Discrimination and Liberty

How much should we care if people discriminate? In answering this question, maybe it's a good idea to say what we mean by discrimination. The most internally consistent definition is that discrimination is the act of choice. Thus, discrimination is a necessary fact of life - people do and must choose. When one selects a university to attend, he must non-select other universities - in a word, he must discriminate. When a mate is chosen, there is discrimination against other possible contenders. In the first instance, we call it university discrimination and in the second case mate discrimination. Thus, when the term discrimination is modified by words such as race, sex, or university and mate, one merely states the criterion upon which choice is being made.

Is there a moral distinction to be made when one makes a selection based on arbitrary distinctions when he chooses a university as opposed to making similar arbitrary distinctions when selecting a mate, employee or any other object of desire? In mate selection, people routinely discriminate by race. How does that act morally differ from choosing employees by race? We know that social sanction is granted when race is used in selecting a mate but not granted in the case of selecting employees.

Some people might offer that when people select mates by race there is no private or social harm done whereas in the case of race discrimination in employment there is private and social harm done. On further thought, it can be easily shown that such a proposition clearly does not hold. At the private level, when a black male indulges his racial preferences by marrying a black female, that act reduces the opportunity set of white females that might have been attracted to and married the black male. At the social level, non-assortive mating (mating with those with similar attributes) has enormous consequences. Simply its racial component produces significant results that are seen when one recognizes significant income and wealth differences between blacks and whites. If whites (generally having higher income and greater wealth) married blacks more often (who generally have lower income and wealth), the income distribution would be less skewed and more rectangularly distributed. Given the political rhetoric we often hear about differences between the haves and have-nots, a more rectangular distribution is a socially desirable goal, but I have not heard calls for mandatory marriage integration.

The fact that choosing by race reduces opportunity sets really does not really distinguish racial discrimination from other kinds of discrimination. When people choose PC's, they "harm" MAC's. When people indulge their preferences for California wines, they "harm" Bordeaux manufacturers. We could produce an endless list of the "harms" done by people indulging their preferences by discriminating against one person, product, or service in favor of others.

In a free society, there should be support for people's right to choose. The true test of one's commitment to freedom of choice does not come when one allows others to choose in ways he deems right. The true test comes when one permits others to choose in ways he finds objectionable.

If there is a moral dimension to discriminatory preference indulgence, it's when it involves threats, violence and government subsidy. The clearest case where racial discrimination has no place is in the instances of government financed services such as schools and libraries. If schools and libraries are publically financed, every citizen, regardless of physical attributes, is entitled to access. If not, the government has committed the equivalent of theft which is immoral i.e., requiring someone to pay for a service and yet deny him its benefits.

There are numerous government acts that subsidize racial preference indulgence. One is price-fixing such as minimum wage laws. When the government dictates that an employer must pay a minimum of $5.00 an hour to no matter whom he hires, that law reduces the cost and hence subsidizes preference indulgence and predictably people will engage in more of it. To make this more concrete, assume that ten people of equal productivity apply for a job. The employer plans to hire six of them. Since there is no economic criteria upon which to choose, the employer must use non-economic criteria for his selection and the non-economic criteria might be race.

Greater preference indulgence in the wake of price-fixing is a general phenomenon. Consider a non-racial example. In a supermarket, filet mignon might sell for $12 a pound while chuck steak sells for $7. The cost to discriminate against the purchase of chuck steak is $5 a pound (the difference between its price and that of filet mignon). If a law was enacted requiring that both sell for $12 a pound, people would begin to discriminate against chuck steak. The reason is simple: the cost of preference indulgence goes to zero. The way that chuck steak effectively competes with what people perceive as more-preferred - filet mignon - is through offering what economists call a compensating difference - a lower price.

The power of price-fixing's ability to subsidize racial preference indulgence has been recognized by racists throughout history. In apartheid South Africa, white unionists argued that "in absence of statutory minimum wages, employers found it profitable to supplant highly trained Europeans by less efficient but cheaper non-whites." In 1919, South Africa Mine Workers Union said, "It is now a question of cheap labour versus what is called dear labour and we consider we will have to ask the commission to use the word "colour" in the absence of a minimum wage, but when the minimum wage is introduced, we believe that most of the facilities in regard to the coloured question will automatically drop out." In the U.S., in 1918, the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen said that, "where no difference in the rates of pay between white and colored exists, the restrictions as to the percentage of Negroes to be employed does not apply." Testifying in favor of the Davis-Bacon Act (a super-minimum wage law), Congressman Miles C. Algood said, "That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." In each of these cases and many others, people who wanted to discriminate against blacks recognized that wage setting was a valuable weapon to have in their discriminatory arsenal.

Price-fixing is simply one of the ways that government subsidizes preference indulgence. Other ways are through taxes on profits, economic regulation and occupational licensure. In general, preference indulgence is subsidized whenever government dictates the terms and conditions of exchange.

While many of us, including me, find some aspects of racial discrimination morally repulsive, we must at the same time recognize that freedom of association should be our overreaching value. Valuing freedom of association does not mean that we are helpless in registering revulsion to various forms of discrimination. There are private social sanctions that can be exercised similar to those exercised when people behave impolitely, use vulgar language, or disrespect elders. But the largest contribution to racial harmony is for us to keep government limited to its legitimate or moral functions; namely, preventing force, fraud, theft and initiation of violence.

Walter E. Williams
Ideas on Liberty, April 1998
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