On the permanence or impermanence of black-white economic inequality

The question of the permanence or impermanence of racism is a critical theoretical and empirical issue in orthodox and heterodox economics where it is framed in terms of black-white inequality in wages, earnings, employment, occupation, capital ownership, and wealth. Economic orthodoxy predicts the demise of racism in the log-run because economic discrimination cannot survive in the face of the competitive forces assumed to be inherent in capitalist markets. However, economic heterodox analysts look at present economic progress such as unemployment, family income, wealth, and poverty rates as indicators that racism has continued and will continue to divide the United States. Black unemployment rates have been twice as high as white rates for nearly 50 years. In 1954, the black teenage unemployment rate was about 15 percent. Forty-four years later, the black teenage rate has more than doubled to 31 percent. Finally, there has been an almost constant three-to-one ratio of black to white poverty rates for nearly 40 years. In order to narrow the black-white economic gap, an economic rights movement is needed. The demands of such a movement should not only be for black community economic development, equal earnings, and employment opportunities but full-employment for the entire economy as well. Full-employment would not only benefit blacks but working class whites as well and might help mitigate some of their bigotry since much of it is fueled by their perception of blacks as competitors for the scarce jobs they consider to be theirs by right. Resistance to the demands of an economic rights movement could be expected to be fiercer than the resistance to the demands for civil and legal rights in the 1960s. Whether these or some other ameliorative actions will ever be undertaken, the need for them is as pressing now as we enter the new century and millennium as it has been at any point in the current century.