Prime Member Exclusive Offer
3 months free
$0.00
  • For a limited time, get Audible Premium Plus free for 3 months.
  • You'll receive 1 credit a month to pick ANY title from our entire premium selection to keep forever (you'll use your first credit now).
  • You'll also get UNLIMITED listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
  • After 3 months, $14.95/mo. Cancel online anytime.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
List Price: $19.95
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Roy Beck (Author, Narrator, Publisher)
See all formats and editions

One hundred fifty years after the end of slavery and nearly 60 years after the passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, average Black household wealth in the 21st century remains a fraction of the median assets of other racial, ethnic, and immigrant populations.

There are many reasons, but this book is about one: two centuries of governmental encouragement of periodic sustained surges in immigration.

Governmental policies and actions have enabled employers to depress Black wages and to avoid hiring African Americans altogether.

Here is a grand sweep of the little-told stories of the struggles of freed slaves and their descendants to climb job ladders in the eras of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Barbara Jordan, and other African American leaders who advocated for tight labor migration policies. It is a history of bitter disappointments and, occasionally, of great hope:

  • Setback: the first European immigration surge after 1820 and the ensuing, sometimes violent, labor competition
  • Hope: the post-Civil War opening of the "golden door" to Northern and Western jobs
  • Setback: the Ellis Island-era great wave of immigration
  • Hope: Major reductions in immigration in the mid-20th century creates a labor demand among Northern and Western industrialists so great that they aggressively recruited descendants of slavery and precipitated the Great Migration of Black Southerners
  • Setback: In 1965, Congress accidentally restarts mass immigration

Looking to the future, the author finds in the past assurance that any immigration policy that helps move more Black workers into the labor force and increases their wealth accumulation will also assist struggling Hispanics and other populations of recent immigration.

Previous slide of product details
  1. Listening Length
    7 hours and 9 minutes
  2. Author
    Roy Beck
  3. Narrator
    Roy Beck
  4. Audible release date
    November 22, 2021
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Roy Beck
  7. ASIN
    B09MDF5K6C
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
Next slide of product details
  Report an issue with this product or seller

Product details

Listening Length 7 hours and 9 minutes
Author Roy Beck
Narrator Roy Beck
Audible.com Release Date November 22, 2021
Publisher Roy Beck
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B09MDF5K6C
Best Sellers Rank #161,961 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#122 in Emigration & Immigration Studies (Audible Books & Originals)
#122 in Immigration Policy
#537 in Black & African American History (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
153 global ratings
Right to Work
5 out of 5 stars
Right to Work
Correlates immigration policies to Black employment advancement or the hinderance there of: well documented and explained. Support American workers via fair, regulated, and enforced immigration laws indeed. Godspeed Roy Beck and NumbersUSA.
Hide
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

Clyde Powell
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2024
Verified Purchase
Good read!
Thanks
Helpful
 Report
David C. Holzman
5.0 out of 5 stars The best of the immigration books
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2021
Verified Purchase
This book will probably do far more than any other book on immigration to convince doubters that mass immigration needs to end. It's a brilliant, easily digestible presentation that gives a succinct overview within the intro and first chapter of how from the early 1800s to the present, time after time, mass immigration has resulted in African Americans seeing their wages reduced, and losing jobs to immigrants during periods of high immigration (relative to America's population within each time period.

Footnoted quotes from people ranging from Frederick Douglass to eminent economic historians:

"Jeffrey Williamson and Peter Lindert's macroeconomic history shows that between 1816 and 1856, the American Northeast was transformed from the "Jeffersonian ideal" to a society more typical of under-developed countries with marked income inequality and very low wags for laborers," to the detriment of both free Blacks and immigrants, due to mass immigration.

One of the beauties of the book is showing that this has happened repeatedly, making it much harder for proponents of mass immigration to argue that this is not what's maintaining the income and wealth gap in wealth between African Americans and Whites (Blacks have 6%(!!!) the wealth of Whites currently).

And author Roy Beck quotes Black leaders, from each of the multiple eras of mass immigration, starting with Frederick Douglass, on how mass immigration is resulting in Black wages dropping, and AFrican Americans losing jobs.

Beck notes that currently, there is an ethical choice being made by many on the left that impoverished denizens of low income countries are more deserving than the descendants of American Black slaves. I would guess that most people making this choice are ignorant of how TOO MUCH immigration has pushed Blacks back down after they'd made progress during periods of low immigration, such as the post Civil War era and the post WWII era (and a handful of other such eras).

That ethical choice may be helping the immigrants, but Beck points out that it is harming the countries they are leaving by enticing away those people who would be most likely to lead the changing of conditions in these home countries for the better.

I'm going to be giving a copy to my US Rep at the next town hall meeting, and dropping one off at my Senator's door (who lives within six miles of me), and giving copies to my high school. That's how effective I think this book will be.
44 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Dave Gorak
5.0 out of 5 stars African Americans abandoned by Congress, the media and Black "leaders"
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2022
Verified Purchase
The farther I got into this detail-rich book that focuses on what can only be called a festering national disgrace, the angrier I became.

Among the most jarring questions the author asks is, "Are we as a nation content to have an earnings gap that is no better than five years after the end of the Civil War?

Why have the nation's Black "leaders," e.g. the NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton remained silent about our immigration policy that hurts most the very people they profess to care about? Where are the voices of prominent Black journalists like Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune) and Leonard Pitts Jr. (Miami Herald), both Pulitzer Prize winners?

Especially troubling is the fact that Congress during the past several decades has repeatedly ignored the recommendations of immigration reform commissions, most notably the one in the early 1990s chaired by the late Barbara Jordan, that called for reduced levels of immigration that would have helped disadvantaged Blacks and others to enter the economic mainstream. Jordan called for an immigration policy that puts the national interest first, but today's annual legal immigration level of 1.2 million people, plus the many temporary work visas issued each year, do nothing to help struggling Black Americans get their feet on what the author calls the "first rung of the economic ladder" that leads to a middle-class lifestyle.
22 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Deena A Flinchum
5.0 out of 5 stars Confirmation - The law of supply and demand is still in effect!
Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2021
Verified Purchase
What a refreshing concept: The Econ 101 Law of Supply and Demand still prevails in labor as well as commodities. Roy Beck has cut through the smoke and mirrors generated by both the right and left to show that numbers count. Flooding the market with cheap foreign labor undermines the wages of the US workers that this labor competes with. In the case of lower skilled, less educated workers, Black workers have borne the costs disproportionally both in the past and now.

It is all well and good to champion civil rights; but until the US comes to the realization that forcing unskilled workers - whatever their race - to compete with desperate foreign workers, many in the US illegally, is a recipe for wider inequality and poverty, we will make little progress in bringing Black workers into the mainstream in wages and wealth. Beck points this out in detail.

Until we are ready to 'cast (our) buckets down here', as advised by Booker T Washington, we will find ourselves being more divided than ever. Kind words and good intentions are merely virtue signaling unless we are willing to enforce our immigration laws and restrict massive legal immigration and end illegal immigration altogether and to do it sooner rather than later.
22 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Karen I. Shragg
5.0 out of 5 stars A book destined to become a classic
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
I was profoundly enlightened by this finely written book and I thought I knew this issue so well! It's a book destined to become an essential read and hopefully a text book for true historians and those truly interested in a more egalitarian society. Beck has done an outstanding job of pointing out the real way forward towards a more fair treatment of our African American brothers and sisters, and that is prioritizing them in the work place rather than allowing employers to hire a cheaper labor force to replace them. Rather than seeing those who wish for tighter immigration laws as prejudiced, Beck makes it clear that flooding the country with periodic surges of immigration has allowed for the continued discrimination of African Americans. With a compassionate look at immigrants, he places the blame for our discriminatory policies squarely on an out of touch Congress and the selfishness of industrial boardrooms.This book will forever change the way you look at the US, its history and the sabotage of America which is baked into our immigration policies. Stop whatever you are now reading and pick up this masterpiece.
19 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report