>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/08/01 06:46PM >>>
The Becker position is that capitalists with a "taste" for discrimination have
to pay a premium for white only. So those who don't discriminate have lower
labor costs and higher profits.
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CB: To Becker: Capitalists who discriminate have a ready group of replacement workers
to put downward pressure on wages of the workers they have. Why would discriminating
raise the wages of their workers ? A famous case is Henry Ford delaying the union at
Ford because he had a concentrated reserve army of unemployed and underemployed in
Inkster , an all Black town next to Dearborn , and Black Bottom in Detroit.
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Competition should of course drive the
discriminating capitalists out of business.So in his theory, if we observe
persistent racial wage disparities, either there is not perfect competition or
the inequalities are not due to discrimination. So he either had to throw out
perfect competition or discrimination. In the face of evidence documenting over
100 years of racial wage disparities (that's the long run, Ian!) some turned to
models of imperfect competition (Arrow's and Phelps' 'statistical
discrimination' models, for example). Becker himself could not bear to throw out
perfect competition, so he dropped the assumption that blacks and whites are
equally productive and turned to 'human capital' theory--the disparities are not
due to discrimination but to differences in productivity, rooted in things like
education, skill, training, family background, job experience, etc.
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CB: Pretty gross theory, this Becker has. This is a cultural racist theory replacing
biological racist theories. This reminds of Moynihan and other liberal racist theories
which place origin of economic inequality between Blacks and whites in the Black
family, failing to see weaknesses in the Black family as caused by capitalist racism.
The error in the premise - racism hurts capitalist employers - has this liberal racist
result.
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This is
still a dominant paradigm,
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CB: Horrendous ! Somehow , I am not surprised. Liberal or paternalist racism is as
old as the conception of "The White Man's Burden". Oh you poor darkies. Let us fix
your families for you.
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but zillions of tests and studies and dissertations
etc. have never been able to eliminate the "unexplained residual"--there has
always remained some part of the wage differentials that cannot be explained by
human capital traits. Convergence of human capital has not led to convergence of
wage and unemployment rates. For some, this must be discrimination; for others,
it must be some unobservable trait influencing productivity not captured by the
other variables--such as "culture." "Culture as human capital." Here you have
Thomas Sowell and other Black neo-conservatives, and some 'liberal' authors as
well. And the genetic tradition has still not died, of course, and even some of
the human capital and culture theorists are really bordering on if not fully
crossed over into genetic explanations.
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CB: Somehow, I am not surprised. As an ethnologist, I am ashamed that the concept of
"culture" has been put to this reactionary purpose, but then it is such a squishy
concept. "Confederate culture" must be respected and preserved, they say, like they
were followers of Boas.
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Darity and Williams put forward an interesting internal critique of the
culturalogical position. The culture of poverty theorists accept the idea that
competitive forces 'cleanse' the economy of discrimination in the long run, as
in the Becker model. Since cultural traits can be taught, learned, transfered,
why haven't the same "alert entrepreneurs" whose competitive spirit eliminated
discrimination also cashed in on the market value of success-producing cultural
norms? Either competition can eliminate both discrimination and cultural
disparities or it can eliminate neither.
Mat
