Theories of discrimination, cont.
alternative approaches
Theories of discrimination
Alternative (heterodox)
• Domestic (or internal) colonialism – Robert L. Allen, Stokely Carmichael,
et al.
•
• Dual economy (alternative)—Michael Piore, et al.
•
• Labor market segmentation (alternative)—David M. Gordon, et al.
•
• Divide-and-Conquer thesis (Michael Reich et al.—neo-Marxian)
•
• Classical Marxian—reserve army—Darity, Williams, Mason, Botwinick:
(competition and discrimination):(wed to interdisciplinary and historical
studies of white supremacy and patriarchy)
From Civil Rights to Black Power
Black Power movement took inspiration from
Third World liberation movements and leaders
such as Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral, and
Patrice Lumumba.
Identified in solidarity with anti-colonial
struggles.
Books such as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of
the Earth had important influence.
From integration to liberation
Conceptual framework for understanding
problems and challenges—as well as solutions
and strategies—were influenced by anticolonial, nationalist, liberation movements.
domestic (internal) colonialism
“Black America is an oppressed nation, a
semicolony of the United States, and the black
revolt is emerging as a form of national
liberation struggle.”
Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in
Capitalist America, 1969
Harold Cruse, 1962
“From the beginning, the American Negro has
existed as a colonial being. His enslavement
coincided with the colonial expansion of
European powers and was nothing more or
less than a condition of domestic colonialism.
Instead of the United States establishing a
colonial empire in Africa, it brought the
colonial system home and installed it in the
Southern states.”
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)
At a meeting of Latin American revolutionaries in
Cuba in 1967:
Our people are a colony within the United states;
you are colonies outside the United States. It is
more than a figure of speech to say that the black
communities in America are the victims of white
imperialism and colonial exploitation. This is in
practical economic and political terms true…We
do not control the land, the houses or the stores.
These are very real colonies, as their capital and
cheap labor are exploited by those who live
outside the cities.
J. H. O’Dell, Freedomways
A people may be colonized on the very territory on
which they have lived for generations or they may
be forcibly uprooted by the colonial power from
their traditional territory and colonized in a new
territorial environment…In defining the colonial
problem it is the role of the institutional
mechanisms of colonial domination which are
decisive.
colonialism
• A political relation and institution with a general
economic motivation and purpose
• political oppression and economic exploitation
accompanied and supported by cultural
imperialism/domination
political domination
—government, court system, legislatures, police
force, prisons, public facilities, etc., are all
racist institutions controlled by white power
elite
—historically, separate laws applying to Blacks:
enslavement, Jim Crow, legal—and later, de
facto—segregation.
Economic exploitation
1) superexploitation of black labor
(lower wages, higher unemployment, worse jobs,
less job security, less chance for advancement)
2) sell goods to Black consumers
3) Blacks make up large proportion of the reserve
army, surplus population, prisoners
4) benefits of Black production not maintained in
their own community
cultural imperialism
• Ideology of white supremacy
• Ideals of beauty
• white & European music, art, literature
nationalism
• Cultural nationalism – “Black is Beautiful”
• Economic nationalism – Black self-sufficiency,
Black capitalism/socialism
• Political nationalism – Black Belt movement;
African repatriation; “Vote Black”
Omi and Winant versus Blauner
O & W criticize Blauner for deviating from the
original meaning of colonialism (territorial
aspect). But:
1) that definition may be problematic
2) territory may not be important
3) territory not irrelevant, but social and
institutional mechanisms more important
Blauner: colonized vs. immigrant minorities
• Blauner: colonized only refers to those who were
“forced” to move. But:
• is there such a clear line between “forced” and
“voluntary” e.g., you came on your own volition,
but the decision resulted from pressures
emanating from neocolonial policies?
O&W: politics versus theory
• O&W see thesis as politically motivated, but is
that bad?
• “strategic essentialism” – Gayatri Spivak
• Also, domestic colonialism has its theoretical
strengths
dual economy
Late sixties response to recognition:
1) Resulting from Civil Rights, Black liberation and
Women’s liberation movements that Blacks and women
were getting a bad deal;
2) That human capital theory could not explain wage and
employment differentials, and that policies to close
human capital gaps were not seeing corresponding gaps
in wages and unemployment rates close;
3) That discrimination was not a short term imperfection,
as in the Becker I model
dual economy
Rather:
1. Discrimination is a deeply rooted structure
2. Giant corporations have a stake in racism and patriarchy
and have the tremendous power to defend theory
interests
dual economy
Economy is divided into core and periphery
firms/industries
Core industries: high productivity, capital-intensive,
monopoly characteristics (market power, operate in less
competitive markets), high rates of unionization,
possess assets that can fund R&D
Workers employed in the core earn higher wages, more
benefits, better working conditions and job security
dual economy
Firms in peripheral industries are smaller, have less market
power, are more labor-intensive, have lower
productivity, operate in more competitive markets, can’t
fund R&D
Workers employed in peripheral industries have lower
wages, less benefits, worse working conditions, little job
security
dual economy
Implication is that human capital returns do not equalize
across these industries
Employees in periphery reap lower returns to education
and training
Blacks and women are viewed as disproportionately
represented in the periphery, with white males getting
the best jobs in the core
dual economy
Quantitative work resulted in important implications:
1) first, it did not seem to support some of the main claims
of the thesis, for example firms with high market
concentration do not necessarily tend to be capital
intensive or more heavily unionized
2) the political element was soon lost in the quantitative
work, with the issues of race and gender inequality soon
disappearing in the maze of equations about sector
characteristics
dual economy
• some have criticized the dual economy thesis for trying
to collapse multidimensional relationships into a single
dimension. Market relationships, productive
relationships, political relationships, cannot all be
collapsed into the core-periphery framework
•
• At the same time, the early, more radical qualitative
formulation did support some generally progressive
policies, such as anti-discrimination, raising the
minimum wage, and government support for smaller
businesses
dual economy
• Suggestions have been made how the theoretical and empirical
weaknesses might be strengthened:
1) early formulations rooted racism and sexism in economic relations
without any real class analysis -- so infusing class analysis into the
framework could be helpful (this should extend and expand into
other types of power relationships as well)
•
2) also, many of the studies treat race and gender as individual
characteristics of individual workers -- instead race and gender
must be reconceptualized as social categories and blacks and
women must be analyzed as social groups
•
3) early work has been ahistorical - have to look at the changing
historical situations of large and small companies , unions, etc.
dual economy and segmented labor markets (LMS)
• shared the same basic set of initial intentions:
•
1. to provide an economic structural explanation for
poverty and racial and gender inequality
•
2. both see the growth of giant corporations as resulting in
restructurings of the labor market
•
3. both critique contemporary capitalism, in most cases
without Marxist class analysis or value analysis
dual economy and LMS are different
• -dual economy looks the capital structure of industries
and firms
•
• -LMS looks at job characteristics and labor markets
Doeringer and Piore, 1971
identified two segments:
•
• 1. Primary labor market jobs with high wages, good
benefits, good working conditions, stable employment,
opportunities for advancement, due process in the
administration of work rules, etc.
•
• 2. Secondary labor market jobs with low wages, little or
no benefits, poor working conditions, little job security
(high turnover rates), little opportunity for
advancement, and arbitrary supervision
Doeringer and Piore, 1971
• workers in secondary jobs frequently display high rates
of absenteeism, lateness, insubordination, petty theft,
etc. (some versions of LMS theory incorporated culture
of poverty and/or human capital aspects.)
•
• What determined whether one was in the primary or
secondary sector for D & P? - residence, low skilled,
poor work histories, and discrimination. (Again, culture
of poverty and human capital theory seeping in).
Doeringer and Piore, 1971
• view primary markets as series of labor markets
providing stable employment and advancement
opportunities- could be specific to a firm, but not
necessarily, could be related to specific occupations or
skills.
•
• in secondary markets, there were either jobs with no
advancement opportunities or short lines of possible
advancement, with low pay and often unpleasant work.
Piore further developed LMS approach
• three segments: secondary, lower tier primary, and
upper tier primary
•
• secondary jobs are characterized by no career ladders,
and are filled by the “underclass” or “lower class
subculture”
•
• lower tier jobs are filled by the “working class”
•
• upper tier jobs by the “middle class”
Piore further developed LMS approach
if lower tier jobs were opened to secondary workers, the
lower tier job could become secondary because of the
cultural characteristics of the secondary workers;
though he conceded that training and socialization
could bring the worker from the “underclass” to the
“working class” (really smacks of culture of poverty)
This is the supply-side of Piore’s development of LMS.
Piore’s demand-side developments
Thesis: structure of technology shapes jobs
1. some types of technologies require skills, knowledge,
and training and so turnover is costly and incentives are
provided to workers to stay
•
2. Other types of technology can be operated without
much training and so workers in these positions tend to
be lower paid and exhibit higher turnover rates
Piore’s demand-side developments
Technology itself partly determined by nature of demand for
product.
• stable demand for a product gives firms the assets and
incentives to invest in higher tech equipment.
•
• unstable and uncertain demand for a product means firms
are afraid to invest too much in retooling and may not have
the funds to do so anyway.
•
• thus, jobs can change from secondary to lower tier primary
or the reverse as a result in a change in the demand in that
market resulting in technological change, or depending on
the supply side condition—who is available to fill it.
David M. Gordon and LMS
Wrote Harvard doctoral dissertation on LMS in 1971.
Continued working on subject for many years, also in
collaboration with Richard Edwards and Michael Reich.
Early work generally agreed with Piore’s—little mobility
between segments (except occasionally for white males)
and different labor markets operated differently.
quantitative work – beginning 1973
Like dual economy, quantitative work did not always
support thesis.
• For example, it was shown in several studies that there
was more inter-market mobility than the LMS theory
predicted.
•
• But because the tests also showed that the segments
differed in their dynamics, and refuted some of the
propositions of human capital theory, attempts were
made to modify rather than to abandon the theory.
LMS modifications
• Piore emphasized the issues of technology and demand
on the one hand, as well as institutional arrangements
such as unions, government legislation, other social and
political factors. The former determined the different
types of jobs, the latter who gets into which ones.
•
• Gordon, Edwards and Reich started approaching the
issue from an historical study of changing social,
political, and economic conditions, focusing on history
of the labor process and capital-labor relations.
According to GER, the complex development of
segmentation grew out of attempts by employers to
control workers.
LMS modifications – Gordon, Edwards, and Reich
Strangely, GER’s early work used something more of a dual
economy model than a segmented labor market model.
Core firms traded higher wages and better conditions to
workers for control over production and the labor
process. They broke the secondary segment into two:
first, all the jobs in periphery firms, and 2) certain jobs in
core firms that either weren’t unionized or were
organized differently (typing pools was one example).
LMS – policy implications
1) training programs don’t do much good, human capital makes a
difference only in the primary segment.
•
2) programs to help blacks and women get into primary segment
jobs.
•
3) although small differences in training and education don’t matter
in segmentation theory, large differences can. So strong support
for education and apprenticeship programs could make some
difference.
•
4) jobs can be changed from secondary to primary through
government policies to stabilize demand. This can be general—
Keynesian type policies to stabilize total demand in the economy,
but they can also be specific to certain industries or certain
geographic areas.
Michael Reich, divide-and-conquer thesis
In Racial Inequality (1981), Reich developed following
thesis:
• racism reduces labor solidarity, hence racism is a
consequence of capital's effort to divide-and-conquer
the working class.
•
• white workers are axiomatically held to be “hurt” by
racism insofar as wages are a function of bargaining
power.
Michael Reich, 1981
Reich’s divide-and-conquer model shows white workers
incurring losses relative to capital, but ignores the fact
that white workers gain relative to black workers (which
can offset their losses).
Racism may reduce white worker's bargaining power
(although this is disputable), but it also reduces the
competition they face for jobs.
Michael Reich, 1981
For Reich and others, white workers are “fooled” by capital
into being racist, even though it is supposedly against
their own interests.
If white workers’ goal is not revolution, but simply to
secure a privileged position within the working class,
with better wages and benefits, lower unemployment,
better job security, etc., then racism is not “false
consciousness” but in the real material interests of
white workers.