Blacks May Suffer Less From Discriminations Than From Whites Helping Friends, Relations

Personal networks matter

There's nothing illegal about giving a hand to a friend or family member who's looking for a job. But when whites do it for other whites, blacks get stuck on the outside looking in. Most blacks still lack the networks to boost them into the kind of good jobs that whites take for granted.

That, in a nutshell, is the conclusion of a forthcoming (April 2013) book called The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism. It's by Nancy DiTomaso, a professor of organization management at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Today DiTomaso spoke on a conference call with reporters that was sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation, the book's publisher. Three other experts joined her.

Nearly half a century after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, and gender, straight-out racism has become rare in the U.S., DiTomaso says in American Non-Dilemma.