A neutral, independent community in which members debate issues related to social justice.
Economic Determinism and Racism
Economic determinism is the idea that economic relationships are the basis of all social and political arrangements.
This term started attracting attention during the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, when the term was used as a perjorative by a minority of Clinton supporters to accuse Sanders of not having a solid platform on race and insensitivity to racial issues. It implied that Sanders thought that racism could be cured if the US were to become, in his words, a democratic socialist country, which is in keeping with Howard Zinn's "racism is based on economic power differential" hypothesis in his A People's History of the United States.
My view on this is that those supporters were wrong to assume that of Sanders (and yes, I supported Clinton in the primary, for her economic views), but that absolute economic determinism is also plainly not demonstrated in historical evidence; increased economic egalitarianism in the US, such as in the 1950s and early 1960s, did not necessarily result in the elimination of racism. In Britain during that same time, also very economically egalitarian as measured by the Gini coefficient, "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" signs could still be seen hanging from shops and businesses. To the contrary, in our much more economically unequal period, racism has been on the decline, with the possible exception of the last few years.
To what extent do you think racism is rooted in economic relationships? I would argue that there is a relationship to at least some degree - discriminated-against minorities tend to be economically poorer, and even more so in the past due to explicit discrimination - but just because we have our current anti-discrimination laws and we make economic opportunity more equal to everyone does not necessarily eliminate racism at at least the individual level if not the institutional level.




It's certainly tied to economics, but not in such a one-to-one manner. Racism is a subset of tribalism, in which people strongly identify with their in-group and are suspicious of outsiders. In an environment in which resources are scarce and competition is zero sum, this attitude would actually make some degree of sense.
Racism in the western world started because white elites had to morally justify enslavement of other groups for their own economic benefit. They continued to perpetuate it in order to enforce a class hierarchy where they were at the top and black people were at the bottom. They then played poor white people against black people in order to maintain this hierarchy, and poor white people largely went along with this because it meant that they were at least not at the bottom of the ladder. But racism is now being perpetuated by the white working class and middle class, while white elites have largely moved on. It's irrational for them to do so, but it happens nonetheless.
So no, I don't think that simply lowering economic inequality between races and classes will put an end to racism. If anything, attempts to lower economic inequality may exacerbate racism, because members of the majority group will think that poor minorities are being given "handouts".
So basically, you agree with Sanders and Zinn that racism was started in the West due to economic reasons, but became a force of its own that will not end with economic equality?
I agree for the most part, though I want to address some other issues. First, you mention that simply lowering economic inequality will not eliminate racism. If so, would the argument that SES-based affirmative action as opposed to race-based affirmative action is more fair to everyone incorrect? (I personally favor neither because they both run counter to meritocratic principles, though I do think that admissions officials could be more forgiving towards a lack of flashy extracurriculars among those without access. There are better ways to address educational inequalities that don't fuel this kind of resentment.) There is an argument to be made that as minorities with the same income as whites do worse on a variety of economic and health metrics, that there is something going on with them that require redress.
Second, would the backlash against economic redistributionism be less severe if the white middle class benefited from them too, and it was made obvious to them? Right now, it is not even the poor, but the white middle class that is the most resentful - they have to pay for means-tested benefits for the poor they do not explicitly benefit from, while they do not know in what ways they do benefit from the government other than Social Security and Medicare.
"Fairness" is a pretty difficult quality to judge, especially when it comes to corrective measures like affirmative action. I don't think it's generally possible to say that one policy is objectively more fair than another.
Interesting. Do you have a source for that? My instinct is that the stress of being subject to discrimination is enough to take a toll on physical health. There's also the fact that minorities have to work harder to achieve the same results as whites. See John Henryism.
There'd likely be less resentment, but not zero. There would still be the feeling that minorities were getting "more than their fair share". We've seen in a lot of psychology studies that people generally care more about relative well-being than absolute well-being.
Indeed. The very policy of affirmative action is extremely subjective and its success or failure can be judged on a variety of metrics that often conflict with one another.
Minorities have less wealth/net worth even controlling for income
Blacks have a lower life expectancy than whites even after controlling for education and income.
And this is where fear of backlash and resentment could do harm as well as good. Yes, people cannot write policy that causes them to lose elections. But at a certain point, you have to either write the resentful voters off, or convince them of your point of view. When should you draw the life between what can be sacrificed for the sake of political expediency, and what is non-negotiable?
Not surprising since minorities haven't had as long to build generational wealth. African Americans were intentionally blocked from accumulating wealth through discriminatory action. Hispanic and Asian Americans generally haven't been in the country long enough.
Could be any number of reasons for this. I think the added stress of being Black and dealing with the discrimination that that entails does play a big role. I wonder if there are any studies that dig down to what the root causes are for this discrepancy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-racism-is-bad-for-our-bodies/273911/