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I was born in 1960. I attended kindergarten in 1965. Half day and we had milk and cookies and a nap in school everyday. By first grade, if a student misbehaved, the teacher could use a wooden paddle to hit the student's buttocks in front of the entire class to show everyone what happens if someone misbehaves. We had special education classrooms for the stupid kids. (Yes, I was so labeled even though today I have three college degrees). Children walked up to a mile to school and home without any adult supervision. Children would ride their bicycles anywhere. I lived in the city and parents expected all children to come home when the street lights came on. If a teacher sent a note home for misbehavior, the parents sided with the teacher. Children had no rights. We had school clothes and play clothes. The good clothes were worn to school. The older or worn out clothes were changed into as soon as the student arrived home from school. No one interfered with how parents raised their children. Children had chores to do every day. The Vietnam War was on the evening news daily. There were protests constantly. My friends' older brothers were being drafted into the army. From the time I was five until I was thirteen, we were at war in Vietnam.Children were to be seen and not heard. There was the children's world and the adult world. Parents did not structure the children's lives like today. There were no play dates. Most mothers were stay at home moms raising the children. The second wave of feminism was getting started. The birth control pill came out in 1960 so more women were able to join the workforce.In 1969, we landed on the moon. Every television in my neighborhood was watching. It was July 20, 1969 and hot, everyone had their doors open. Central air conditioning not that common yet.The Charles Manson murders of Sharon Tate in the summer of 1969 was sensational news. I remember everyday, more bad news from California on the case. One day, the newsboy was delivering the newspaper and as he got off his bicycle, everyone stopped, in silence and watched him walk up the porch. We knew he had bad news, even at nine years old, I knew this was very bad.We also were on the Cold War. In elementary school we had regular drills In the event of nuclear war. We were taught to ‘duck and cover'. We had to get under our desks, during the drill.The 1960s were a very turbulent times. I do not believe there has been anything like them since.

I’ll offer a slightly different take: those jobs still exist, and in large numbers, but the requirements have changed.In the wake of WWII, the US was one of few industrialized nations that had been spared massive destruction. In addition, we had so built up our industrial base (power production, factories, mines, etc.) in the 1930s and during WWII that we had capacity. A world in need, mixed with capacity, led to huge growth in manufacturing and related industries. Profit margins on manufactured goods were high, and little automation existed (relative to today), so many of those jobs went to people who could operate anything from simple hand tools to complex machinery.Starting in the 1960s, that changed. The US industrial base aged, and became inefficient. Infrastructure investment dwindled. Other countries built their own industrial bases, and became competitors; since their infrastructure was newer, they could cut costs. US manufacturing began to be less competitive, and stupid business and government decisions meant that this less-competitive race to the bottom would accelerate. Meanwhile, cost of living rose. Wages stagnated.Fortunately, the Cold War and globalization set the US on an alternative path for growth. Rather than televisions and cars, we would sell information, using the growing STEM workforce that the NSF, Department of Education, and DoD had pushed for.So, good news and bad news. The good news is that the transformation worked, and the US is still the wealthiest country around. The bad news is that this wealth is not evenly distributed. Not remotely. To enter the information economy workforce, almost everyone needs a bachelor’s degree (not necessarily in STEM, though). For 30–40% of the US workforce, this is OK, but for 60–70%, it’s probably not obtainable.There are still good jobs for people without bachelor’s degrees. The problem is that there aren’t enough of them to go around. We have about 3 million people total in the building trades, and we graduate about 3.5 million new high students each year. The building trades could double, and that would still not mean that every high school students from even one year could have a job.There are other issues. Financialization. Stagnating wages for all workers, and rising incomes for owners. Drastically lowered corporate and wealth taxes, and drastic increases in regressive taxes. Real estate ownership in cities. However, those issues affect the meaning of an income, rather than its availability.

People in the UK are generally paid according to the job they do. Race, creed, colour, sex, disability, sexuality, and so on, none of these should have anything to do with it, and in most cases any such discrimination would be illegal.So any ethnicity pay gap will be to do with occupation, not skin colour. My well-educated neighbours of Pakistani origin, most of them either solicitors (lawyers) or accountants, are as well paid as their white British colleagues. However, they are mostly the second or third generation of their families to be living in this country, speak English as a native language, and went to school and university here.The first generation immigrants in their families came here with nothing, spoke almost no English, and took what low-status, low-paid work they could get and could do. They worked hard, and ensured that their children worked hard at school. It's what happens in immigrant communities.If I had moved, as a young woman, to a country where I didn't speak the language, especially if I had no recognisable qualifications or obvious skills, I would have expected to go through precisely the same process. Being black, white, brown or bright green would have nothing to do with it.The main cure for what you choose to describe as an ethnicity pay gap is time, coupled with education and training. New immigrants with poor English and few marketable skills don't earn much. And why should they — anywhere in the world where they are new arrivals and not easily assimilated into a workforce?Edit: Just as an afterthought, there was a little news item on the radio this morning, about a school in one of the poorest, most deprived parts of London; nearly half of all pupils qualify for free school meals, and most students are black or Asian. And in only the seventh year of its having a sixth form at all, 41 of its students have received offers of places at either Oxford or Cambridge. London state school secures 41 Oxbridge offersDon't be tempted to play the “race" card; it won't work as an excuse for underachievement.