Twenty-second International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The Black-White income gap in the United States has been well-documented and persists despite decades of pay equity efforts. Two of the main driving forces for this inequity are structural issues and racial biases. Structural factors lead to differential access to cultural capital developed through life experiences. Such disparities can lead to the formation of biases, which may then lead to differential outcomes in the workplace. This paper investigates differences in labor market outcomes of monoracial Black individuals and monoracial White individuals by introducing another group of comparison: biracial employees (e.g., individuals with one Black parent and one White parent). The rising population of biracial-identifying individuals in the United States presents new opportunities to further our understanding of current and future racial dynamics. Having parents of different races and/or identifying with multiple races could affect job market outcomes due to varying cultural capital. Of particular interest to this study are society’s perceptions of Black, White, and Black-White biracial individuals, the resources afforded to each group, and how these perceptions and resources affect each group’s starting salaries and salaries over time. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, this paper find that Black and Biracial individuals receive similar, yet lower starting wages than White individuals. However, the rate of growth for Black-White biracial employees’ income increases at a higher rate than either other group, leading them to earn incomes more similar to White employees.