The Political Economy of Hope and Fear: Capitalism and the Black Condition in America.

By Marcellus Andrews

New York: New York University Press, 1999. Pp. vii, 224. $29.95.

Marcellus Andrews, an associate professor of economics at Wellesley College, argues in this provocative and passionate series of essays that racism is not the cause of Black economic backwardness in the modern era. Instead, he contends that the persistence of racial economic inequality stems from the nature of competitive capitalism and the destructive forces of globalism.

The book has four chapters. A brief introduction provides the context of the discussion of conservative and anticonservative views on racial inequality and Andrews' statement of the hypothesis that racism is not the cause of racial economic inequality. The first chapter lays the foundation for the paradox explored in the remaining chapters. On one hand, the author demonstrates that there has been much economic progress among African Americans in the past decades. Relative Black poverty has fallen, educational completion has increased, and at least one segment of the Black community, the Black middle class, has made significant gains toward economic parity. On the other hand, the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores of Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 are lower than the SAT scores of Whites with incomes of only $30,000. The racial gap in test scores at the upper end of the income distribution is larger than it is at the lower end. Andrews contends that this persistent disparity in one measure of merit--even accounting for racial differences in income--opens the door for two competing conservative explanations for racial inequality. One explanation, effectively detailed in Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein's The Bell Curve, points to genes, as Andrews puts it. The other, restated recently by Dinesh D'Souza in his The End of Racism, is termed by Andrews as cultural deficiency. The first chapter passionately rejects both of these apparent explanations for the persistent racial gap in economic performance.

The explanation for the rejection of the culture and genes arguments rests in the second chapter, where Beckerian models of labor market discrimination are detailed and elaborated. The central point of the second chapter is that in a dynamic world in which previous discrimination vests itself in underdeveloped skills among the discriminated-against group, racial inequality will persist under competitive capitalism. Alternative explanations for the failure of the elimination of racial discrimination in conventional market economies are also explored.

The third chapter initiates a more macroeconomic approach to the persistence of Black-White economic inequality. Here, Andrews details the destructive forces of worldwide competition and the implications for Black and White workers alike. It is here that the argument advanced in the introduction is developed: [T]he movement towards racial justice in America was assassinated by free markets and the technological whirlwind driving capitalism worldwide rather than by organized racism per Se. Racism is still an important and destructive influence on the economic fortunes of Black people in America, but it is no longer the primary reason why Black people are poorer than white people. [ldots] Black people were completely unprepared for, and unable to take advantage of, the shift in the structure of the American economy toward a knowledge- and technology-driven system that offers huge rewards to brains over brawn, because they remain an industrial labor force in a postindustrial country. (p. 3)

According to Andrews, capital mobility, budget deficits, and a strong dollar limit the ability to subsidize the declining relative positions of the poorest of the poor, whose very position is a consequence of the new international competition. The result is that liberal policies of income redistribution and race-based redress are no longer tenable.

The final chapter hints at the nature of White fears, the preference in postindustrial society for incarceration and prison growth as a manner of controlling the unwanted classes and the coming Black rebellion. Surprisingly, Marcellus Andrews' three-pronged solution is a conventionally structured and politically centrist one. The reader will have to buy the book and wade through the often acerbic prose to get to that point, but it may well be worth the price.

The main contribution of the book rests not in what the book says but how it succeeds in provoking the reader to reconsider and rethink current racial policies and theoretical positions often advocated by economists. For example, the detailed discussion about the Beckerian model of discrimination underscores for this reviewer the utter absence within the profession of a carefully articulated, well-developed analysis of racism. What is most apparent when exploring the reality of the brutal mutilation of a Black man in Jasper, Texas, with the tools of applied microeconomics is that economists do not have a clue about the nature and causes of racial hatred. Moreover, our focus on racial hatred as a precondition for racial discrimination utterly ignores the presence of newer forms of racism where disdain is replaced by paternalism and apparent kindness. Our models and our analysis may be sufficient for understanding racial discrimination and then only the sort of discrimination that causes people to translate th eir bigoted preferences into differential treatment. Yet, it is clear that conventional microeconomic models are insufficient for understanding the evolution, development, and persistence of that racial hatred. Neither of our models are sufficient to explain persistent racial division in the absence of racial hatred. There is a striking need for economic models that can articulate how test scores--almost perfectly correlated with race--can replace race as a determinate of economic status. There is a need for understanding a world of smiling, caring, and self-consciously nonracist decision makers who simultaneously act on their racially exclusionary practices and deny being racist.

Some brilliant young scholar will read this book and will be similarly provoked. She will not agree with the basic conclusions or even the indictment of the conservative agenda that Andrews spends so much of the book attacking. Instead, the reader will be inspired to create an alternative analytical device appropriate for understanding how racism can remain permanent in a postindustrial society even when it may no longer be the ultimate source of racial economic inequality. Such a budding scholar would most likely need to consider the role of rising White fears as well as the significance of institutionalized forms of belief systems that position certain groups at the bottom without anyone being racist. For example, the analysis would need to explicate how SAT scores and other indicators of either cognitive ability or academic promise, so highly correlated with race, have come to dominate in the measurement of merit. The analysis would need to articulate how in predominately White places such as Minnesota, k nown for its liberalism and proud of its legacy of support for civil rights and equal opportunity, there are often larger racial gaps in social and economic outcomes than in allegedly racist places such as Columbia, South Carolina, where the confederate flag still--at the date of this writing--defiantly flies from the top of the Capitol building. In other words, the challenge posed to economists by Marcellus Andrews' passionate volume is one of building better models and analysis for understanding the changing nature of racism in American society.