[lbo-talk] Comment on F-9/11 and racism

[Luke Weiger]

> You run right into your old lack of agency problem, and end up
> reifying racism and discrimination. When employers read resumes and
> discriminate against black names, or discriminate against black
> applicants in interviews, that's an instance of the material social
> relation that constitutes racism. And while you can argue all you
> want about how this works out on the macro level, for an individual
> white worker, the advantages of the set-up are pretty obvious, in a
> particular instance.
>
> Doug

Employer discrimination hurts everyone: if employers discriminate against
better-qualified minorities, we presumably suffer losses in
productivity/efficiency as a result.  The gains to individual whites in the
job market due to discrimination (which I bet in most cases are pretty
small) are easily swamped the by the collective losses of creating
underclasses.

-- Luke