I'm not sure I agree with Yoshie and Jim -- regardless of whether Heather Boushey's
statistics 'prove' her point or not. The reason why is:
1. I think that the age old "what's short and what's long?" question applies here.
Most people (from all classes, including the working class) do not think of long
term strategy -- in fact the only people I know of who think in terms of long term
strategy are economists, political economists, and lefties.
2. Racism and sexism may not be in the 'real', long-term interest of white men, but
the minority (in numbers) realize this. If consiousness was at all prevalent, then
the disparities in wages would be less.
3. I also think that white women, including those in the pink collar ghettos and
blue collar jobs, significantly benefit from being white and that this is a paradigm
many stripes of intellectuals (feminists, lefties, academics, union types) are
unwilling to debate openly.
4. I believe discriminatory attitudes are, to a great extent, unconsious which
makes them incredibly difficult to deal with. Barbara Bergmann in her book
"Defending Affirmative Action" cites some really interesting psychological studies.
One takes groups of people who openly oppose discrimination -- both racism and
sexism. They are all able to clearly distinguish discriminatory hiring and payment
practices when looking at statistical trends. They are then asked to judge the
promotion of male-female pairs where the pairs have been equalized for education,
job skills and training, age, etc. In either every case or almost every case (it's
been a while since I read the book), the male is given preference for incredibly
minute and unimportant differences. The book also looks at studies where matched
pairs of job applicants (by gender, race, and Hispanic origin) are sent out to job
interviews. The white applicants were overwhelmingly hired in preference to
minority applicants, even where the minority applicants has slightly more education
or experience.
By the time you are ready to go out into the world, if you are white or white
and male, you might not admit it, but you EXPECT to get preferential treatment
because that is the way the world is structured.
maggie coleman
Jim Devine wrote:
> Yoshie, I agree. I think that the main message is that racism (and sexism)
> are in the interest of white (male) workers only in the short-term. In the
> long-term such institutional forms of oppression undermine the collective
> interests of the working class, which includes the white (male) workers. (I
> see this as the message of Michael Reich's RACIAL INEQUALITY (1981), a book
> I helped him produce.) It's the standard problem of "economism," one
> that's encouraged by high unemployment rates, especially if they persist:
> unemployment encourages those who have jobs ("insiders") to build
> institutional walls to protect themselves from the fate of falling into the
> reserve army.
>
> (BTW, orthodox labor economics blames unemployment partly on the power of
> "insiders" (except tenured professors, of course). I think they have
> causation reversed.)
>
> At 01:43 AM 3/2/01 -0500, you wrote:
> >>Gar Lipow wrote:
> >>
> >>>There was an article in LBO a while back in an issue I have
> >>>unfortunately lost. (Maybe Doug can dig it out.) It made some strong
> >>>statistical arguments that -- in the case if racism anyway -- whites
> >>>gain more from racism than from a partial reduction in racism.
> >>
> >>It's an article by the excellent Heather Boushey, and it's on the LBO
> >>website <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Race_curve.html>, along with a
> >>longer, more formal version of the argument in MS Word format, and an
> >>archived thread of the discussion of it on this list.
> >>
> >>Doug
> >
> >Heather Boushey writes in "Two Alternate Tests of the Wage Curve: Does
> >Discrimination Matter?" (1998):
> >
> >***** These findings show that the unemployment rate of whites and males
> >has the strongest effect on the earnings of the aggregate population. The
> >unemployment rate of the groups that are hypothesized to be in the reserve
> >army of labor does not have a strong effect on the earnings of the
> >aggregate population. These findings also point to the conclusion that
> >the labor market is highly segmented along the lines of gender and race
> >and that there are different dynamics for these labor markets. Increases
> >in unemployment for discriminated-against workers lowers all earnings, but
> >to a lesser extent than the unemployment of non-discriminated against
> >groups. Thus, in 1994 and all else being equal, individuals who lived in
> >large urban areas with relatively high unemployment rates for whites or
> >males experienced lower pay than individuals living in large urban areas
> >with a relatively high unemployment rate for African Americans or females. [1]
> >
> >These findings provide empirical support for the argument that it is in
> >the interest of whites and males to maintain their employment privilege
> >because it sustains their higher earnings. When events are such that even
> >whites or males lose their jobs, all groups suffer in terms of pay, but
> >when African Americans or women lose their jobs, pay does not fall for
> >other groups as much.
> >
> >
> >[1] This makes intuitive sense in that the unemployment of high earners
> >has, relative to low earners, a more of a negative effect on average
> >earnings since high earners are a large proportion of the labor market. *****
> >
> >I don't think Boushey's findings "provide empirical support for the
> >argument that it is in the interest of whites and males to maintain their
> >employment privilege because it sustains their higher earnings." Why is
> >it in the interest of white & male workers "to maintain their employment
> >privilege" when the only thing it sustains is their relatively "higher
> >earnings" than discriminated-against workers'? Her findings do not
> >suggest that _real earnings_ of white workers go up _because_ they
> >increase their _relative privilege_ (e.g., they are not among the "last
> >hired, first fired") by making America _more racist_. In my opinion,
> >_only if_ real earnings of white workers rise _because_ of racism can it
> >be said that racism is in the real -- as opposed to perceived -- interest
> >of white workers (in the empiricist sense).
> >
> >Moreover, Boushey neglects to compare the earnings -- as well as other
> >indices of welfare -- of white workers in the area with a higher degree of
> >racism (the U.S. South) with those in the area with a lesser degree of
> >racism (the U.S. North).
> >
> >***** It is not accidental then, that where the Negroes are most
> >oppressed, the position of the whites is also most degraded. Facts
> >unearthed and widely publicized, including the Report of the National
> >Emergency Council to the late President Roosevelt, have thrown vivid light
> >on the "paradise" of racial bigotry below the Mason-Dixon Line. They
> >expose the staggering price of "white supremacy" in terms of health,
> >living and cultural standards of the great masses of southern
> >whites. They show "white supremacy" -- the shibboleth of Bourbon
> >overlords -- to be synonymous with the most outrageous poverty and misery
> >of the southern white people. They show that "keeping the Negro down"
> >spells for the entire South the nation's lowest wage and living standards.
> >
> >"White supremacy" means the nation's greatest proportion of tenants and
> >sharecroppers, its highest rate of child labor, its most degrading and
> >widespread exploitation of women, its poorest health and housing record,
> >its highest illiteracy and lowest proportion of students in high schools
> >and colleges, its highest death and disease rates, its lowest level of
> >union organization and its least democracy....
> >
> >Nearly 45 per cent of sharecroppers were white in 1940....
> >
> >Wages in 1938 were anywhere from 30 to 50 per cent below those of the rest
> >of the country. In 1940 the per capita income of the southeast was only
> >$309. Compare this with a national per capita income of $573. Containing
> >14 per cent of the nation's population, the region received only 7.3 per
> >cent of the nation's wage total....
> >
> >Political controls which are aimed primarily at the disenfranchisement of
> >the Negro have also resulted in depriving the mass of the poor whites of
> >their right to the ballot. In 1942, 6,000,000 southern whites were
> >disenfranchised as compared to 4,000,000 Negroes.
> >
> >Lynching, a device of the Bourbon ruling classes designed to keep the
> >Negro in "his place," is turned against the white worker whenever he
> >attempts to improve his conditions or to join forces with the Negro in the
> >struggle for his rights....
> >
> >In fact, every measure passed to curb the Negro has resulted in destroying
> >the civil rights of the poor whites. At the bottom of the cultural
> >backwardness and impoverishment of the southern white is the position of
> >his black neighbor. America's Tobacco Road begins in the Black Belt....
> >
> >Plainly the South can progress only by breaking the oppression of the
> >Negro. "A people which enslaves another people forges its own chains,"
> >said Karl Marx. The same idea was expressed in colloquial language by
> >Booker T. Washington: You can't hold the Negro in the ditch without
> >staying in it with him. (Harry Haywood, "Shadow of the Plantation [from
> >_Negro Liberation_] (1948)," _Black on White: Black Writers on What It
> >Means to Be White_, ed. David R. Roediger, NY: Schocken Books, 1998) *****
> >
> >I believe it is still very much true -- even after the end of Jim Crow --
> >that white workers in the U.S. North are much better off than their
> >counterparts in the Southern "Right-to-Work" states. I'd like to see if
> >anyone has newer studies that compare them.
> >
> >Moreover, racism (which compounds sexism) has been one of the main reasons
> >why it has been so difficult to create, sustain, & improve the social
> >programs & insurances (e.g., universal health care, unemployment
> >insurance, workers' compensation, old age pension, paid parental leaves,
> >paid vacation, day care, decent public schooling, free tuition for
> >post-secondary education, etc.) that lower the "cost of job loss," which
> >Boushey, too, says plays "an important role in the determination of
> >wages," and/or directly improve the welfare of the proletariat.
> >
> >In short, I repeat my argument that racism makes white workers -- as well
> >as workers of color -- "losers." Therefore, racism is not in the interest
> >of white workers.
> >
> >Yoshie
> >
> >P.S. The above discussion originated in LBO-talk; I'm posting it here
> >because I'm interested in what Progressive Economists have to say about
> >the subject.
> >
>
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
