Quote Of The Day

“Neither legal nor market forces have brought employment parity between whites and blacks in the United States. Parallel with the struggle of blacks for parity, Jews, East Asians, and immigrants generally, have made rapid economic progress and indeed (at least in the case of Jews and East Asians) largely overcome discrimination, yet without significant help from the law. An open economy provides opportunities even to victims of discrimination, especially if the victim group is large enough to achieve economies of scale in trade within the group. As members of the group grow modestly affluent and thus achieve a standard of living that enables them to assimilate to the larger culture, as by consuming similar goods and services and sending their children to good schools, discrimination against them declines because they cease to seem “different” from the majority. When members of a minority group talk and think and act like the majority and have the same tastes and in short share the same culture, the fact that they may have a different physical appearance ceases to count greatly against them, as indicated by high rates of intermarriage in the groups I have mentioned. Assimilation to the dominant culture, as yet incomplete for a great many blacks, may thus be the major force in reducing discrimination, with competition and law playing lesser roles.” — Richard Posner, blogging at the Becker-Posner blog on the Economics of discrimination