Systemic Racism Is Real. Here's Proof.

Chances are you don’t consider yourself very racist.

After all, you’ve never held midnight vigils around a burning cross in someone’s yard.

You’ve never participating in a lynching. You’re fond of the civil rights movement, perhaps. All in all you might even consider yourself something of a progressive when it comes to race.

You have probably found it strange, then, that so many people seem resolutely convinced that you are, in fact, a racist.

The reason for their belief? You participate in a system that has legalized racism. You profit from a legal system that is “institutionally” racist.

I’m also guessing you're not actively fighting to dismantle that system of laws and institutions, so that too, makes you a racist (according to many on the left).

In the words of activist author Ijeoma Oluo— if you are not outwardly fighting the “system of white supremacy” then you are on the “side of injustice.”

By “system of white supremacy” she is referring to legalized or “institutional racism.” By “side of injustice” she means you are a racist.

This idea is called ”systemic racism.” It is not a terribly new idea, but it is a popular one today.

It is the notion that our laws enshrine some past racism that carries on today. The only way to truly end racism is to undo these racist laws.

You may no doubt be one of the many who deny that such “systemic” racism exists. Along with a great tide of conservative apologists, you feel that systemic racism is simply a lie conjured by the left to gain political power.

You may not believe in systemic racism… but you should.

Here’s why:

The definition of systemic racism is: “racism embedded into the laws or regulations of society.” It also results in a racial disparity that would not have occurred otherwise.

So in order to prove systemic racism exists, I must come up with at least one law or regulation with explicitly racist origins. This law or laws must also have created a racial disparity that otherwise would not have occurred.

There are in fact many such laws, but I will choose just one today— the minimum wage.

The Origins Of The Minimum Wage: The Davis-Bacon Act

Many people believe that the first federal minimum wage law was enacted in 1938 by FDR under the name “Fair Labor Standards Act” (FLSA). In truth, the first federal minimum wage was introduced seven years earlier under the “Davis-Bacon Act.”

Originally written by New York Representative Robert Bacon, the bill mandated a “prevailing” (minimum) wage for all contracts awarded for federal construction projects.

The reason for the bill was simple — blacks were making too much money.

Many people are unaware that in the period after the civil war, during the so-called “Jim Crow” era, blacks actually had higher levels of employment than whites.

Even for the same jobs, blacks often were making more money in the South than their white counterparts.

How was this possible? Blacks were able to charge lower wages than their white competitors.

Rather than touting political slogans about “equal pay,” black Americans realized their ability to charge lower wages for labor was their greatest weapon in the labor market.

Lower wages meant that blacks won the majority of construction contracts. This led to an astounding result: a higher rate of employment for blacks in the South.

More than 80% of unskilled labor was dominated by black Americans in the supposedly racist South, particularly in construction.

What’s more, Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University points out that blacks also represented as much as 20% of the skilled labor force in some cases.

Not only did blacks possess lower rates of unemployment, but they were able to get jobs much faster than whites. Dr. Williams explains in his book Race and Economics:

“The duration of unemployment was shorter for blacks than among whites between 1890 and 1900, by 13 percent.”

(Smack dab in the middle of the “Jim Crow” Era I might add)

Contrast that with today’s rates — blacks have a more than 15 percent longer duration of unemployment than among whites.

A complete reversal of the trend from the 1890s, which means there can only be one explanation — we must be more racist than we were in the 1890s!

So what happened? The answer: blacks began leading the construction industry in the North.

In 1927 an Alabama contractor won a large construction contract for a hospital in Long Island by underbidding his competitors.

When he arrived with truckloads of cheap black labor from the south, it set off a national frenzy.

In the next two years alone, more than a dozen federal labor regulations were introduced in Congress.

This legislative fever culminated in the Davis-Bacon Act, which required contractors to pay their workers union wages.

(Incidentally, unions also have racist origins, which I will discuss in a later newsletter).

In other words, no more black labor outbidding white workers.

But, how do we know these laws were racially motivated? Sometimes laws result in "unintended consequences" while possessing the best of intentions.

We know the law was racist because the representatives that sponsored it told us so:

William Upshaw of Georgia spoke of the problem of “the superabundance or large aggregation of black labor… you are confronted with in any community.”

Representative Clayton Allgood said in support of the bill:

“Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor…it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country… it is very important we enact this bill.”

These men created minimum wage laws to keep blacks from competing with white labor. The law resulted in a racial disparity that would not have occurred without the law — namely a reversal of the employment trends cited above.

Remember I said we need at least one example of a racist law still on the books to prove there was systemic racism? Well, at least 75 federal statutes have Davis-Bacon clauses.

As recently as 1994, a court case was brought against the Davis-Bacon Act as unconstitutional on the grounds that it was racist. The Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs.

The Davis-Bacon Act was the inspiration for a litany of New Deal laws passed later in the thirties, including the FLSA.

So, let's recap:

1. We have a law that was created for the express purpose of hurting black Americans and other minorities.

2. It is the basis of no less than 75 federal statues.

3. It created a racial disparity that would not have existed otherwise.

4. It is still a law today.

By all accounts, systemic racism exists.

Thus I stand with my fellow radicals when they chant about “dismantling the system.”

I couldn’t agree more— in order to end systemic racism, we need to repeal all minimum wage laws and abolish all unions.

That, at least, would be a pretty good start.

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IF you want to learn more about this week's story, I would recommend getting Walter Williams book Race and Economics. Dr. Williams' book covers all the material above, and much more about the history of economic success for black Americans as well as other minorities around the world.

You can get a copy of his book here.