows that differences in the occupational distribution of the male and nonwhite male labor force in the United States have declined slightly between 1950 and 1970, both overall and within educational groups. However, differences in level of schooling or test achievement between whites and nonwhites cannot explain the underrepresentation of nonwhites in managerial, sales, and skilled manual occupations. The proportionate representation of nonwhites in occupations, instead, is a function of the income of the occupation relative to its educational prerequisites. Equal recruitment of educationally qualified nonwhites into skilled crafts and managerial jobs would significantly upgrade the occupational and income status of about fifteen percent of the nonwhite male labor force.
Recent Trends in the Occupational Mobility of Negroes, 1930–1960: An Intracohort Analysis
An intracohort analysis of occupational trends produced more consistent results than did conventional approaches to the study of labor force change. There was a trend of convergence between the occupational distributions of white and Negro males from 1930 to 1940 and, especially, from 1940 to 1950, which did not hold, however, during the fifties. Figures for the South showed a trend of convergence similar to that of the country as a whole during the 1940's, but, in contrast to popular opinlion, the Negro lost notable occupational ground in the South during the fifties. The factor of education was found to be of special importance for the Negro's mobility dutring periods of sutbstantial occupational change. R ecent trends in the occupational distribution of Negroes in the labor force of the United States have been analyzed with contradictory results by several wellknown social scientists. There are, to begin with, the static, cross-sectional comparisons by Myrdall and Taeuber and Taeuber.2 Myrdal concluded that Negroes "usually fail to improve their opportunities by staying in school longer." But Taeuber and Taeuber found, on the other hand, that "there are close associations between levels of education and occupational concentrations," although the "educational levels of nonwhite men in specific occupations are somewhat below those of all men in the same education." Important trend analyses more recently were made by Bogue3 and Miller.4 Bogue suggested that while the occupational differential between whites and nonwhites "is still very large, very substantial changes have been made" since 1940. Miller conversely concluded that "the relative occupational status of nonwhites has not changed appreciably" since 1940. One contribution of the present report -aside from its attempt to illuminate specific trends in the occupational distribution of Negroes, with special reference to the factor of education-is its deemonstration that conventional analytical approaches can produce these (livergent results.
Police and Political Violence in the 1960s and 1970s: Germany and Italy in a Comparative Perspective
Notwithstanding the significant differences between the German and Italian police models (federal and civil vs. centralised and militarised), in both countries the confrontation with the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound impact on police conceptions and public order strategies. Police forces in some German federal states (West Berlin) followed a hard line until the late 1960s, while in others (Munich, Hamburg) reforms to the Weimar-centred police intervention tactics took place beginning in the early to mid-1960s. In Italy, traditional police conceptions and strategies remained largely unchanged and re-emerged in 1968. Here, a movement from within the police led to the demilitarisation and unionisation of the state police in 1981. In both countries, fighting left-wing terrorism in the 1970s stimulated technical modernisation and enhanced the centralisation of the police. In critical response to police tactics, in the late 1970s Germany police matters were increasingly perceived as a concern not only of the state but of civil society—even if policing remained a highly contested terrain. In Italy, such matters largely remained state concerns in which only politicians and internal security specialists were entitled to intervene.