![handle is hein.journals/injlaseq8 and id is 1 raw text is:
0 Brother Where Art Thou?
The Struggles of African American Men in the
Global Economy of the Information Age
Kenneth Glenn Dau-Schmidt, JD, PhD*
INTRODUCTION
In the late 1980s, William Wilson first argued that widespread economic
transitions had altered the socioeconomic structure of American inner cities to the
detriment of African Americans.1 Wilson identified declines in manufacturing work
and its replacement with poorly compensated service-sector work as driving racial
segregation and leaving African Americans jobless, poor, and alienated from
American society.2 These transitions were particularly problematic for African
American men because manufacturing work was their primary gateway to middle-
class employment, while African American women had already focused more on
service work.3
Since the initial exposition of Wilson's theory of deindustrialization, Wilson's
framework of transition, disadvantage, and alienation has proven true with a
vengeance for working-class African American men. The decline in manufacturing
jobs since the 1980s has left African American men without their traditional
gateway to the middle-class and has accelerated the decline of American unions
that benefited those men.4 As the economy transitioned from manufacturing to
service jobs, African American men's disadvantages in education have left them at a
loss in competing for the high-wage jobs that remain.5 At the same time that
deindustrialization was sweeping the U.S. economy, the nation also waged a War
on Drugs, largely at the expense of the same inner-city African American men who
then suffered high rates of imprisonment with long mandatory sentences even for
Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Indiana University - Bloomington,
Maurer School of Law, kdauschm@indiana.edu. I would like to dedicate this article to the proud African
American men I have been honored to call my good friends: Steve Braunginn, Paul Higginbotham, Earl
Singleton, Kevin Brown, Frank Motley, and Tim Lovelace.
1 See WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED: THE INNER CITY, THE UNDERCLASS, AND PUBLIC
POLICY, vii-xi (1987) [hereinafter WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED]; WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, WHEN
WORK DISAPPEARS: THE WORLD OF THE NEW URBAN POOR (Alfred A. Knopf ed., 1996) [hereinafter WILSON,
WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS].
2 See WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED, supra note 1, at 39-46, 100-104; WILSON, WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS,
supra note 1, at 29-31, 142, 144.
3 See WILSON, WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS, supra note 1, at 95-97, 105.
4 KENNETH G. DAu-SCHMIDT, MARTIN H. MALIN, ROBERTO L. CORRADA, CHRISTOPHER DAVID RUIZ CAMERON &
CATHERINE L. FISK, LABOR LAW IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORKPLACE 91, 93, 98 (3d ed. 2019); Michael B. Katz,
Mark J. Stern & Jamie T. Fader, The New African American Inequality, 92 J. AM. HIST. 75, 85-89 (2005).
5 Katz et al., supra note 4, at 94.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/injlaseq8&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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