Theories of discrimination, cont.

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 anti-colonial, 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: • that definition may be problematic • territory may not be important • 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: • 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.

Theories of discrimination, cont.