Do inner-city, African American males exhibit “bad attitudes” toward work

Many potential employers of inner-city African-American men believe that African-American men have poor work attitudes. The investigations reported here attempted to evaluate the veridicality of this assumption. The responses of African-American men who utilize a soup-kitchen were compared with college men on a variety of attitude measures, as well as on their reactions to a scenario about a man who worked for an unfair boss and quit in response. Generally, little support for the view that inner-city, African-Americans men have a predilection to presume prejudice or unfairness, or to render a favorable evaluation of quitting under unfair conditions, was found. According to-William Julius Wilson (1996; see also Kirschen-man & Neckerman, 1991, pp. 203-234), employers, regardless of their own race, often view inner-city, African-American men as having "bad attitudes " toward work. Although data attest that employers harbor the assumption of attitude problems amon