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Four Corners: African American salary disparity, 1968

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David Dinkins walks up stairs
Four Corners: African American salary disparity, 1968

SUBJECTS:  Civics and Citizenship, History

YEARS:  9–10


How does it feel to be paid less than another person doing the same job, because of the colour of your skin?

During the 1960s, this was the plight of many professional African Americans who were not paid equally for doing the same work as their white counterparts.

Listen to David Dinkins, a New York lawyer, share his experiences.


Things to think about

  1. 1.How might the wage you earn be seen as a measure of the importance of your work? What do you think the term 'black power' might mean?
  2. 2.In what ways is lawyer David Dinkins worse off than his white American counterparts? How does he explain this disparity (inequality)? In what way does the situation with commissions from housing transfers (something that David Dinkins' firm deals with on a regular basis) suggest that there was widespread inequality at this time?
  3. 3.In the 1960s affirmative action programs for employment and education were considered the best way to achieve equal opportunity. Have these programs improved opportunities for African American lawyers in the USA today? At the time African Americans were demanding that the number of African American professionals should match their representation of the population (12 per cent in the 1960s). Has this been achieved today?
  4. 4.View other clips relating to the African American experience in the 1960s. In what ways was life similar and different for African American's in different economic circumstances? How did their experience of the 1960s differ to that of white Americans at the time? Research how the name used to describe African Americans has changed over time. How and why did this happen?



Date of broadcast: 19 Oct 1968


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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