Economics 153: African Americans in the U.S. Economy

Spring 2002

 

 

Professor Elaine McCrate                                                         

Office Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, 9:00-10:30, and by appointment

335 Old Mill                             

656-0192

elaine.mccrate@uvm.edu

 

The purpose of this course is to understand different economic perspectives on black-white economic inequality in the U.S. We will spend the first part of the semester investigating the growth and change of the key economic institutions which have shaped U.S. race relations: slavery, sharecropping, ghettoization, and the market economy. We will then examine a variety of economic theories on racial economic inequality. We will spend most of the rest of the semester on the question of equal opportunity and affirmative action.

 

Textbooks and Readings: You should purchase In Defense of Affirmative Action, by Barbara Bergmann. Also, there is a substantial reading list on electronic reserve, which will also be available as a complete set in L/L.

 

Your Responsibilities in the Course and Your Grade:

 

  1. Occasional short homework assignments (and attendance if necessary). These will count as 10% of your grade, and will be graded simply as a ‘+’ or a ‘0’. (A minimum level of quality is required for a ‘+’.)  Homework will be due at the beginning of the class for which it is assigned.

 

  1. Five focus papers, roughly scheduled for week 3 (why slavery? (15%)), week 5 (sharecropping (15%)), week 7 (ghettoization (20%)), week 11 (theory and history (20%)), week 15 (affirmative action and equal opportunity (10%)). Focus papers will be in the vicinity of five pages each.

 

  1. One presentation, on affirmative action/equal opportunity, near the end of the semester. You will work in groups with other students. (10% of your grade)

 

 

I might postpone dates of assignments, depending on how fast the course goes, but I won’t move them up.


Provisional Course Schedule

 

Dates               Topics, Readings, and Assignments

 

Week 1            

I. The Development of U.S. Racial Institutions

 

Weeks 2,3:        The Economic Origins of U.S. Racism

 

·         George Fredrickson, The Arrogance of Race, ch. 13, “Social Origins of American Racism”.

·         Ratner, Soltow, and Sylla, Evolution of the American Economy, pp. 39-47.

·         Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South, pp. 10-15, 43-55, 128-157.

·         optional: Evsey Domar, “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis”. pp. 18-32 in Journal of Economic History, v. XXX no.1, March 1970.

 

Week 4:            From Radical Reconstruction to Jim Crow

 

·         Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, ch 2 (optional), and ch 5 (required).

·         Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom, ch. 2.

·         Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, pp. 52-68, 127-151.

 

Weeks 5,6:        The Great Migration and the Growth of the Ghettos

 

·         Daniel R. Fusfeld and Timothy Bates, “The Black Sharecropping System and Its Decline,” pp. 25-32 in Readings in Black Political Economy, ed. John Whitehead and Cobie Kwasi Harris.

·         Warren C. Whatley, “African American Strikebreaking from the Civil War to the New Deal,”  Social Science History, v. 17 no. 4, Winter 1993, pp. 525-558.

·         Philip S. Foner, “The Rise of the Black Industrial Working Class,” pp. 33-39 in Whitehead and Harris, op. cit.

·         Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities, pp. 65-82.

·         Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, ch’s 1 and 4.

·         video: Holding Ground

 

Weeks 7,8:        From the Civil Rights Movement to the Present: Jobs and Housing

 

·         James P. Smith and Finis R. Welch, Closing the Gap: 40 Years of Economic Progress for Blacks, pp. v-xxix only.

·         Richard B. Freeman, “Black Economic Progress Since 1964,” ch. 5 in Labor Markets in Action: Essays in Empirical Economics.

·         Barbara Bergmann, In Defense of Affirmative Action, ch’s 2 and 3.

·         Wiliam Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears, ch. 2, ch. 7 to p. 195 only.

·         Cecilia A. Conrad, “Changes in the Economic Status of Black Women,” in Whitehead and Harris, op. cit., pp. 140-146.

·         Jim Campen, “Lending Insights,” in Dollars and Sense, January 1994.

·         Veronica M. Reed, “Civil Rights Legislation and the Housing Status of Black Americans: Evidence from Fair Housing Audits and Segregation Indices,” in Review of Black Political Economy, v. 19 no. 3-4 (1991).

·         Peter Dreier, “Redlining Cities: How Banks Color Community Development,” in Challenge, Nov-Dec 1991, pp. 15-23. (total 9 pp.)

·         video: True Colors

 

 

II. Theoretical Frameworks on the Economics of Race

 

Week 9:            Neoclassical Economics

 

·         Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, pp. 108-115 only.

·         Ronald G. Ehrenberg and Robert S. Smith, Modern Labor Economics: Theory and Public Policy, 7th edition, ch. 12, pp. 426-452.

 

Week 10:          Institutional Perspectives

 

·         Michael Reich, Racial Inequality, pp. 233-264.

·         Steven Shulman, “Racial Inequality and White Employment: An Interpretation and Test of the Bargaining Power Hypothesis,” in Review of Black Political Economy, v. 18 no. 3, pp. 5-10, 16-18.

·         Steven Shulman, “The Political Economy of Labor Market Discrimination,” in Review of Black Political Economy, v. 24 no. 4, pp. 47-64.

 

III. Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action   

 

Week 11:          What Are Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action?

 

·         lectures and class notes

 

Weeks 11-15:    Presentations on Affirmative Action

 

            In this section of the course, teams of 3-4 students will be responsible for presenting brief summaries of the assignments. On any given day, students who are not making presentations will be responsible for writing 2-3 short discussion questions. These discussion questions should not just ask the class to reiterate the material presented, but to compare material from different readings, to clarify the theoretical underpinnings of the readings, and to challenge the evidence or logic behind the claims made in the readings.

 

·         W.E. Block and M.A. Walker, Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Equal Opportunity, pp. 5-14.

·         Jonathan Leonard, “The Federal Anti-Bias Effort,” in Essays on the Economics of Discrimination, ed. Emily P. Hoffman.

·         William Julius Wilson, op. cit., rest of ch. 7 (after p. 193)

·         Barbara Bergmann, In Defense of Affirmative Action, rest of the book (ch’s 1, 4 to 8)

·         William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River, pp. xxvi-xxx, 3-14, all of ch. 2, pp. 53-65, 155-160.

·         Glenn Loury, One by One from the Inside Out, ch. 6 (including appendix)

·         Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, All That We Can Be, ch’s 1, 5, and pp. 131-142.

·         Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, selection from America in Black and White

 

Assignments and Provisional Due Dates

 

 

January 15:          Individual or group homework assignment: Read the chapter by George Fredrickson and the short selection by Ratner, Soltow and Sylla. Then construct a timeline of important changes in the colonial/U.S. economy, and of  important changes in the status of Africans in North America from their first arrival to around 1800.

 

January 28:          Focus Paper #1: How and why did the predominant form of labor in the American south change from indentured servitude to black slavery in the 17th century? Your answer should include a discussion of why wage labor did not emerge as the predominant form of labor. Why did slavery end relatively early in the north?

 

                                    None of the focus papers require additional research beyond what we’ve covered in class. For citations, just use the form (author, date) and when you are citing specific statistics or using direct quotes, or using material we didn’t cover in class, also include the page number.

 

February 11:        Focus Paper #2: Explain the main economic objectives of the ex-slaves and ex-slaveholders at the end of the Civil War. How did the conflict between these groups result in sharecropping as the dominant form of labor in this period? (Be sure that you define sharecropping. Also define and discuss the role of debt peonage.)

 

February 27:          Focus Paper #3: Compare and contrast Sowell’s and Hirsch’s explanations for the evolution of segregated northern ghettos in the 20th century. I am looking for conceptual similarities and differences between their arguments.

 

April 3:                     Focus Paper #4: Derrick Bell, a law professor with a specialty in law pertaining to racism, wrote the following in his 1992 book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism:

 

“ There has been no linear progress in civil rights. American racial history has demonstrated both steady subordination of blacks in one way or another and, if examined closely, a pattern of cyclical progress and cyclical regression.” (p. 98)

 

“For over three centuries, this country has promised democracy and delivered discrimination and delusions…oppression on the basis of race is permanent.” (p. 99)

 

“Today, while civil rights laws seem to protect blacks from bias, discrimination in fact continues under a myriad of guises, most of them either not covered or not easily ascertainable under existing laws.” (p. 101)

 

The assignment has two parts:

 

1.      What do different types of economic theory have to say about the “staying power” of racism and racial discrimination? Do they support Bell’s pessimism about the possibility of ending racism and racial discrimination?

 

2.      What does the historical record tell us about the permanence of racism? Use any material we covered in class, but be sure to include the period from about WWI to the present.

 

This is an opinion paper: you can make any argument that you like. However, it has to be thorough, logically presented and carefully documented. You have to anticipate the arguments that might be used against you: so for example, if you take the position that racism is permanent, then you have to come up with a reason(s) for not believing the neoclassical assertion that employer discrimination is likely to self-destruct in the long run.

 

Use quotations and/or cite statistics as appropriate.

 

May 8:                      Focus paper #5:  Explain what equal opportunity laws and affirmative action programs actually entail. What do neoclassical and institutional theories of discrimination suggest about the need for equal opportunity laws and affirmative action programs? From both pro- and anti-affirmative action perspectives, explain the possible effects of affirmative action on fairness and productive efficiency in labor markets. (Note: “efficiency”¹”effectiveness”.) Use quotations and data as appropriate.