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  5. Economics and Racism – The Long View
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Economics and Racism – The Long View

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)

Hosted By: History of Economics Society & National Economic Association
  • Chair: Evelyn Forget, University of Manitoba

Economists, Race and Racism: The Long View

Sandra J. Peart
,
University of Richmond
David M. Levy
,
George Mason University

Abstract

We review economists’ views on race and racism from Adam Smith through the reactions to twentieth century models of racial discrimination developed by Kenneth Arrow and Edmund Phelps (1972). Smith’s analysis, and that of the classical economists who followed in his tradition, is characterized by what we have called analytical egalitarianism, the presumption that humans are the same in their capacity for language and trade (Peart and Levy 2005) This is the basis of Smith’s famous statement that a philosopher and a common street porter are indistinguishable as youngsters but, as a consequence of the division of labor, as adults they appear to be “the most dissimilar characters.” A commitment to analytically egalitarian devices constrains the theorist, as we shall demonstrate using F. Y. Edgeworth’s famous trading example in Mathematical Psychics., in juxtaposition to his eugenic views later in the book. Indeed, a major theme of our review is that there is great merit in rediscovering Smith’s wisdom—as our examination of James Buchanan’s views with respect to race before and after his encounter with Smith’s economics of natural equals reveals.

Fighting Racism with/in Economics? The Journey of Phyllis A. Wallace, 1944-1975

Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche
,
University of Cambridge

Abstract

Wallace’s career began at a time when race was largely ignored by economists, although Wallace was not allowed to attend AEA meetings held in the South. Her work as the Chief of Technical Studies of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission starting in 1965 is the focus of the second section. She set up an interdisciplinary team to gather and use occupational and wage data, as well as employers’ survey, for research and litigation purpose. The final section looks at her participation in the first economics conference on discrimination, in 1971 at Princeton, as well as her role in the AEA’s CSWEP and the National Economic Association. At the Princeton conference, Wallace presented on the policy needed to tackle racial inequalities. That same year, Wallace was instrumental in supporting experts’ arguments behind the Griggs decision that established the disparate impact doctrine. It was also the period where she completed most of her academic work, and took an active role at the AEA’s CSWEP and the NEA. That she became the first tenured black woman economist at MIT, yet not in the department of economics, illustrates the tentative reconfigurations of academic frontiers in that era.

Francis Galton's Pictorial Statistics: The Eugenic Origins of Ethnic Profiling

Marcel Boumans
,
Utrecht University

Abstract

In a series of publications, which appeared between 1878 and 1906, Galton discussed the method of composite portraits. He had developed this method to study the external physical characteristics of a 'typical' member of a group. The groups he studied were patients suffering tuberculosis, violent prisoners, and Jewish schoolboys. The aim of this method was to make these type characteristics visible by a particular composition of the photographs of the individual members of the group in question. Galton's composite portraiture, however, undermined his eugenic project. Rather than enforcing signs of the prisons' villainy or racial inferiority, the composite portraits showed the 'beautiful' face of common humanity.
Discussant(s)
Guy Numa
,
Colorado State University
JEL Classifications
  • B0 - General
  • B3 - History of Economic Thought: Individuals