Affirmative action is a term that initiates many debates in the United States. Citizens tend to be divided in views with respect to this issue. Many feel that racial and gender discriminations (among others) still exist and pose grave problems within the labor market. Others, however, believe that as America begins the new millennium, racial prejudice and other forms of discrimination are less salient within the occupational structure and therefore affirmative action is no longer necessary. Due to the theory advanced by William Wilson, I believe that the federal government should restructure affirmative action so that it is no longer applicable to the work force, however, areas such as universities and other institutions of that caliber should still be held to the policy of affirmative action.
             The theoretical framework advanced by Wilson in "The Declining Significance of Race" is that as America moved from the pre-industrial to the post industrial and now the modern era, minorities (specifically African Americans) are becoming more polarized, which brings with it a very thick stratification of social classes within the black community. This community changed from nearly all blacks in America being slaves to the present time where there exist the working class blacks and the middle or upper class blacks. This is due to blacks finally entering the job market during the industrial period and slowly becoming upwardly mobile. Wilson further argues that do to this mobility of blacks in their social class, race became less of an issue in entering the job market but rather that one's social class became the defining factor. This is further explained in the following exert,
             The recent Mobility patterns of blacks lend strong support to the view that economic class is clearly more important than race in predetermining job placement and occupational mobility. In the economic realm, then, the black experienc...