[ There is a widely held belief, especially among white people,
that social welfare programs primarily benefit African Americans. Yet,
in virtually all U.S. social support programs, whites are the largest
demographic group of recipients. ]
[[link removed]]

RACE INEQUALITY, CLASS INEQUALITY  
[[link removed]]


 

Arthur MacEwan
December 19, 2023
Dollars and Sense
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ There is a widely held belief, especially among white people, that
social welfare programs primarily benefit African Americans. Yet, in
virtually all U.S. social support programs, whites are the largest
demographic group of recipients. _

Workers leave a Detroit Ford Motor Company factory in 1948., Courtesy
of Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs,
Wayne State University.

 

In 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the fourth
Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, an overwhelmingly white
audience:

Our [the Negro people’s] needs are identical with labor’s needs,
decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age
security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families
can grow, have education for their children and respect in the
community...

The duality of interests of labor and Negroes makes any crisis which
lacerates you, a crisis from which we bleed...

Together we can be architects of democracy in a South now rapidly
industrializing. Together we can re-tool the political structure of
the South...Together we can bring about the day when there will be no
separate identification of Negroes and labor.

King was making an appeal, based on the common interests of most
African Americans and most working people of other races. He was
arguing that such an alliance, effectively a white-Black alliance,
would require Americans to abandon racism, at least in political and
social struggles.

The harm that racism does to African Americans is severe and well
known. (See Arthur MacEwan, “The Economic Conditions of Black People
in the United States,” _D&S_, September/October 2023.) It follows
from King’s speech that white working-class people, along with
African Americans, are harmed by racism. But how?

Competition or Partnership?

If we assume that workers and people at the bottom of society can
acquire only a fixed amount of society’s income, then all such
people are in competition with one another for shares of this fixed
amount. And groups that identify with one another in some way—by
race in particular—are in competition with other such groups. With a
fixed share of the economic “pie,” more for one group means less
for the other.

The share of the pie going to working people, including most African
Americans, however, is not “a fixed amount.” In the United States
and other countries, this share has varied over time, a consequence of
changes in economic and political power.

For example, when labor unions have been powerful, the share going to
working people has been larger than when unions are weak. This
difference is clear in a comparison of the third quarter of the 20th
century to the first quarter of the 21st century. In the United
States, in 1968, the lowest- income 40% of the population obtained
18.1% of all income, while the top 20% got 41.1%; but in 2021, the
lowest-income groups got only 12.1%, and the 20% at the top obtained
51.2%.

Further, when broad, progressive coalitions have been strong, the
political process has yielded more adequate social support programs.
Important examples are the programs that originated in the
1930s—notably the National Labor Relations Act, Social Security, and
the Fair Labor Standards Act—and adopted through the 1960s—for
instance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act, and the Fair
Housing Act.

Historically, however, the force of racism has tended to weaken both
unions and broad progressive coalitions. This weakening has been
direct, most clearly with unions, but also in the creation of myths
about social programs. For example, there is a widely held belief,
especially among white people, that social welfare programs primarily
benefit African Americans. Yet, in virtually all U.S. social support
programs, whites are the largest demographic group of recipients.

Historical Factors

During the 19th century and on into the first decades of the 20th
century—the early era of the formation of labor unions in the United
States—labor unions generally did not accept African-American
members. When African Americans could obtain employment in unionized
firms, it was for unskilled jobs; and they were paid lower wages than
their white counterparts. Moreover, in addition to their formal
exclusion, through the 1930s relatively few African Americans worked
in sectors of the economy where unionization had taken place. They
were concentrated in farming and household care, activities not
covered by the National Labor Relations Act. (The notable exception
was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded in 1925 and led
by the organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph.)

In at least one important way, unions’ exclusion of African-American
members undercut the unions. Having been discriminated against by the
unions, Black workers were generally not sympathetic to the unions
that excluded them and, accordingly, were available as strikebreakers.
Warren Whatley, writing in Social Science History and using published
sources, “counted 141 incidents of strikebreaking by African
Americans between 1847 and 1929 [mostly in the North]; 111 of these
occurred between 1880 and 1929.” Because of the limitations of his
sources, Whatley viewed this number as an undercount of such
incidents. According to Whatley:

African-American strikebreakers were used in almost every major
confrontation between capital and labor. They were used in the Jay
Gould strike of 1886 ... They were used in the Homestead steel strike
of 1892, the Pullman railroad strike of 1894, the stockyard strikes of
1904, the Illinois Central railroad strike of 1911, and most of the
major confrontations that followed World War I, including the steel
strike of 1919, the railway strikes of 1922, and the coal strikes of
1924–1927.

This strikebreaking was not brought about simply by African Americans
seeing an opportunity to obtain employment, but was actively arranged
by employers. A prime example is provided by the 1919 strike
throughout the iron and steel industry. The evolution of that strike
is described by Michael Reich, whose _Racial Inequality: A Political
Economic Analysis_ provides much of the foundation for this article.
The steel companies first tried to undermine the strike by exploiting
divisions between native-born, English-speaking workers and
immigrants, but the immigrants tended to support the strike. Then, in
the sixth week of the strike, the companies brought in 30,000
African-American workers, kept the plants running, and the strike was
broken.

Broad social movements with interracial coalitions have played roles
in our history, but they have been few and far between. Reich points
to the 1890s in the South, when, “Through Populism, many white
Southerners [farmers in particular] discovered the importance of
interracial solidarity to pursuit of their own self-interests.” But,
when “the biracial alliance [through the Populist party] threatened
Democratic party power in many Southern states,” they “were
defeated... [by] electoral fraud... facilitated by repressive violence
and racist appeals to white Populists...even though the... Democrats
had offered so little to poor white farmers.”

During the mid-20th century, in the modern Civil Rights movement, most
activists and virtually all leaders were Black. There were white
activists and supporters, but the great majority of whites were
passive, skeptical, or opposed. And while today, Martin Luther King
Jr. is widely acclaimed as an American hero, during his lifetime, a
substantial majority of white people did not approve of his actions.
(See sidebar.) The Civil Rights movement had major success in getting
rid of Jim Crow laws and establishing national civil rights
legislation, but it did not lead to a social movement based on broad
interracial solidarity. Racism remains alive and well today.

The Data

While Reich’s historical account of race issues is important, his
singular contribution lies in his statistical work. In this work, he
examines the relation between 1) the inequality between whites and
Blacks and 2) the inequality among whites. To determine how the former
affects the latter, Reich uses data for 1960 and 1970 to compare
experiences in the 50 largest metropolitan areas across the
country—Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs).

In establishing his findings, Reich was confronted by extensive
statistical problems. First, data on the distribution of income among
whites was not directly available for SMSAs. Reich had to estimate
these from other data on white incomes. Second, various other
variables that could affect inequality among whites—so-called
“control variables”—had to be estimated for each SMSA. For
example, these control variables include for each SMSA the structure
of industry, the demographic make-up of the populations, and the share
of employment in the public sector. With the variables established,
Reich estimated the impact of the Black/white income gap on income
inequality among whites. He finds this relationship to be positive and
statistically significant—the greater the inequality between Blacks
and whites, the greater the inequality among whites.

This relationship operates in two ways. First, racial inequality
undermines worker solidarity in wage bargaining. Second, racial
inequality also undermines worker solidarity in the political realm,
leading to an under-supply of public services, such as good public
schools and social welfare services. (Recall from above that whites
are the majority of recipients of virtually all social support
programs.) These statistical results, along with his examination of
the historical record, led Reich to conclude: “[Racial] inequality
increases inequality among whites by benefiting capitalists and
high-income whites and by hurting most white workers.”

Reich’s work (published in 1981) relied on data for 1960 and 1970,
and one might argue that things are different 50 years later. However,
I am not aware of any more recent statistical studies that examine
this important issue. Moreover, the persistent Black/white income gap
has changed very little in the last 50 years, and overall economic
inequality among whites has risen. It seems likely that the same
impact of racism on white workers has been maintained.

ARTHUR MACEWAN is a professor emeritus of economics at UMass–Boston
and a _Dollars & Sense_ Associate.

Sources: Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to the Fourth Constitutional
Convention of the AFL-CIO, 1961(umdlabor.weebly.com); Warren C.
Whatley, “African-American Strikebreaking from the Civil War to the
New Deal,” _Social Science History_ (Winter 1993); Michael Reich,
_Racial Inequality: A Political Economy Analysis_ (Princeton
University Press, 1981); Jessica Semega and Melissa Kollar, “Income
in the United States: 2021, Table A-5” U.S. Census Bureau, September
13, 2022 (census.gov).

* Racism
[[link removed]]
* class struggle
[[link removed]]
* Inequality
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]