Economist Walter Williams died on December 2, 2020. As with my post on James Randi, this article is more a memorial to him than a discussion specifically of The State Against Blacks. If you haven’t heard of Williams, Thomas Sowell’s essay on him is a good place to start. It’s worth reading even if you have. (Sowell is 90 years old himself. I hope I don’t have to do a similar piece on him too soon.)

Williams’ writing treats emotional subjects with precision. Wokes demand that black people follow their party line, and they respond to lack of subservience with racial insults such as “minstrel show.” This never deterred him.

The State Against Blacks came out in 1982. Many things have greatly changed since then, some for the better, some for the worse. The economic fundamentals which are central to the book haven’t changed. But it adds perspective to look at a more recent work of his, so I’ll start with his 2011 essay, Race and Economics. It’s a very short piece referring to his book of the same title, published in the same year, but unfortunately I don’t have it. Turning out an article a week requires some compromises. They say that turning material out on a predictable schedule helps to build readership. Progress is slow, but I think it’s happening.

The essay notes a paradox: Since the Civil Rights movement and its attendant legislation, black unemployment has gone up. He asks, “How might one explain yesteryear’s lower black unemployment and greater labor force participation? The usual academic, civil rights or media racial discrimination explanation for black/white socio-economic differences just wouldn’t hold up.”

He sees well-intended legislation as the main culprit, putting barriers in the way of upward mobility.

Good intentions motivate most Americans in their support for minimum wage laws, but for compassionate public policy, one should examine the laws’ effect. That’s seen by putting oneself in the place of an employer and asking, “If I must pay $7.25 an hour to no matter whom I hire, does it pay me to hire a worker who’s so unfortunate as to have skills that enable him to produce, say, only $4 worth of value an hour?” Most employers would view hiring such a worker as a losing economic proposition; therefore, a minimum wage law discriminates against low-skilled workers by reducing employment opportunity.

The State Against Blacks goes into more detail. Occupational licensing, with expensive fees and lengthy and often irrelevant training requirements, makes it hard for anyone without a lot of money to go into business. In New York City, taxi medallions went as high as $1.3 million at one point and lately have been around a quarter of a million dollars. Without one, you can’t legally operate a cab in NYC. That’s useful for those who can afford it; it reduces the competition and lets the owner make the money back on fares. But those who don’t have that money in the bank and can’t qualify for so big a loan are stuck. This isn’t racial discrimination in itself, but there are proportionally more poor black people than poor whites. That’s one less way they can improve their situation.

Occupational licensing laws have mostly grown worse since the time of the book. It’s a way for any entrenched group in a business to keep newcomers from competing with them.

Williams devotes a chapter to how railroad unions, granted monopoly power by legislation, squeezed black workers out. The 1909 strike of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen aimed unsuccessfully to eliminate black workers from the Georgia Railroad. He comments: “One of the most remarkable stories to be told about the early history of Negroes in the railroad industry is their success despite white worker hostility.”

A lot of the specifics in the book are out of date. I don’t know what ICC trucking regulations are like today, but they’re probably different in important ways from what Williams describes in his chapter on the subject. What’s more important is his analysis of ideas. His discussion of the concepts “prejudice” and “discrimination” especially deserves close attention.

We all discriminate. We prefer some things to others. Our reasons may be good or bad. When people in business discriminate on irrational grounds, it costs them economically. We all act on prejudices. Sometimes we don’t have time to judge an individual case and rely on generalized impressions of a category. Williams gives this example: “Suppose a fully grown tiger suddenly appeared in the room. A reliable prediction is that most individuals would endeavor to leave the area with great dispatch. In most instances, the individual’s response to the tiger’s presence is not based on detailed information about the behavioral characteristics of that particular tiger.”

A lot of what is called racial discrimination, perhaps most of it, isn’t based on physical characteristics but on measurements that correlate with them. School credentials may be the most obvious example. Having a high school diploma may not confer any qualifications for a particular job, but employers see it as a proxy for reliability. Licensing laws often require a high school or college diploma for no good reason. Valuing credentials that aren’t directly related to the job is another kind of prejudice.

Employers can take a chance that an applicant who hasn’t graduated from high school is still good for the job, especially if they can initially offer a lower wage to reduce their risk. But if the law sets a high minimum wage or mandates a schooling requirement, they’re less likely to do this. The result is that those on the bottom tend to stay on the bottom.

For many years in America, slavery followed by overt race-based laws and regulations held black people back. The question is why progress is still so slow. It’s widely held that hostility to dark skin is hard-wired in our brains. I find Williams’ answer more plausible: that legal restrictions designed to favor certain groups or even to protect people against discrimination have made it hard to advance. He believed that keeping markets open and letting people experience the consequences of rational and irrational actions was a more effective remedy for racial discrimination than any amount of legal compulsion.

Another book of Williams’ in my library is South Africa’s War against Capitalism. It’s about apartheid and thus is even more dated than That State against Blacks. However, I’ve reread its opening chapter, ‘The Evolution of Apartheid,” and it provides a lot of detail about the events and policies in South Africa that led to apartheid (properly pronounced, as he notes, roughly “apart-hate”). He makes a point we shouldn’t forget: “South Africans — unlike colonists in America, Australia, and other places — had not decimated the native population.”

Walter Williams had the ability to discuss emotionally laden issues sympathetically, yet rationally. In a time when “racism” has become an all-purpose accusation that has no clear meaning, we could use more people like him, who can subject feel-good policies to the cool light of reason.

I may skip next week or post something short, since it will be in the middle of the holidays.