White Males Still Hold Most Top Executive Jobs

White males continue to hold more than half of all executive positions in California private industry and are paid as much as $30,000 more than women who hold similar positions, according to a new report by the Tomas Rivera Center, a national institute for policy studies at the Claremont Colleges.

The study found that white males hold more than 60% of all mid- to upper-level positions in California private industry. By contrast, the report found that African Americans hold 4.2% of such positions and Mexican Americans hold less than 2% of those jobs. Mexican Americans, which were broken out from Latinos in general because they make up most of the state’s Latinos, make up one-fourth of the state’s population.

White male managers earn an average of 60% more than white female managers and are paid twice what African American and Mexican American women earn at the same positions, the study found. African American and Mexican American men, on average, also make less than do white male men. The study found that Mexican American men made only 70% of what white males made in the manufacturing industry, for instance.

The study looked at a 5% sample of California residents taken from the 1990 U.S. Census in seven industries, including retail, transportation, wholesale, finance and manufacturing. The report runs counter to recent complaints that affirmative action is unfair, said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Center.

“Looking at these numbers . . . we’re hearing from around the state about the unfairness of affirmative action programs--it just doesn’t hold water,” Pachon said.

Pachon’s views are disputed by Joe Gelman, campaign manager of the proposed California civil rights initiative, which would eliminate gender, race, color, ethnicity and national origin as factors that can be considered in the public employment, public education and public contracting systems.

Gelman says the study has no bearing on the affirmative action debate.

“If purple men continue to make more, it’s irrelevant. The issue here is a question of opportunity, not equality of results,” Gelman said. “If they want equality of results, they can go to Cuba.”

Lourdes Arguelles, professor of education at the Claremont Graduate School, said: “This doesn’t surprise me at all, because the campaign against affirmative action is very much guided by powerful people in government and corporate America, and this is just one more instance where minorities are scapegoated for systemic failures.”

The Tomas Rivera Center is a national, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts research on issues that affect the Latino community in the United States.