jobs in the same blue-collar labor market in the early 1990s.

After seriously examining the educational performances, work ethics, and values of the black men for unique deficiencies, her study reveals the greatest difference between young black and white men--access to the kinds of contacts that really help in the job search and entry process.

Personal Review: Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs (George Gund Foundation Book in African American Studies) by Deirdre A. Royster
In examining the seeming intractability of race and exclusionary tactics of white-male social networks, sociologist, Deirdre A. Royster asks and answers five fundamental questions that serve as a foundation for substantive discussions and analysis, among academic and non-academic audiences alike. Her questions are: (1) What happens when whites and blacks share a track placement, the same teachers, and the same classrooms? (2) Can desegregated institutions, in this post-civil rights era, provide equal foundations and assistance for blacks and whites? (3) Does the problem of embeddedness - in this case, historically segregated job networks - stifle the emergence of cross-racial linkage mechanisms and networks beyond schools? (4) Or does the post-Civil Rights era provide a new, color-blind labor market in which blacks show signs of workreadiness and achievement succeed on a par with white peers in terms of initial employment outcomes? (5) Finally, are black students, as the racial deficits theory suggests, lacking something that should make them less desirable as workers than their white peers? Of her questions, I find number one of considerable interest, for it illustrates what are some outcomes even when the playing field is leveled. In asking such questions Royster lays a foundation that challenges conventional wisdom as it relates to African Americans and their economic, political, and social achievements. Not unlike a 1992 Atlanta newspaper article by Leonard Steinhorn, wherein he writes, "rather than asking why blacks have achieved so little, it is more appropriate to ask how blacks achieved so much given the odds against them," Royster begins her work by examining the social networks of her African American and American Anglo male respondents; networks that allow for successful school-to-work transitions for white males, but which are lacking in African American bluecollar social circles. Historically, with fewer and fewer African American men in quality blue-collar jobs, coupled with the lack of social networks, young black males seeking entre into the sector were not met with a hand up, but a proverbial boot in the face. Examining the landscape of African American unemployment, coupled with massive deindustrialization in many American cities, I conclude that not only do African American males face seemingly entrenched "stigmatization" as articulated by Glenn Loury in his work "The Anatomy of Racial Inequality", they are also victims of a mistaken belief among white males that if an African American male has a particular job the Anglo male