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Whitewashing Capitalism: Mainstream Economics’ Resounding Silence on Race and Racism

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  • Tim Koechlin
Abstract
This paper is about the gaping silence in mainstream economics regarding the relationship among capitalism, race, racism, and enduring racial inequality in the USA. Racial inequality is a glaring and enduring fact about the US economy. And yet mainstream economics has little to say about race or racism. Gregory Mankiw’s bestselling textbook devotes seven pages to “discrimination.†There is no discussion of racism per se. Mainstream economists and textbooks typically conflate racism and “discrimination,†and reassure the reader that “markets contain a natural remedy for employer discrimination†(Mankiw, 2008: 409). A student is likely to leave ECON 101 (or an economics major) with a sense that “economic science†has “shown†that discrimination is not that big a deal, and that the history of racist plunder and exploitation in the USA (of which there likely has been no discussion) is not relevant to “economics.†I argue here that the mainstream narrative (its assumptions, its logic, its conclusions, and its rhetorical choices and emphases) systematically obscures, dismisses, and ignores essential ways that racial inequality has been (re)produced by US capitalism. Especially striking is the resounding silence about the legacy of racist economic practices—in particular, the ways in which the enormous black/white wealth gap (and its effects) in the USA are linked to centuries of racist exclusion, violence, and plunder. The mainstream narrative thus whitewashes capitalism and exonerates “the market system.†The final section argues for a radical multidisciplinary economics. JEL classification: J15, D63

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Koechlin, 2019. "Whitewashing Capitalism: Mainstream Economics’ Resounding Silence on Race and Racism," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 51(4), pages 562-571, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:51:y:2019:i:4:p:562-571
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613419873229
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Darity Jr & Dania Frank, 2003. "The Economics of Reparations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 326-329, May.
    2. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Jonathan Guryan, 2011. "Studying Discrimination: Fundamental Challenges and Recent Progress," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 479-511, September.
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    4. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    5. Michelle Holder, 2017. "African American Men and the Labor Market during the Great Recession," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-56311-8, October.
    6. Altonji, Joseph G. & Blank, Rebecca M., 1999. "Race and gender in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 3143-3259, Elsevier.
    7. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1998. "What Has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 91-100, Spring.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    discrimination; race and economics; inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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