The functions of indicators to measure fullness of participation of minorities in American society can best be understood by relating them to strategic junctures in the socioeconomic life cycle. Data for Negroes, in particular, reveal the operation of two types of handicaps—those common to all members of the society subject to disadvantages of back ground or misfortune, and those specific to minority status. To distinguish between them, and thus to measure progress in reducing discrimination, requires not only comprehensive time series but also methods and models suited to the analysis of causal sequences. Despite the growing fund of valuable indi cators of the status of "nonwhite" Americans, a number of statistical hazards must be circumve...