The American "races," 1850-2005
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Pct. Other/Multiple Race
Pct. Asian/Pacific Islander
50%
Pct. Amer. Indian/Alaska Native
Pct. black
40%
Pct. w hite
30%
20%
10%
0%
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2005
Percent of U.S. population that identifies as "Hispanic"
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
1980
1990
2000
2005
From 2000-2010
•
•
•
•
•
U.S. white population grew 5.7%
U.S. black population grew 12.3%
U.S. Hispanic population grew 43.0%
U.S. Asian population grew 43.3%
U.S population identifying as “mixed race”
grew 32.0%.
Measuring Diversity
• Herfindahl index, from industrial organization,
measures concentration of an industry as
n
D  1  p
i 1
2
i
• Same principle can measure group
diversity. Herfindahl index means that
diversity goes up when one minority group
becomes larger at expense of majority
group, or when one group splits into two.
• Example (China):1 majority (Han, 91%);
55 minorities. Assume each constitutes
equal share of 9% minority.
• D = 1-0.912-55x(0.0016362)=0.172.
• Example 2: US
• In 2005, whites = 0.747; blacks = 0.121;
American Indians/Alaskan Islanders =
0.008; Asian/Pacific Islanders=0.043;
Multiracial/other=0.079.
• D = 0.419.
Ethnoracial diversity (Herfindahl
index) over time in U.S.
•
•
•
•
•
1960: 0.226
1980: 0.394
1990: 0.468
2000: 0.570
2005: 0.594
Some issues to think about
• Issues of definition: Diversity by what criteria?
• Issues of commonality: When are these
differences, however we define them, important
in society? When are they largely irrelevant?
• Issues of identity: How do individuals define
themselves? How important are the usual
diversity criteria to them? How important should
they be?
• Issues of policy: How should governments react
to diversity? What should their goals be? What
constraints do they face?
Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois)
“E Pluribus Unum”
- “From Many, One,” longtime official
motto of the U.S.
27. This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent
with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural
heritage of Canadians.
- From the Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms
Discrimimation: why might wage/salary incomes
differ among groups?
• Prejudice: Employers dislike members of other
groups, and labor-market groups reflect this.
• Human capital: People are paid by productivity,
other things equal. Differences among groups
reflect differences in productivity.
• Information: Groups may differ on average with
respect to various traits that are assets or
drawbacks in employment. Lacking information
on individual traits, employers rely on group
membership, among other things, as useful
information. This practice is known as statistical
discrimination.
From 1988-2010:
• Real non-Hispanic white male earnings have increased
1.01%
• Real non-Hispanic white female earnings have increased
31.86%
• Real black male earnings have increased 8.11%.
• Real black female earnings have increased 50.85%.
• Real Hispanic male earnings have decreased 3.65%.
• Real Hispanic female earnings have increased 31.42%.
• Real Asian male earnings have increased 11.16%
• Real Asian female earnings have increased 44.23%
Median M/F earnings among
“Asian” groups, 1999
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
All workers: 37,057 (M), 27,194 (F)
All “Asians”: 40,650 (M), 31,049 (F)
Indians: 51904 (M), 31258 (F)
Japanese: 50,876 (M), 35,998 (F)
Chinese: 44,381 (M), 34,689 (F)
Pakistani: 40,277 (M), 28,315 (F)
Korean: 38,776 (M), 28,403 (F)
Vietnamese: 31,258 (M), 24,028 (F)
Thai: 32,879 (M), 25,402 (F)
Cambodian: 28,706 (M), 21,911 (F)
Annual Income Relative to Non-Hispanic White Males (NHWM)
1.2
1
Axis Title
0.8
BM/NWHM
0.6
AM/NWHM
HM/NHWM
0.4
0.2
0
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
BF/NHWF
0.6
AF/NHWF
Axis Title
Income Relative to Non-Hispanic White Females
1.2
1
0.8
HF/NHWF
0.4
0.2
0
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
Female/Male Income Within Each Racial Group
0.9
0.8
0.7
Axis Title
0.6
0.5
NHWF/NHWM
BF/BM
AF/AM
0.4
HF/HM
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
19881989199019911992199319941995199619971998199920002001200220032004200520062007200820092010
Human capital (Gary Becker)
• Skill behaves like physical capital. It can be augmented
through investment, and it tends to depreciate over time.
• Like physical capital, it is productive. Those who
possess more will earn more. Differences in income are
thus a function of differences in market returns to the
skill sets individuals possess.
• Its return depends on the extent to which consumers
value the product produced from it. “Years of education”
or “years of experience” are very general measures of
what are often very specific skills, often used in research
as a measure of human capital despite their limitations.
Taste-based discrimination (also
Becker)
• Discrimination is modeled as disutility from working with or
supervising people from other groups. Like most dislikes, the loss
from discriminatory tastes can be offset when hiring members of
these groups if he is sufficiently compensated – by paying lower
wages, for example.
• The theory predicts that in the presence of discriminatory tastes and
imperfect competition, members of the discriminated-against group
will have fewer jobs and earn less.
• It also predicts that the more vigorous competition is, and the bigger
the stakes are, the less employers will be able to discriminate in
wages and employment.
To what extent does human capital matter in
explaining compensation differences among
groups?
• This requires that, in comparing groups, we take
account of differences in human-capital
characteristics known to matter in the market.
We can only talk of discrimination after adjusting
for these differences. Some subset of the
remaining gap may be discrimination.
• “Subset” is important because many things
besides years of education and of work
experience affect productivity – English fluency
(or fluency in other languages), family structure,
and other things that may be unmeasurable.
Educational differences among groups over time – percent
of all college degrees awarded to various groups; bold and
italic denote significant over- and under-representation
NHW
males
Black
males
Hispanic
males
Asian
males
NHW
females
Black
females
Hispanic
females
Asian
females
1976-7
.477 .027 .011 .010 .403 .036 .009 .007
1988-9
.460 .022 .012 .019 .445 .035 .016 .018
1996-7
.344 .029 .022 .028 .424 .052 .031 .031
2003-4
.318 .031 .027 .030 .415 .062 .041 .036
Source: National Center for Educational Statistics
Source: Mary Jo Bane, “Race, Poverty and Public Policy,” Kennedy School of
Government, 2004.
Source: Bane (2004).
Statistical discrimination
•
•
•
•
•
Statistical discrimination refers to employer use of traits such as race and
sex in decision-making because they are somewhat correlated with
productivity, and employer lacks more useful information specific to the
individual. These traits are, in other words, stereotypes with some value.
Statistical discrimination is less vulnerable to competition than taste-based
discrimination because, unlike employers discriminating on taste grounds,
statistical discriminators are trying to maximize profits. The problem is lack
of information, not prejudice.
Statistical discrimination raises the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy –
fearing discrimination, some groups don’t invest in human capital. Seeing
that many applicants from those groups have little human capital, employers
calculate that this trait is strongly associated with group identity.
But if stakes are big enough (i.e., cost of discrimination high enough), better
information – e.g., individual-specific tests – can be acquired.
Not all stereotypes are costly to the stereotyped group.
Thus:
• Very large differences among groups with respect to
obvious human-capital sources.
• Not entire story; even within education groups median
incomes significantly different.
• However, ignores other aspects of human capital –
personality attributes, differences in returns to different
kinds of college degrees, etc.
• Bottom line – By 2000 measurable human-capital
differences explained perhaps 95 percent of wage
differences among most groups. Discrimination costs
black males and white women at most 1-5% in lost
earnings, given what we can measure.
Source: Steven Levitt, “Testing Theories of Discrimination: Evidence from ‘The
Weakest Link,’” Journal of Law and Economics 47 (2004).
Other results from Levitt on “The
Weakest Link”
• After standardizing for players’ education,
proportion of questions previously answered
correctly (both of which affect votes against a
player in predicted direction), no evidence of
taste-based discrimination against blacks,
Asians or women. Some evidence of statistical
discrimination against Hispanics, taste-based
discrimination against elderly, who are voted off
early despite performing poorly on average at
the end.
• Young and old both tend to vote against the
elderly.
• “I've no doubt that there are a few people out there who have been
unjustly hurt by this; but we cannot regulate every bad business
decision that hurts a few people. Each regulation may sound fine on
its own, but collectively, they massively raise the compliance cost of
starting a business and hiring workers, two things we want to
support. So we need to set some sort of bar to ensure that we're
only regulating things that have substantial, widespread negative
impact.” – Megan McArdle, “Fico Frenzy.”
Anti-discrimination efforts and the law of
unintended consequences
•
•
•
•
•
In 1964, general skills tests were commonly given by employers – there were over 2000 kinds in that
year alone, and 84% of employers used them.
In response to Congressional concern, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was specifically amended to allow
any such test, as long as “such test, its administration or action upon the results is not designed,
intended or used to discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.”
But in 1971, in Griggs v. Duke Power, the Supreme Court adopted the “disparate impact” standard.
Duke Power, which had explicitly banned blacks from promotion to executive position before 1964, had
adopted a policy whereby workers with high-school degrees or who passed one of two general-skills
tests would be eligible, as well as promising to pay 2/3 of the education costs of workers who lacked the
degree. But plaintiffs argued not that the employer had directly discriminated, but that the test was
discriminatory because of large differences in success rates.
The Court agreed, arguing “The Act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are
fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business necessity. If an employment
practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the
practice is prohibited. On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the
general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the
jobs for which it was used.”
Thus, employers now had to show that a test is immediately related to job performance., and if not
discriminatory intent need not be shown. Later, the EEOC held that if the selection rate on a test for a
protected group (blacks, in Griggs) were less than 4/5 that for the non-protected group (whites), the test
was suspect.
The legacy of Griggs
• While about 2/3 of employers still use
tests, they are very specifically worded to
the work environment, and general IQ and
mechanical-aptitude tests are seldom
used for fear of litigation.
• As a result, many argue, college became a
substitute, but much more expensive
screen for employers to use in weeding
out applicants for higher-level jobs.
Source: Bryan O’Keefe and Richard Vedder, “Griggs v. Duke Power:
Implications for College Credentialing,
http://www.popecenter.org/acrobat/Griggs_vs_Duke_Power.pdf.
In the wake of Griggs, there has been a
dramatic expansion in:
•
•
•
•
College income premium;
College enrollment;
College tuition;
The nature of jobs that require a college
degree;
• An expansion in enrollment in graduate
programs.
This argument suggests that a college degree is a crude screening device
made necessary by fear of being charged with discrimination. The worse a
screen (where “good” or “bad’ means avoidance of Type I and Type II errors)
a college degree is, the bigger the social costs of this roundabout
credentialing system.
Anti-discrimination efforts and the law of
unintended consequences
“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer –
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to
discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms,
conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin; or
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for
employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any
individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his
status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin.”
- 1964 Civil Rights Act, 703(a)
Most popular names for baby girls,
New York City, 2005
Rank Hispanic+
Black
White
Asian & Pacific Islander
1
Ashley
Kayla
Sarah
Emily
2
Emily
Jada
Julia
Sophia
3
Isabella
Madison
Esther
Nicole
4
Jennifer
Destiny
Sophia
Michelle
5
Mia
Brianna
Ava
Rachel
6
Brianna
Ashley
Chaya*
Tiffany
7
Kayla*
Aaliyah
Emma*
Chloe
Olivia*
Jessica
8
Samantha* Gabrielle
9
Kimberly**
10
Nicole**
Chelsea Isabella
Ashley
Alyssa*
Taylor*
Sarah
Source: NYC Health Department
Emily
Source: Jorge Reina Schement, Wiring the Castle: Demography, Technology and the
Transformation of the American Home, web.mit.edu/commforum/forums/Schement%20MIT%202006.pdf
Most popular names for baby boys,
New York City, 2005
Rank
Hispanic+
Black
White
Asian & Pacific Islander
1
Angel
Joshua
Michael
Ryan
2
Anthony
Elijah
Joseph
Jason*
3
Christopher Justin
Daniel
Kevin*
4
Justin
Jayden
Nicholas
Daniel
5
Joshua
Isaiah
Matthew
Justin
6
David
Michael
Jacob
Eric
7
Daniel
Jaden
David
Ethen
8
Kevin
Christopher Alexander Andrew
9
Michael
Christian
10
Jonathan
Tyler
Jack
Brian
John
David**
Vincent**
Cultural differences are real, substantial,
and sometimes long-lasting.
• In every country in the New World to which
they have immigrated, Japanese have
done better than almost any other ethnic
group.
• Groups such as the Lebanese, the
Gujaratis (from India), and the Jews have
been unusually successful in retail trade.
In the U.S. Koreans and Arabs, particularly
in cities, have done the same.
True or false?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
In Malaysia, Chinese tend to work harder and save more than Malays.
In Malaysia, Chinese are more productive than Malays.
As an employer in Malaysia, I’d prefer to hire Chinese to Malay workers if I
can.
Asians outperform members of other U.S. races on math standardized
tests.
Asian-Americans tend to be better at math than people of other races in the
U.S.
Asians are good at math.
Black Americans have contributed a great deal to the country’s (and
world’s) musical stock.
Black American culture is very creative musically.
Blacks are good at music.
Native Americans have high rates of alcoholism.
Mohawks are unusually good at urban construction work.
Some basic truisms about affirmative action
around the world
• It has expanded substantially, in conjunction with a
decline in laws discriminating against minorities.
• It is always claimed to be a response to unique historical
circumstances – slavery (U.S.), the caste system (India),
etc.
• It always lasts longer than was initially predicted.
• It generally expands to cover other groups than the one
thought to be uniquely historically disadvantaged.
• Despite the rarity with which occupations
demographically “look like” the broader society, this is
generally used as the target for group representation.
Affirmative action in other countries
• Malaysia: Chinese do better economically than majority Malays.
Firms doing business with government often required to have Malay
partner.
• India: Extensive quotas for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and
“other backward classes” (the latter 52.5% of the population by
themselves) in politics, universities, public employment. After a
2008 Supreme Court decision, almost half of spots at Indian public
national universities are reserved.
• Sri Lanka: For many years, Sinhala language required for all
communications with government. Sinhalese got preferences in
university admissions, public employment.
Theoretical reasons to support
affirmative action
• Hysteresis – the tendency of outsiders to
forever be excluded from valuable trading
networks without some effort to include
them.
• Role models, to encourage future
aspirants to try.
Theoretical reasons to be against
affirmative action
• Mismatch,
• Lower productivity,
• People figure out ways to get around it.
Affirmative action in action - mismatch
Source: Richard H. Sander, “A Systematic Analysis of Affirmative Action in
American Law Schools,” 97 Stanford Law Review 363 (2004)
Other Sander results
• Minorities are underrepresented as partners at big law firms, despite
the fact that law firms work very hard to hire them as associates.
• Whites and Asians are already very overrepresented in the collegegraduate population, making increases in number of
“underrepresented” minorities even more difficult.
• Without affirmative action of any kind, 86% of black applicants would
still be admitted to some law school.
• But they would not get such poor grades, and fail the bar at such
high rates, because they would be in schools more reasonable for
their admissions index.
• Thus, affirmative action in law schools, by creating mismatch, may
actually result in fewer black lawyers.
The law on affirmative action
• Private firms may not “discriminate,” by civil-rights laws of the 1960s.
• They also may not use explicit ethnoracial quotas, except as
remedy to their own legally established pattern of prior
discrimination.
• They may, however, aggressively use goals, outreach, etc. to
pursue greater workforce “diversity.” “Discrimination” is illegal;
“affirmative action” is not.
• Affirmative action by government contractors and public universities
is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of court scrutiny (for
constitutional violations) of government action.
• In higher education the goal of any ethnoracial affirmative action can
only be the remedying of past discrimination or the pursuit of
“diversity.” The justification comes from a legal opinion signed only
by Justice Lewis Powell in University of California Regents v. Bakke
(438 U.S. 265 (1978)).
The language of Bakke
•
“Hence, the purpose of helping certain groups whom the faculty of the Davis
Medical School perceived as victims of ‘societal discrimination’ does not
justify a classification that imposes disadvantages upon persons like
respondent, who bear no responsibility for whatever harm the beneficiaries
of the special admissions program are thought to have suffered. To hold
otherwise would be to convert a remedy heretofore reserved for violations of
legal rights into a privilege that all institutions throughout the Nation could
grant at their pleasure to whatever groups are perceived as victims of
societal discrimination. That is a step we have never approved.” (Bakke, at
2758).
•
“Physicians serve a heterogeneous population. An otherwise qualified medical
student with a particular background--whether it be ethnic, geographic, culturally
advantaged or disadvantaged--may bring to a professional school of medicine
experiences, outlooks, and ideas that enrich the training of its student body and
better equip its graduates to render with understanding their vital service to humanity.
Ethnic diversity, however, is only one element in a range of factors a university
properly may consider in attaining the goal of a heterogeneous student body.
Although a university must have wide discretion in making the sensitive judgments as
to who should be admitted, constitutional limitations protecting individual rights may
not be disregarded.” (Bakke, at 2760).
Grutter v. Bollinger (539 U.S. 306
2003)
•
$
•
“As part of its goal of ‘assembling a class that is both exceptionally academically qualified
and broadly diverse," the Law School seeks to "enroll a 'critical mass' of minority students. The
Law School's interest is not simply ‘to assure within its student body some specified percentage of
a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin.’ That would amount to outright
racial balancing, which is patently unconstitutional. Rather, the Law School's concept of critical
mass is defined by reference to the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce.
These benefits are substantial. As the District Court emphasized, the Law School's
admissions policy promotes ‘cross-racial understanding,’ helps to break down racial stereotypes,’
and ‘enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.’ These benefits are
‘important and laudable,’ because ‘classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more
enlightening and interesting’ when the students have ‘the greatest possible variety of
backgrounds.’ (Justice O’Connor’s opinion)
We find that the Law School's admissions program bears the hallmarks of a narrowly tailored
plan. As Justice Powell made clear in Bakke, truly individualized consideration demands that race
be used in a flexible, nonmechanical way. It follows from this mandate that universities cannot
establish quotas for members of certain racial groups or put members of those groups on
separate admissions tracks. Nor can universities insulate applicants who belong to certain racial
or ethnic groups from the competition for admission. Universities can, however, consider race or
ethnicity more flexibly as a ‘plus’ factor in the context of individualized consideration of each and
every applicant.”
“It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in
student body diversity in the context of public higher education. Since that time, the number of
minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased. We expect that 25
years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest
approved today. “
The race riot at Springfield, Ohio, last week was one of the fiercest conflicts
that has ever taken place between the blacks and whites. At the same time
there was a like disturbance at Tempson, Texas, but the Texas affair was tame
when compared to the Ohio trouble, and this again demonstrates the fact that
the blacks and whites can never live together on equal footing, theoretical
though it may be, in peace and harmony, it also demonstrates the fact again,
that it is no matter of geography, of north and south, it further demonstrates the
pernicious influence of republican agitation of the race question. Ohio people
have shed floods of tears over wrongs inflicted on negroes in the south, yet
when it comes to a practical solution of negro outrages, they resort to the
bullet, the rope, and the torch, with a cruelty and vengeance, seldom equaled
and never excelled in the south. These thing sought to teach the people of the
north some valuable lessons, and but for “office blindness” they would.
- Editorial, Arlington (TX) Journal, March 17, 1904.
Competition and discrimination
• Freer markets – where new businesses
are easier to start, labor markets more
flexible, etc. – are associated with less
discrimination.
• For example, in the transition from
socialism, Eastern European countries
saw relative female income improve.
.5
USA
.4
COL
LTU
.2
.3
EST
AUT
BEL
LVA
FRA
IRL
HUN
POL
PRTESP CAN
RUS
THA
NLD
ECU
AZE MNG
BGR
ISL
CRI URYDEU LUX
ROM
HKG
FIN
GRC
DNK
CZE
SGP
MEX
BRA MUS
NOR
ZWE
0
.1
IRN
MYS
ITA ARM
UGA
CYP
GAB
HTI
CHN LKA
SLVJPN
TUN
EGYGHA
PAK
TZA
KOR
SEN
JORBHR
KWT
IND
AGO
0
20
40
60
80
Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Rating, 2007
100
.8
BGD
.6
EGY
.4
IND
0
.2
IDN
KOR
VNM
TUR
NGA
ALB
DZA
BGR
IRN
ROM
ZAF
PHL
ZWE
HRV MKD
JOR ARM
DOM
UGAMLT
BLR
TZA
POL
SVK
TWN
VEN CHN
ITA
BELEST
MEX
GRC
BIH
AZEMDA
SVN ESP FIN IRL
PER
UKRMAR
CZE
LTU CHL
GEO
CHE
GBR
RUSPAK FRA
PRT
NOR
USA
URY
AUT DNK
LUX
ARG
LVA DEU
NLD AUS
SGP
BRA
CAN
NZL
COL
SWEISL
0
20
40
60
80
Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Rating, 2007
100
.8
.6
EGY
0
.2
.4
IND
KOR IDN
TUR
VNM
NGAALB
BGR
IRN
ZAF
ROM
HRV PHL
ZWE
JOR
ARM
MKD
UGA
DOM
TWN
SVK TZA
BLR
POL VEN
BEL
ITA
EST CHN
MEX
GRC
BIH
IRL
FIN
SVN AZE PER
YUG
MARLTU ESP
MDA
CZE
UKR
CHEGEOFRA
NORGBRDNK
USA
PRT CHL
RUS
AUT
URY PAK
AUS
NLD
SGP
DEU
LVA
ARG
NZL
CAN
BRA
SWE
COL
20
40
60
Total number of procedures
DZA
80
Organized labor and black
Americans – the pre-Civil War era
• There was no official recognition of unions; absolute freedom of
contract ruled.
• Early 1700s: Pennsylvania merchants petitioned colonial
government for action against allowing hiring of black mechanics.
• In the early 1800s, white workers requested that legislatures in the
North and South outlaw teaching skilled labor to blacks.
• New York City required cartmen to get licenses to do business;
blacks were never granted any.
• The New York (State) General Trades Union saw abolition as a
conspiracy to decrease white wages. Some labor leaders saw
“wage slavery” as worse than the real thing.
• In NYC in 1862, Irish workers rioted against a tobacco company that
employed blacks. A shipping company hired blacks as
strikebreakers during a longshoreman’s strike in 1863. During the
July, 1863 draft riots, blacks were purged from the docks.
Organized labor and black
Americans in Reconstruction
• Civil-rights legislation and the 14th Amendment it
inspired were meant largely to ensure property and
contract rights for black workers. The “Black Codes”
enacted immediately after the war had restricted such
rights.
• Between late 1860s and roughly 1900, black income
converged from 24% to 35% of that of whites; black
income grew 2.7% a year, white income 2.0%. Black
mortality rates fell significantly faster than those of
whites.
• Partly in response to this competition Jim Crow laws –
which mandated segregation and barred outsiders who
recruited black labor to quit their jobs and go elsewhere
while criminalizing the exit from a labor contract.
Organized labor and minorities during the
Progressive era
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
California labor leaders formed affiliate of the Workingmen’s Party in 1877 under slogan
“The Chinese must go.”
1879 California constitution, heavily influenced by labor, barred state government and
corporations chartered there from employing Chinese. Business groups, with the notable
exception of those competing against Chinese firms, opposed these provisions.
Throughout the late 19th century violence by labor groups against Asian workers was
common.
A national labor federation, the Knights of Labor, led 1885 Spring Rock, Wyoming riots that
killed 28 Chinese railroad workers.
Most national unions completely excluded blacks.
Black laborers in Louisiana sugar fields in 1887 themselves used violence to thwart
strikebreakers.
In 1890s cotton and textile workers in South usually walked off the job rather than work
with blacks.
When blacks were sufficiently numerous (e.g., in West Virginia coal mines), they were
often admitted to unions. American Federation of Labor (AFL) admitted blacks, but allowed
individual member unions to discriminate.
1915 La Follette Seaman’s Act designed, in part to protect white merchant seamen from
competition from Asians. Samuel Gompers, labor leader, told Robert La Follette, nowrevered Progressive Senator, that free labor market was “driving not only the American but
all white men from the sea.”
Organized labor and minorities
before and during the New Deal
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1926 Railway Labor Act gave any union supported by a majority of railroad workers
exclusive collective-bargaining rights. In 1929 a whites-only rail union insisted that
Louisville & Nashville Railroad relegate black workers, often with substantial seniority, to
the most menial jobs. This contract was overturned by U.S. Supreme Court, but not
until1944, on the grounds that the union had failed to represent its black workers.
Wagner Act (1935), which gave unions legal privileges in heavy industry, opposed by many
black civic leaders. Urban League president Lester Granger called it “the worst piece of
legislation ever passed by the Congress.”
Proposed anti-injunction legislation (ultimately passed in 1933) opposed by some in
NAACP, who thought injunctions gave blacks chance to work when unions wouldn’t admit
them as members.
National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) gave federal government power to extensively
regulate business, including to impose minimum wages, in interest of “fair competition.”
One scholar estimates that blacks, prevented from competing on wage grounds, lost
500,000 jobs as whites sought to protect their own jobs.
The power the NRA gave to unions in particular allowed those dominated by whites to lock
blacks out of private- and public-sector work.
Legislation requiring public projects to pay “prevailing wage” used in 1930s to protect white
construction workers.
Congress of Industrial Organizations, organized along industrial rather than craft lines,
formed in 1938. It immediately admitted black members and enforced non-discrimination
clauses in its charter. A CIO committee was established in 1942 to abolish discrimination
in its ranks.
Organized labor and minorities
during the post-WWII era
• 1947 Taft-Hartley Act diminishes union
monopoly power by outlawing closed shop
and allowing unions too to be charged with
unfair labor practices by NLRB.
• In 1955 AFL and CIO merged; charter
asserted right of all, of any race, to “share
in the full benefits of trade union
organization.”
Organized labor and minorities during the
post-WWII era (continued)
•
•
•
•
•
United Auto Workers consistently halted black advancement indirectly by its
monopolistically high wages and seniority rules for layoffs and promotions
from 1940s-1970s.
George Wallace enthusiastically endorsed by AFL/CIO in 1962 Alabama
governor’s race. When Autherine Lucy integrated the University of
Alabama-Tuscaloosa in 1956, labor-union members were prominent in the
crowds that stormed the campus trying to prevent her attending class.
The AFL-CIO did support the fair-employment sections of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. But an exemption for “bona fide seniority systems” to civil-rights
requirements inserted to protect white workers from previously excluded
black competitors.
In 1965, during construction of the Gateway Arch, the federal Department of
Labor persuaded one contractor to use a black-owned plumbing firm
associated with a non-AFL/CIO labor federation. (None of the 1200 St.
Louis AFL/CIO plumbers were black.) White union workers left the job until
forced back by the courts.
By the 1980s government-employee unions, with many black members,
began to support affirmative action within union seniority constraints.
Black leaders on economic freedom and
organized labor after the Civil War
•
•
•
•
•
“I cannot think so meanly of my fellow-citizens as to suppose that their opposition proceeds
altogether from villainy. It is due in part to honest stupidity, and to that narrow notion of political
economy which supposes every piece of bread that goes into the mouth of one man, is so much
bread taken out of the mouth of another.” – Frederick Douglass, “We Are Not Yet Quite Free,”
August 3, 1869.
“On more than one occasion we have attempted to convince the workingmen of the injury to their
interests of the labor unions of the country, and also their oppressions and tyrannical course
toward fellow workers, as well as to their employers. The history of these organizations –
generally managed, not by industrious workmen themselves, but by unprincipled demagogues
who control them for their own benefit – furnishes abundant proof almost every day of their
mischievous influence upon every industrial interest in the country. – Douglass, “The Folly,
Tyranny and Wickedness of Labor Unions” (New National Era, May 7, 1874).
“Do nothing with them; minding your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is
their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they ask, and really
have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and
succeed best by being left alone. The great majority of human duties are of this negative
character.” – Douglass, “What Should Be Done with Emancipated Slaves,” January 1862.
The AFL is “the most wicked machine for the propagation of race prejudices in the country.” – A.
Philip Randolph, The Messenger, May-June 1919.
“Whatever the tactics, the result is the same for the mass of white workingmen in America: beat or
starve the Negro out of his job if you can by keeping him out of the union; or if you must admit
him, do the same thing inside union lines.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, Crisis, July 1912.
The black press on unions after the
Civil War
•
•
•
•
“There is too much fear of these tyrannical labor trusts on the part of public officials.
The people’s welfare is bartered away, year after year to satisfy the ever-increasing
demands of these selfish cormorants. They bar the Negro from the benefits that
unions are designed to confer, and then proceed to terrify capitalists and politicians
into connivance with their indefensible schemes.” – Colored American, October 8,
1898.
“White miners of that region have combined and sworn that a black man shall not
exist if they have anything to do with it…[The United Mine Workers was] “no more
than an abominable ‘trust’ so far as it relates to the still poor blacks.” -- Washington
Bee, October 7, 1899
“Am I to be permitted to dictate to my brother, when and how he shall dispose of his
toil, and how much he shall receive for it?” -- Indianapolis Freeman, July 7-14, 1894
(on the extremely violent Pullman Railroad strike).
“There are those who think that Negroes should not allow themselves to be used to
help corporations against striking employees, but we are not of the number, on the
theory that a man has the right to quit work if he is dissatisfied and another man has
the right to take the job if he wants to work and is satisfied with the conditions of
employment. The theory that he may also prevent others from working is an
absurdity which cannot be recognized or tolerated without destruction of personal
liberty and of business enterprise.” – New York Age, August 4, 1904.
Some thoughts by giants of the
labor movement on matters of race
•
•
•
“The Dago works for small pay and lives far more like a savage or wild beast, than
the Chinese.”– Eugene Debs, later Socialist Party presidential candidate (1891).
“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a
resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the
hills of Virden, Illinois on the morning of October 12, 1897, for their heroic sacrifice of
their fellow men. They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state
in America. I hope it will be my consolation when I pass away to feel I sleep under the
clay with those brave boys.” – Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones, celebrating miners
whose labor action in 1898, among other things, involved bloody attacks on black
workers and which ultimately prevented black miners from migrating north of the Ohio
River.
“I have stood as a champion of the colored man and have sacrificed self and much of
the movement that the colored man should get a chance. But the Caucasians are not
going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs, or any
other…If the colored man continues to lend himself to the work of tearing down what
the white man has built up, a race hatred worse than any ever known before will
result. Caucasian civilization will serve notice that its uplifting process is not to be
interfered with in any such way.” – Samuel Gompers, founder, AFL (1905).
Some thoughts by giants of progressive
economics on matters of race
•
•
•
•
•
“The Jew occupies a unique position in the clothing trade. His physical strength does
not fit him for manual labor. His instincts lead him to speculation and trade. His
individualism unsuits him for the life of a wage-earner, and especially for the
discipline of a labor organization.” – John R. Commons, Trade Unionism and Labor
Problems (1905).
[Africans are] “a race indolent, improvident, and contented. 75% of the deaths [in
Africa] are said to be executions for supposed witchcraft, which has killed more men
and women than the slave trade.” – Commons, Races and Immigrants in America
(1907).
While “other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized
– the Negro has been only domesticated.” – Commons, ibid.
“The coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him.” – E.A. Ross, wellknown “political economist” of early 20th century, arguing in favor of a minimum-wage
law.
“Of all the ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites, the most ruinous to the
community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners.” – Sidney
Webb, British socialist economist, “The Economic Theory of a Legal Minimum Wage,”
The Journal of Political Economy (1912), making the same argument.
Why did unions behave so much more
discriminatorily than employers?
• It is in the interests of laborers, and
especially organized labor, to restrict the
supply of workers. It is in the interest of
employers to have free competition among
workers.
• “We desire protection against foreign
pauper labor imported against our
interests, to reduce the price of labor.” –
Andrew Cameron, The Workingman’s
Advocate, Sept. 1, 1866.
A person may live in Manchester for years, and go in and out daily without coming
into contact with a working people’s quarter or even with workers, that is, so long
as he confines himself to his business or pleasure walks. This arises chiefly from
the fact, that by unconscious tacit agreement… the working people’s quarters are
sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle
class…Manchester contains, at its heart, a rather extended commercial district,
perhaps half a mile long and about as broad, and consisting almost wholly of
offices and warehouses. Nearly the whole district is abandoned by dwellers and
is lonely and deserted at night…this district is cut through by main thoroughfares
upon which the vast traffic concentrates, and in which the ground level is lined
with brilliant shops. With the exception of the commercial district, all Manchester
proper is unmixed working-people’s quarters, stretching like a girdle averaging a
mile and a half in breadth around the commercial district. Outside, beyond this
girdle, lives the middle and upper class. – Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the
Working Class in England (1844).
Demolition of Cabrini-Green housing-project tower
The Thomas Schelling diversity
model
• Two groups, defined both by percentage
of population and initial geographic
distribution.
• Members of each group have a particular,
given desire to live among their own; if
neighbors not of their own kind exceed a
certain percentage, they will move.
• Equilibrium occurs when no one wants to
move.
One possible initial distribution; each individual wants at least
50% of four neighbors around him to be of same type.
Stage 2
Stage 3
Seen in two dimensions, assuming that each
individual wants at least half of neighbors
immediately surrounding him to be of same type.
Initial distribution
Final equilibrium
Implications
• Even low tastes for segregation yield
highly segregated neighborhoods.
• This happens even when only one group
has a significant taste for segregation.
• Neighborhood “tipping” is a very possible
outcome; once a threshold is reached the
older group empties out.
• Applicable to many big cities in many
Western countries.
A taste for those unlike you?
•
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-white-people-are-no-longer-relevant-in-pop-musicin-terms-of-sales-2012-3#
1962: For the first time, half the Top 10 were African-American artists.
1973 was another turning point: The top-selling artist was a
multicultural collaboration.
1993: Eight of the 10 bestsellers were African-American, and the other
two were white or multicultural groups playing forms of reggae.
2000 was another turning point: The Top 10 has featured a cross-cultural
collaboration every year since Santana's No. 2 album.
Percentage answering "No" to question, "Do your children attend school with
children of other races"
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1972
1980
1990
Source: University of Chicago, General Social Survey
2000
2004
The economic function of the middleman
is to match buyers and sellers. For
buyers to find sellers and sell directly,
and for sellers to find buyers and buy
directly, is too costly because of lack of
knowledge by each side about the other.
The middleman is compensated for his
knowledge.
The middleman or trading minority
specializes in retail activites, and is paid for
“knowledge” and “knitting,” the ability to
know, often after a lot of costly searching,
where buyers and sellers are, and the effort
required to knit them together through buying
from one party, marking the good up and
selling to the other.
Chinatowns around the world
San Francisco
Yokohama, Japan
Bangkok, Thailand
London
Sydney, Australia
Toronto
Vancouver
The Milesians were not only familiar with the Greek culture
of the mainland, but were also conversant with the Near
Eastern cultures of Lydia, Cappadocia, of Phrygia, of the
Phoenician lands, of Egypt, of the whole Levantine world.
Traders they were, wandering about, speaking with great
facility this, that, or the other tongue that they found
necessary to transact their business.
- Howard Becker, Man in Reciprocity: Introductory
Lectures on Culture, Society and Personality (New York:
Praeger, 1956), p. 227.
Taken as a whole, opinion was hostile to the
middleman. His function, and his hard work in bringing
buyer and seller together, were ignored; profits were not
regarded as a reward for labor, but as the result of
sharp practices. Despite the fact that his very existence
was proof to the contrary, the middleman was held to be
redundant.
- R.A. Radford, “The Economic Organization of a
P.O.W. Camp,” Economica, Nov. 1945, p. 199.
School-age children, when not in school, were at their
parents’ elbows, waiting on customers, making change,
stocking shelves, and imbibing the shrewdness of
operating an independent business on meager
resources. They were inculcated with the parents’ work
and thrift ethics and the lesson that family unity and selfdenial was essential to the family’s goals…With all of
their attraction to America, Lebanese parents, however,
disapproved of their children growing up “like American
children” without the restraints of Lebanese values.
- Alixa Naff, “Lebanese Immigration into the
United States: 1880 to the Present,” The Lebanese in
the World, Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi (eds.), p.
157.
"We will not stand by and allow them to
move this brother so that some white
interloper can expand his business."
- Rev. Al Sharpton, 1995
Burned market, Koreatown, Los Angeles, 1992
Two Korean men stand on the roof of a grocery store with rifles to prevent
looters from entering the store, April 30, 1992, in Los Angeles. The worst riots
in modern U.S. history began when outnumbered police were faced by a crowd
angered by the acquittals of four white police officers accused in the videotaped
beating of black motorist Rodney King. Few lives in the city were untouched by
the riots, but some were nearly destroyed. (AP)
Jae Yul Kim greets longtime customer McKinley Gipson in his market
in South Central Los Angeles, April 10, 1997. Five years earlier, Kim
watched helplessly as a man put a gun to his ribs while a mob
ransacked and burned his small market. Kim and his family rebuilt their
store and relations with the community around it.
Turkish rule...meant unutterable contempt...The Armenians
(and the Greeks) were dogs and pigs...to be spat upon, if
their shadow darkened a Turk, to be outraged, to be the
mats on which he wiped the mud from his feet. Conceive
the inevitable result of centuries of slavery, of subjection to
insult and scorn, centuries in which nothing that belonged
to the Armenian, neither his property, his house, his life, his
person, nor his family, was sacred or safe from violence—
capricious, unprovoked violence—to resist which by
violence meant death.
- Ramsay, William M. Impressions of Turkey During
Twelve Years' Wanderings. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1897. pp. 206-207
The Turks have embarked upon the total extermination of the
Armenians in Transcaucasia...The aim of Turkish policy is, as
I have reiterated, the taking of possession of Armenian
districts and the extermination of the Armenians. Talaat's
government wants to destroy all Armenians, not just in
Turkey but also outside Turkey. On the basis of all the reports
and news coming to me here in Tiflis there hardly can be any
doubt that the Turks systematically are aiming at the
extermination of the few hundred thousand Armenians whom
they left alive until now.
- Major General Otto von Lossow, acting German
military attaché in Turkey, 1918
The battalion left Aleppo on 3 February and reached Ras
al-Ain in twelve hours....some 12,000 Armenians were
concentrated under the guardianship of some hundred
Kurds…These Kurds were called gendarmes, but in reality
mere butchers; bands of them were publicly ordered to
take parties of Armenians, of both sexes, to various
destinations, but had secret instructions to destroy the
males, children and old women...One of these gendarmes
confessed to killing 100 Armenian men himself...the empty
desert cisterns and caves were also filled with corpses.
- Gertrude Bell, British diplomat in Turkey
We intend to harm, maim, cause them a lot of suffering, even killing them in
the most despicable way ever…if they don’t leave our land and country
immediately.
- Uganda Africa Trade Movement, statement on Indian middleman
in that country, 1992.
“We are tired of Asians!
They should go back to their land!“
- Slogan chanted by rioters on April 12, 2007 against plans by
company founded by Ugandans of Indian origin to grow sugar cane
in a national forest (with permission of government).
As many as 3000 Tamils are said to have been killed,
nearly 60% of the Tamils in Colombo were turned into
refugees, and most of the Colombo Tamil business
community, which had accounted for over half the city’s
commercial infrastructure, was ruined. Many Sinhalese
burned down their own workplaces, targeting, in
particular, Tamil-owned garment factories. Much of the
wholesale food district of Colombo was destroyed. The
stately Victorian railroad station in the center of the city
had to be converted into a morgue to accommodate the
corpses.
- William McGowan, Only Man Is Vile: The Tragedy of Sri
Lanka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), p. 97.
Not only the numbers, but also the nature of the atrocities, suggested the
levels of hatred that had developed in a once peaceful and harmonious
country. For example, a bus was accosted by a mob and the bus driver
ordered to turn over a Tamil. He pointed to a woman passenger who was
then taken out into the street, where her belly was ripped open with a broken
bottle and she was set on fire. People in the mob “clapped and danced” as
she died in agony.
-Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study
(Yale University Press, 2004), p. 90
Sri Lankan army troops pulled 20 civilians off a bus and executed them two
weeks ago in retaliation for a Tamil guerilla attack that killed 13 soldiers, a
government spokesman confirmed today.
- “Sri Lanka Confirms Report of Army Slayings,” The New York Times, August
7, 1983.
Northern soldiers chased Ibo troops from their barracks and murdered scores
with bayonets. Screaming Moslem mobs descended on the Ibo quarters of
every northern city, killing their victims with clubs, poison arrows and shotguns.
Tens of thousands of Ibos were murdered in the systematic massacres that
followed.
- David Lamb, The African (Random House, 1982), p. 308.
Gangs of youths armed with machetes, swords and bows and arrows took to
the streets of lay goes yesterday in a third day of ethnic conflict in which at
least 55 people have been killed.
Grabbing what possessions they could, thousands left their homes as plumes
of black smoke rose from the city slum… soldiers were deployed yesterday to
help contain the violence, which began on Saturday between Yoruba and
Hausa tribal fights in the impoverished northern areas of Idi Araba and Mushin.
- “Thousands Flee Ethnic Blood-Letting,” The Australian, February 6, 2002.
To the average Nigerian, a political leader is good only if he is able to patronise
members of his family at the expense of other families, to promote the cause of
his tribe at the expense of the nation, and, if need be, to defend the wrong of a
brother at the expense of justice.
- Obi Igwara, “Dominance and Difference: Rival Visions of Ethnicity in Nigeria,”
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24 (1), January 2001, p. 88.
“The efforts of men are utilized in two different ways: they are directed to
the production or transformation of economic goods, or else to the
appropriation of goods produced by others.”
- Vilfredo Pareto
Pieter van der Heyden, The Battle About Money (c. 1570).
Inscription: “It’s all for money and goods, this fighting and quarreling.”
“With, without…
And who’ll deny…
It’s what the fighting’s all about”
- Pink Floyd, “Us and Them,” 1973
Cooperation vs. conflict
• Cooperative production is positive-sum:
participants end up better off than when
they started.
• Conflict is, at best, zero-sum: one party
can gain only at another’s expense.
• Conflict may even by negative-sum, in that
both parties are worse off than if
opportunities for conflict did not exist.
“Gain cannot be made without loss to someone else.”
- Publilius Syrus, 337.
Examples of conflict
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Warfare
Crime
Lobbying
Voting
Litigation
Sports contests*
Strikes/lockouts
Backstabbing and tattling at work
Politics is an activity that lends itself to conflict; it
is frequently zero- or negative-sum. (Exception:
public goods.)
In the economic theory of conflict,
who will fight harder?
• Depends on comparative advantage in fighting and in
joint production. Party with comparative advantage in
fighting should fight more.
• Party with comparative advantage in production will
produce more, fight less.
• Thus, one party contributes more to production, but via
conflict, what is produced is partly redistributed toward
other party.
• Those with fewer resources, or those with resources not
well-suited to the productive process, will tend to fight
more. Conflict, in other words, leads to more equal
distribution of (less) income than a world without conflict.
The natural resource curse occurs when most
of a country’s assets lie in the ground (resource
capital) rather than in the mind (human capital).
Because human capital is mobile while
resource capital is secured by controlling land,
resource capital promotes violence in order to
control the land under which it sits.
Ethnic Politics:
• Focuses on the faults of the other group
rather than any deficiencies of the own
group.
• Is heavy on symbolism, often at the
expense of substantial steps to improve
the group’s lot.
Ethnic diversity and economic
discrimination
Legislative economic discrimination, 2004
Economic discrimination
4
3.9
3.8
3.7
3.6
3.5
3.4
Lowest third
Middle third
Ethnic diversity
Highest third
Two principles suggested by the economic model
of conflict to achieve a more harmonious society
• Maximum economic freedom, especially in
starting businesses and hiring and firing.
• No ethnoracial or religious discrimination
by the government.
Commerce attaches [people] to one another through mutual utility.... Through
commerce, man learns to deliberate, to be honest, to acquire manners, to be
prudent and reserved in both talk and action. Sensing the necessity to be wise
and honest in order to succeed, he flees vice, or at least his demeanor exhibits
decency and seriousness so as not to arouse any adverse judgment on the part
of present and future acquaintances. - Samuel Rincard, 1704
Quoted in: Pinker, Steven (2011-10-04). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why
Violence Has Declined (Kindle Locations 1878-1887). Penguin Group. Kindle
Edition.
Source: Human Security Center, Human Security Report 2005,
http://www.humansecurityreport.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=31&
Itemid=66
Things language can teach us about how
things used to be
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Whipping boy
Excruciating
Hold one’s feet to the fire
To be racked with pain
To be drawn and quartered
To be disemboweled
A slow burn
Keelhaul
In 1968 the political scientist Andrew Hacker predicted that African Americans
would soon rise up and engage in “dynamiting of bridges and water mains, firing
of buildings, assassination of public officials and private luminaries. And of course
there will be occasional rampages.” Undeterred by the dearth of dynamitings and
the rarity of rampages, he followed up in 1992 with Two Nations: Black and White,
Separate, Hostile, Unequal, whose message was “A huge racial chasm remains,
and there are few signs that the coming century will see it closed.” Though the
1990s were a decade in which Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and Colin Powell
were repeatedly named in polls as among the most admired Americans, gloomy
assessments on race relations dominated literary life. The legal scholar Derrick
Bell, for example, wrote in a 1992 book subtitled The Permanence of Racism that
“racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society.”
Source: Pinker, Steven (2011-10-04). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why
Violence Has Declined (Kindle Locations 8625-8630). Penguin Group. Kindle
Edition.
John Kim: Father of 2, accountant, ethnically
Korean, born in U.S., son of immigrants,
Presbyterian, New York Giants fan, tennis
player, left-hander, resident of Pennsylvania,
epileptic.
Two kinds of identities
• Exclusive identities: explicitly exclusive,
unavoidably separate you from other types
of that identity (race, religion, ethnicity,
sex).
• Non-exclusive identities: while distinct,
they do not place you in unavoidable
opposition to other groups (scientists, lefthanders; citizenship?)
Are ethnoreligious identities
natural or forced?
• "She used the word Hispanic. I wanted to
ask her, 'Why are you using that word?‘
People who use that word don't know why
they're using it. To me, it's like a slave
name. I'm a Latina.“
- Sandra Cisneros, poet, The Washington
Post, August 25, 2003.
Are ethnoreligious identities immutable?
• “We Latinos, we think different.”
- Jose Maldonado, unsuccessful candidate
for city council in Montclair, CA
(interviewed in 2012).
Gains from trade and exclusivist
identities
• Over time, in free societies, exclusivist
identities tend to fade in importance
because emphasizing it is costly in terms
of gains from trade with other groups.
• Certain people who are expert in or who
have themselves invested heavily in an
exclusivist identity have an incentive to try
to get it subsidized.
The state and identity
• The state should subsidize things that
enhance gains from trade – common
language(s), sense of citizenship.
• Identities for which the gains are primarily
private and confined to the group should
not be subsidized or taxed.
“Acting white”
• “I got there [Holy Providence School in Cornwall Heights, right
outside Philadelphia] and immediately found that I could read better
than anyone else in the school. My father’s example and my
mother’s training had made that come easy; I could pick up a book,
read it aloud, pronounce the words with proper inflections and
actually know what they meant. When the nuns found this out they
paid me a lot of attention, once even asking me, a fourth grader, to
read to the seventh grade. When the kids found this out, I became a
target....It was my first time away from home, my first experience in
an all black situation, and I found myself being punished for
everything I’d ever been taught was right. I got all A’s and was
hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk. I had to learn a
new language simply to be able to deal with the threats. I had good
manners and was a good little boy and paid for it with my hide.” –
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Giant Steps (1987, p. 16) on
Multiculturalism is a practice which promotes teaching, learning, and understanding of cultural,
social, political, and human differences. We are including topics of race, gender, sexual identity,
disability, religious difference, class, and their complex intersections as they are addressed in
questions of social justice, patterns of oppression, and the institutionalization of prejudice. As
synonymous with multiculturalism, diversity functions as a critique of glib universalism, and affirms
the search for a dialogue to find common ground.
Multiculturalism is an approach to education that prepares students to take social action against
social structural inequality. It emphasizes understanding, the causes of oppression and inequality,
and ways in which these social problems might be eliminated. Adherents to multiculturalism try to
use their power for collective betterment.
-Sleeter and Grant, “Multicultural Education.” Facing Racism in Education. 1990
Multiculturalism promotes the strength and value of cultural diversity, human rights and respect for
cultural diversity, (and alternative life choices for people). Social justice and equal opportunity for all
people, and equity distribution of power among members of all ethnic groups. It is a process which
engages institutional racism, unequal power relationships among socalled racial groups, and
economic stratification, and social class.
Multiculturalism (n): The practice of acknowledging and respecting the various cultures, ethnicities,
attitudes and opinions within an environment.
Diversity Database-Moving Towards Community, University of Maryland, diversity@umail.umd.edu,
10/21/99
Taking a multicultural stance is taking an anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-heterosexist stance.
- Beth Richie, 1989
(Source: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~divcoaff/bias_prevention/definitions.htm)
•
Multiculturalism is a practice which promotes teaching, learning, and understanding of cultural, social, political, and
human differences. We are including topics of race, gender, sexual identity, disability, religious difference, class,
and their complex intersections as they are addressed in questions of social justice, patterns of oppression, and
the institutionalization of prejudice. As synonymous with multiculturalism, diversity functions as a critique of glib
universalism, and affirms the search for a dialogue to find common ground.
•
Multiculturalism is an approach to education that prepares students to take social action against social structural
inequality. It emphasizes understanding, the causes of oppression and inequality, and ways in which these social
problems might be eliminated. Adherents to multiculturalism try to use their power for collective betterment. Sleeter and Grant, “Multicultural Education.” Facing Racism in Education. 1990
•
Multiculturalism promotes the strength and value of cultural diversity, human rights and respect for cultural
diversity, (and alternative life choices for people). Social justice and equal opportunity for all people, and equity
distribution of power among members of all ethnic groups. It is a process which engages institutional racism,
unequal power relationships among socalled racial groups, and economic stratification, and social class.
•
Multiculturalism (n): The practice of acknowledging and respecting the various cultures, ethnicities, attitudes and
opinions within an environment.
Diversity Database-Moving Towards Community, University of Maryland, diversity@umail.umd.edu, 10/21/99
Taking a multicultural stance is taking an anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-heterosexist stance.
- Beth Richie, 1989 (Source: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~divcoaff/bias_prevention/definitions.htm)
•
Canadian multiculturalism is fundamental to our belief that all citizens are
equal. Multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can
take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance
gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them
more open to, and accepting of, diverse cultures. The Canadian experience
has shown that multiculturalism encourages racial and ethnic harmony and
cross-cultural understanding, and discourages ghettoization, hatred,
discrimination and violence.
Source: http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/multi/what-multi_e.cfm
Multiculturalism is, in the words of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a
search, a "conversation among different voices," to discover perspectives that
have been silenced in traditional scholastic narratives. Multiculturalism attempts
to uncover "the histories and experiences of people who have been left out of
the curriculum," as anti-racist educator Enid Lee emphasizes. Because
multiculturalism is an undertaking that requires new scholarship and constant
discussion, it necessarily is ongoing.
Source:
http://www.socialstudies.com/c/@.3LoXXbbb5oFQ/Pages/multiculturalism.html
Of course, "multiculturalism" is the exact opposite of melting pot! It
literally means don't learn our country's cultural values, don't learn our
way of life, don't learn our language, don't try to fit in, don't assimilate!
Source:
http://www.adversity.net/Terms_Definitions/TERMS/Multiculturalism.ht
m
multicultural
adj
1. Said especially of a society, community, etc: made up of, involving or relating
to several distinct racial or religious cultures, etc. Compare monocultural.
Derivative: multiculturalism
noun
The policy of accommodating any number of distinct cultures within one society
without prejudice or discrimination.
Derivative: multiculturalist
adj, noun
Source: http://www.allwords.com/word-multiculturalism.html
The secularization hypothesis
• Religious belief is an artifact of an earlier
time, when life was difficult and often
short. As societies modernize, religious
belief fades away, forced out by science,
prosperity and secular ethics.
But in the U.S., one of the world’s richest
and most scientifically productive countries:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Membership in an organized church was 17 percent of the population during
Revolution, 34% in the mid-1800s, perhaps 60% today.
The rate of clergy membership has always been roughly 12/10,000 pop. since the
1840s; at the highest level ever recorded now.
Since the dawn of opinion polling (late 1930s), roughly 40% of Americans have
claimed they attend church weekly.
Roughly 95% of Americans have always told pollsters they believe in God.
Since the mid-1950s, church contributions have been about 1% of GDP, half of all
charitable giving. Religiously motivated volunteering is the most common kind.
The rate of religious belief is constant across income levels, and is increasing in
levels of education.
Members of so-called extremist “cults” have no signs of standard clinical mental
illness.
Professors are less religious than the general population, but this is particularly true in
the humanities and social sciences, especially psychology, sociology and
anthropology. Natural scientists believe at a higher rate, and the same percentage of
them (roughly 40%) believe in a God who answers prayer as did in 1916.
“Sects” vs. “mainline
denominations”
• “Sects” tend to be younger, to be more
orthodox, to impose more stringent
limitations on member behavior –
Orthodox Jews or Pentocostalists, e.g.
• “Mainline denominations” tend to have
fewer restrictions – Reform and
Reconstructionist Jews, Episcopalians,
e.g.
Religious capital
• Religious capital is like any other form of
human capital. Investing in it yields
returns.
• But it is specific human capital. Investing
a lot in Orthodox Judaism, for example,
doesn’t put one in a position to be a
devout Mormon. But it does make the
cost of leaving Orthodox Judaism high.
The implications of the religious
capital model
• People should tend to be of the same
religion as their parents, especially when
the parents are quite religious.
• Most religious switching occurs in youth.
• Endogamous marriages are more stable.
• Religious devotion will be less in societies
with more non-religious opportunities.
A club good has some characteristics of a
public good but is subject to crowding costs.
The benefits are provided nonrivalrously
(like a public good), but at some point extra
members provide more costs than benefits.
Source: Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White
America, 1960-2010.
Why might religious belief promote
happiness?
• Social networks of people with similar
beliefs and approaches to life. These
networks can be drawn on in time of need.
• Promotes behavior correlated with
happiness – good health practices, valuing
family, etc.
• Makes personal crises more manageable
by encouraging reaction that is optimistic
or accepting.
Source: Abbott L. Ferriss, “Religion and the Quality of Life, Journal of
Happiness Studies 3 (3), 2002.
According to research, how, specifically is religion
shown to be linked with better health?
• Lower mortality rates at a given age.
• Lower incidence of depression.
• Better self-reported health.
Source: Matthew E. Dupre et al., “Religious Attendance and Mortality: Implications for the BlackWhite Mortality Crossover,” Demography 43 (1), 2006.
Source: Same
Source: Same
Source: Same
Why might religious belief promote
economic growth?
• Encouraging positive (or negative) behavior:
Belief system of a particular religion promotes
hard work, thrift, other habits conducive to
growth in traditional models. Or, it promotes
habits (exclusion of women, avoidance of
modern technology) costly to growth.
• Deterring negative behavior: Religious belief
leads to less of other behaviors that are costly to
growth – crime, drug and alcohol abuse, school
attendance, and crime, all of which have been
shown empirically to be related in the expected
direction to religious belief.
So does it?
• Religious belief does positively affect
growth. After standardizing for that,
religious attendance does not (although it
might still have a beneficial effect by
supporting belief).
Optimal government policy toward
religion
• First, religion is generally welfare-enhancing.
• Second, competitive markets are better with
regard to total consumer welfare – because
religions can be more appealing to the
consumer and perhaps better from the point of
view of the entire society.
• Thus, policy should promote competition where
possible. Since religious entry is easy (i.e.,
religions are not natural monopolies), religions
should neither be taxed nor subsidized, and
there should be “separation of church and state.”
Religious freedom and religious
quality
• “But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the
conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than
those of another when it had gained the victory, it would probably
have dealt equally and impartially with all the different sects, and
have allowed every man to choose his own priest and his own
religion as he thought proper…The teachers of each little sect,
finding themselves almost alone, would be obliged to respect those
of almost every other sect, and the concessions which they would
mutually find it both convenient and agreeable to make to one
another, might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater
part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every
mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men
have in all ages of the world wished to see established.”
- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
But what is “separation of church
and state”?
• The prevailing legal standard is that of Lemon v. Kurtzman,
403 U.S. 602 [1971], which requires that any church/state mix
pass three tests: (1) it must have a secular purpose; (2) it
must have a primary secular effect; and (3) it must not involve
the government in an excessive entanglement with religion.
• But what does this mean? Open access or no access?
• No access may be a subsidy of anti-religious belief.
Economically, the goal should be to subsidize no particular
religious belief. This requires open access, not scrubbing the
public square clean of all religious expression, if secularism is
itself a belief.
• In countries with subsidized state churches and French-style
sterilization of the church in the state, religious observance is
lower and less diverse.
Permanent residents
New legal permanent residents to U.S., 1820-2005
2,000,000
1,800,000
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0
2000
1980
1960
1940
1920
1900
1880
1860
1840
1820
192
National Quick Facts: 2002
• In 2002, 32 million (12 percent of the
U.S. population) were foreign born.
• In 2002, 12 million (37 percent of the
foreign born) were U.S. citizens through
naturalization.
• 49 percent of the foreign born entered
the U.S. between 1990 and 2002.
• Of the 32 million foreign born in 2002,
17 million were from Latin America.
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
193
Percent Foreign Born
by World Region of Birth: 2002
Percent
Total Foreign Born
Latin America
Asia
Europe
Africa
Other Regions
100
52
27
15
3
3
Source: American Community Survey194
2002
Immigration source countries, 2007 (legal
permanent residents)
1. Mexico 148,180
2. China 70,924
3. Philippines 68,792
4. India 55,371
5. Russia 41.593
6. Colombia 32,055
7. Haiti 29,978
8. Dominican Republic 27,785
9. Vietnam 27,510
10. Cuba 25,441
17. 16,113
Language Spoken at Home
for the Foreign Born: 2002
(Population 5 years and over)
Percent
Total Foreign Born
Speak only English
Speak a language other than
English
100
17
83
Speak Spanish
45
Speak Asian or Pacific Island languages
18
Speak other Indo-European languages
17
Speak other languages
3
Source: American Community Survey 2002
196
English-Speaking Ability of Foreign Born Who Speak Spanish
At Home: 2002
(Population aged 5 and older)
Percent
Speak Spanish
Speak English "very well"
Speak English "well"
Speak English "not well"
Speak English "not at all"
100
29
21
31
19
Source: American Community Survey197
2002
Top Five Places of 100,000 or More
Population With the Highest Number of
Foreign Born: 2000
Place
Total Foreign Born
New York, NY
2,871,000
Los Angeles, CA
1,513,000
Chicago, IL
629,000
Houston, TX
516,000
San Jose, CA
330,000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000
199
Age Distribution by Sex for the Native and Foreign-Born
Populations: 2002
Native
Foreign Born
Age
Male
Female
Male
Female
80+
75- 79
70- 74
65- 69
60- 64
55- 59
50- 54
45- 49
40- 44
35- 39
30- 34
25- 29
20- 24
15- 19
10- 14
5- 9
0- 4
8
6
4
2
0
Percent
2
4
6
8
8
6
4
2
0
2
4
6
8
Percent
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
200
Percent of Population Aged 18 to
64 by Place of Birth: 2002
(In Percent)
Foreign Born
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
201
202
Percent of Population with Less Than 9th
Grade Completed by Place of Birth: 2002
(Population 25 years and over)
35
22
11
10
8
4
Total
Europe
Asia
Latin
America
Other
Regions
Native
Foreign Born
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
203
Percent of Population with a Bachelor’s
Degree or Higher by Place of Birth: 2002
(Population 25 years and over)
Foreign Born
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
204
Median Earnings of Year-Round, Full-Time Foreign-Born Workers by Place of Birth:
2001 (Population 15 years and over with earnings) (In dollars)
Foreign Born
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
205
206
Percent of Population Below Poverty
Level by Place of Birth: 2001
(In Percent)
20.6
16.1
Total
10.0
11.1
Europe
Asia
13.2
Latin
America
Other
Regions
11.1
Native
Foreign Born
Source: Current Population Survey, (2002) Annual Social and Economic Supplement
207
Immigrants and public assistance,
percent using (2001)
Any
Public
assistance
TANF
Food
Stamps
Medicaid
Native-born
14
1.6
5.4
13.4
Legal
immigrants
20.3
2.7
5.9
21.4
Legal nonrefugees
19.1
2.5
5.2
20.5
Illegal
immigrants
19.8
0.7
4.8
23
208
Should immigrants be forced to
assimilate?
• Private ethnoreligious capital yields
returns for people, including parents
investing in it for their children.
• But a common culture is a public good of
sorts, like a common standard of weights
and measures or a common currency.
If globalization is simply lower transport costs, its effects on
culture should be:
• More trade in the existing cultural
products;
• More cultural experimentation.
But “more trade in the existing
cultural products” can mean:
• More diverse cultural-consumption
opportunities,
• Or cultural domination by a single culture,
if that culture benefits from increasing
returns to scale.
“The world’s needs and desires have been irrevocably
homogenized… The multinational corporation operates
in a number of countries, and adjusts its products and
practices to each — at high relative costs. The global
corporation. operates with resolute constancy — at low
relative cost — as if the entire world (or major regions
of it) were a single entity; it sells the same things in the
same way everywhere. ... Ancient differences in
national tastes or modes of doing business disappear.”
- Theodore Levitt, “The Globalization of Markets,” The
Harvard Business Review (1983).
Is cultural uniformity a negative effect
of globalization?
• Free trade is beautiful – Culture flourishes under
exchange and prosperity and stagnates under
protection. All culture ultimately is a product of
exchange, and the more the better.
• Addition, not subtraction – To a surprising degree,
pop culture goes in many directions, not just out of
the U.S. The global culture is a pot luck from which
diners may choose freely, not take-it-or-leave-it.
This effect is enhanced by the digitization of culture.
• Resilience – Much culture will survive in open
competition if consumers find it worthwhile. If not, is
it really a loss?
• “A system that allows a bad singer to
earn more than a good singer gets
you more singing of many different
kinds.”
- Tyler Cowen, economist, Reason
magazine online, Aug./Sept. 2003.
“Spring rolls with curried chicken and mango
salsa.”
- Appetizer item, Lil’s Land & Sea Restaurant,
Crested Butte, Colorado.
Is cultural uniformity a negative effect of
globalization? (continued)
• Defining culture properly – Culture is
something far more profound than CDs, Tshirts and burgers;
• “Museum fallacy” – People who if allowed
to will choose otherwise should not be
forced to live their lives in a manner that
modernized intellectuals, especially in the
First World, feel is “appropriate.”
• “McWorld is a product of popular culture. Its template is
American, its form style. Its goods are as much images as
materiel, an aesthetic as well as a product line. It is about culture
as commodity, apparel as ideology.”
- Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (1998)
• “I mean, we don’t even export the best of our own
culture…defined by serious music, by jazz, by poetry, by our
extraordinary literature, our playwrights - we export the worst, the
most childish, the most base, the most trivial of our culture. And
we call that American.
- Barber, interviewed in The Washington Post (2002).
•
“How depressing was it to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by
buying consumer electronics?”
Columnist Anna Quindlen, in Newsweek, 12/03, reacting to Afghans’ post-Taliban
surge of interest in Indian movies and satellite TV.
•
“The idea that people are poor doesn't mean that they are not living good lives…I
have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that
were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity.”
Gar Smith, president, Earth Island Institute
•
•
•
"This whole area was littered with commercialism. There were hundreds of beach
chairs out here. I prefer the sand. Everyone is talking about it. It looks much better
now."
Greg Farrando, tourist from Hawaii, vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, two weeks
after the 2004 tsunami.
"People often say, 'How could you, living in India,
end up a Reaganite?' Well, the answer is, live in India.
There are two things that people don't understand.
One is the degree to which a highly regulated
economy produces masses of corruption because it
empowers bureaucrats. It just has to be seen to be
believed. The second is that you are very quickly
inured to the charms of preindustrial village life.
Whenever someone says the word community, I
want to reach for an oxygen mask.“
- Fareed Zakaria, The Wall Street Journal, April 26,
2005.
Is cultural uniformity a negative effect of
globalization? (continued)
• The culture of liberty (Vargas Llosa): For
several reasons, the changes that we are
observing are in the end to be applauded,
not criticized.
“The Culture of Liberty”
• Some cultural practices will be eliminated by
globalization, but this is modernization rather
than Americanization;
• Globalization and the liberty that accompany
it are better for cultural preservation;
• To reduce a person to his culture is
dehumanizing.
The historical roots of cultural anti-globalization: antimodernization and anti-Americanism
According to their critics,
Modernization/globalization/America promote:
- Mindless consumerist conformity, where
everyone is like everyone else;
- Love of money, and of nothing else;
- Racial/religious/class mixing;
- Worship of technology that destroys spirituality
and a harmonious relation with the earth.
On the market, modernization and tolerance
“Go into the Exchange in London, that place
more venerable than many a court, and you
will see representatives of all the nations
assembled there for the profit of mankind.
There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the
Christian deal with one another as if they were
of the same religion and reserve the name of
infidel for those who go bankrupt…If there
were only one religion in England, there would
be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they
would cut each other's throats; but there are
thirty, and they live happily together in peace.”
- Voltaire, “Letters on England,” 1733.
"Men admired as profound philosophers
gravely asserted that all animals, and with
them the human species, degenerate in
America -- that even dogs cease to bark
after having breathed awhile in our
atmosphere.“
- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
Sometimes it comes to my mind
To sail to America
To that pig-pen of Freedom
Inhabited by boors living in equality
- Heinrich Heine, German Romantic poet
"The breathless haste with which they [the
Americans] work – the distinctive vice of the
new world – is already beginning ferociously to
infect old Europe and is spreading a spiritual
emptiness over the continent."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
America, in the words of several speakers, was a land almost
without values. One participant in the conference, a conductor
who lived for three years in the US, told the audience that
American values consisted of “owning a house, a car and a dog.”
- David Rennie, writer, The Daily Telegraph, Jan. 20, 2006,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETA
IL&grid=P30&blog=newsdesk&xml=/news/2006/01/29/bleurop
e29.xml, referring to comments made at a conference on the
future of the EU in Salzburg, Austria, Jan. 27-28, 2006.
“After roaming the streets of the capital a day or two, making
headway with difficulty through the human turmoil and the endless
lines of vehicles, after visiting the slums of the metropolis, one
realizes for the first time that these Londoners have been forced to
sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all
the marvels of civilization which crowd their city; that a hundred
powers which slumbered within them have remained inactive, have
been suppressed in order that a few might be developed more fully
and multiply through union with those of others. The very turmoil
of the streets has something repulsive, something against which
human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes
and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human
beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same
interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek
happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they
crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common,
nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit
one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to
delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man
to honor another with so much as a glance.”
- Friedrich Engels, “The Condition of the Working Class in
England (1845) (emphasis added)
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to
all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the
motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has
left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most
heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of
philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation,
veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its
paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil,
and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Since the domination in these countries [America
and the USSR] of a cross section of the
indifferent mass has become something more
than a dreary accident. It has become an active
onslaught that destroys all rank and every
world-creating impulse of the spirit, and calls it a
lie. This is the onslaught of what we call the
demonic (in the sense of destructive evil).
- Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics
(emphasis added)
“But [1930s Japanese] intellectuals detested
Americanism for a more personal reason. They knew
that in an Americanized society, dominated by
commercial culture, the place of philosophers and
literati was marginal at best. Far from being the
dogma favored by downtrodden peasants,
Occidentalism more often reflects the fears and
prejudices of urban intellectuals, who feel displaced in
a world of mass commerce.”
- Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism:
The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, 2004, p. 30.
First, the challenge that Islamism represents is not a
strange and unfamiliar one. Rapid transition to
modernity has long spawned radicalization; we have
seen the exact same forms of alienation among those
young people who in earlier generations became
anarchists, Bolsheviks, fascists or members of the
Bader-Meinhof gang. The ideology changes but the
underlying psychology does not.
- Francis Fukuyama, “A Year of Living
Dangerously,” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 2, 2005.
The universal civilization (= culture
of liberty) and global culture
• The universal-civilization argument (Naipaul,
Vargas Llosa) says that there are cultural
universals, that most humans want them, and
that they will replace their own culture’s features
to the extent they conflict with the needs of the
universal civilization.
• But this in no way destroys other aspects of
culture, and even allows them to be preserved.
What is in the universal civilization?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rational inquiry/science
Progress
Justice preferable to injustice
Prosperity preferable to poverty
Education preferable to ignorance
Desire to know the outside world
Work ethic, requiring belief that work is fairly rewarded.
Society must be capable of admitting, learning from and
correcting its mistakes.
• Ethnoreligious diversity is an asset rather than a liability.