Political Discrimination vs. Market Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

by | May 6, 2023

Political Discrimination vs. Market Discrimination – Walter E. Williams

by | May 6, 2023

Gross racial discrimination alone has never been sufficient to prevent blacks from earning a living and bettering themselves by working as skilled or unskilled craftsmen and as business owners, accumulating considerable wealth. The fact that whites sought out blacks as artisans and workers, while patronizing black businesses, can hardly be said to be a result of white enlightenment. A far better explanation: market forces at work.

 

The relative color blindness of the market accounts for much of the hostility towards it. Markets have a notorious lack of respect for privilege, race, and class structures. White customers patronized black-owned businesses because their prices were lower or their product quality or service better. Whites hired black skilled and unskilled labor because their wages were lower or they made superior employees.

 

People have always sought to use laws to accomplish what they cannot accomplish through voluntary, peaceable exchange. As will be argued in subsequent chapters, restrictive laws harm blacks equally, whether they were written with the explicit intent-as in the past-to eliminate black competition or written-as in our time-with such benign goals as protecting public health, safety and welfare, and preventing exploitation of workers.

– Walter E. Williams, Ph.D., Race and Economics

Keith Knight

Keith Knight

Keith Knight is Managing Editor at the Libertarian Institute, host of the Don't Tread on Anyone podcast and editor of The Voluntaryist Handbook: A Collection of Essays, Excerpts, and Quotes.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

Podcasts

scotthortonshow logosq

coi banner sq2@0.5x

liberty weekly thumbnail

Don't Tread on Anyone Logo

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

Our Books

Recent Articles

Recent

Fat Amy Follies Break the Bank

The F35 continues to disappoint. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else. Incentives matter. You want to see over-promise/under-deliver fixed? Limit total compensation for the top 10 executives in any year they miss their own promises. It's really that...

read more

Mass Production Equals Mass Consumption

[R]elative shares in national income have remained substantially constant over the last hundred years. This, however, is true only if we measure them in money. Measured in real terms, relative shares have substantially changed in favor of the lower income groups. This...

read more

Murder

Why would anyone think that condemning a murder must imply any particular judgment about the victim?

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This