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The Suppression Hypothesis Reconsidered: Competition Between Blacks and White Immigrants in the Retail Trade in Large Northern Cities, 1910–1930
Author(s) -
BOYD ROBERT L.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2011.00816.x
Subject(s) - immigration , white (mutation) , competition (biology) , retail trade , census , ethnic group , entrepreneurship , demographic economics , geography , economics , demography , political science , sociology , archaeology , law , population , commerce , ecology , biochemistry , chemistry , biology , gene
A bstract Past studies have dismissed the claim that retail enterprise among blacks in the urban North during the early 20 th century was suppressed by competition from white immigrant merchants. The present investigation reconsiders the suppression hypothesis, applying the concepts of “niche overlap” and “competitive exclusion” from the literature on ethnic competition. An analysis of Census data on large northern cities offers some support for the hypothesis. The level of retail entrepreneurship of black men was negatively associated with that of white immigrant men in 1910 and 1920, implying that black retail enterprise at these time‐points was discouraged by the presence of white immigrant merchants. These negative associations, though, were only moderately significant in a substantive sense, and there was no evidence that a reduction of white immigrant merchants would have produced substantial gains for blacks in the retail trade, as many black entrepreneurs and activists at the time had claimed.