Racial Repression Is Built Into the U.S. Economy
One hundred fifty years after the Civil War, the color of money is still white.
Protesters in front of the White House on May 29.
Photographer: Dee DwyerThe economics profession has had a hard time getting a fix on racial discrimination. Quite apart from its cruelty, it seems … illogical.
One of the first lessons in microeconomics is that workers are paid a sum equaling the marginal product of their labor—their value to the enterprise. Any employer who tried to pay them less would lose them to a competitor. Clearly that doesn’t always happen in the real world. For more than half a century, some of the biggest names in economics have wrestled with why, including Nobel laureates Gary Becker, Edmund Phelps, Kenneth Arrow, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, and Michael Spence. All white men, by the way.