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Plural but Equal: Group Identity and Voluntary Integration*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Jennifer Roback
Jennifer Roback
Affiliation:
Economics, George Mason University
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Extract

During this period, when disciples were growing in number, a grievance arose on the part of those who spoke Greek, against those who spoke the language of the Jews; they complained that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

When Americans think of ethnic conflict, conflict between blacks and whites comes to mind most immediately. Yet ethnic conflict is pervasive around the world. Azerbijanis and Turks in the Soviet Union; Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Arabs and Jews in the Middle East; Maoris and English settlers in New Zealand; Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan; French and English speakers in Quebec; Africans, Afrikaaners, and mixed-race people in South Africa, in addition to the tribal warfare among the Africans themselves: these are just a few of the more obvious conflicts currently in the news. We observe an even more dizzying array of ethnic conflicts if we look back just a few years. Japanese and Koreans; Mongols and Chinese; Serbs and Croats; Christians and Buddhists in Viet Nam: these ancient antagonisms are not immediately in the news, but they could erupt at any time. And the history of the early Christian Church recounted in the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that suspicion among ethnic groups is not a modern phenomenon; rather, it is ancient.

The present paper seeks to address the problem of ethnic conflict in modern western democracies. How can our tools and traditions of participatory governments, relatively free markets, and the common law contribute to some resolution of the ancient problems that we find within our midst? In particular, I want to focus here on the question of ethnic integration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Spring 1991 , pp. 60 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1991

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References

1 Apostles 6:1.

2 For a textbook treatment of this literature, see Kreps, David M., A Course in Microeconomic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, especially ch. 14.

3 Robert D. Cooter, “Inventing Property,” University of California, Berkeley, Law School, Working Paper Series, #88–5.

4 Landa, Janet, “A Theory of the Ethnically Homogeneous Middleman Group: An Institutional Alternative to Contract Law,” The Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (June 1981), pp. 349–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See, for example, the experience described by Rodriguez, Richard in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, An Autobiography (Boston: D. R. Godin, 1982)Google Scholar, in being encouraged by the nuns to learn English.

6 Dubois, W. E. Burghardt, Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1907)Google Scholar; State of Illinois, Report of the Health Insurance Commission of the State of Illinois (Springfield: Illinois State Journal Co., 1919).Google Scholar For a preliminary analysis of some of this material, see Roback, Jennifer, “Social Insurance in Ethnically Diverse Societies,” Center for Study of Public Choice Working Paper, 1989.Google Scholar

7 For evidence on the large size of Catholic parishes relative to other religious congregations, see Lipford, Jody Woods, “Religious Organizations as Nonprofit Firms: A Study in Organizational Theory” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Clemson University, 1990), p. 154.Google Scholar As a personal note, my father, a working-class Polish Catholic, obtained every job he ever had through someone he knew at church.

8 McWhiney, Grady, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988)Google Scholar; McDonald, Forrest and McWhiney, Grady, “The Antebellum Southern Herdsman: A Reinterpretation,” Journal of Southern History, vol. XLI, no. 2 (May 1975)Google Scholar; Curtin, Philip D., Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975).Google Scholar

9 See for example, Breen, T. H., “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” in Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of The Early Modern Period, ed. Greene, Jack P. and Pole, J. R. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp. 195–232.Google Scholar

10 See Curtin, Economic Change; Wood, Peter H., Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974).Google Scholar

11 The methods of disenfranchising black voters in southern states included poll taxes, literacy requirements, and “white primaries.” For evidence of the effectiveness of these devices, see Kousser, J. Morgan, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1888–1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).Google Scholar

12 In fact, of course, blacks continue to feel victimized by the police and the courts. It is interesting to note that most race riots have their origins in some perceived injustice by the police or courts against blacks.

13 Louw, Leon and Kendall, Frances, South Africa: The Solution (Bisho, Ciskei: Amagi Publications, 1986).Google Scholar For an additional discussion of federalism in multi-ethnic societies, see Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle (Columbus: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1972).

14 Affirmative action is a requirement that business take special action to assure adequate and nondiscriminatory minority hiring. Minority set-asides are requirements that a certain fraction of government contracts be set aside for minority-owned businesses.

15 This rhetorical question is slightly misleading in the context of Native Americans. Many transfer programs to Native Americans are administered by the Department of the Interior. However, the Department – particularly the Bureau of Indian Affairs – is also the trustee of Indian land and exercises regulatory control over land use decisions by the tribes. The impact of this regulatory activity on the economic well-being of Indians is only beginning to be studied. It is not clear that the activities of the Department of the Interior are beneficial to Native Americans on net.

16 Transracial adoption is an extremely controversial issue in the United States. In addition to the objections raised by immediate family members, the National Association of Black Social Workers has taken the stand that same-race placements of adoptable children are preferable to transracial adoptions.

17 The following discussion is based upon Roback, Jennifer, “Racism as Rent-Seeking,” Economic Inquiry, vol. XXVII, no. 4 (October 1989), pp. 661–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 The definition of optimality in the text is Pareto optimality with compensation. I ignore the problem of multiple optimal points, but I acknowledge that the problem almost certainly arises in the context of conformity to social norms.

19 For a thorough discussion of the socialist calculation debate, see Lavoie, Don, Rivalry and Central Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Reconsidered (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

20 See Roback, “Racism as Rent-Seeking.”

21 Transfers that alter relative prices do have efficiency consequences and need to be considered separately. A case could be made that all transfer payments should be cash payments, rather than in-kind transfers or changes in relative prices. However, making that argument here would detract from the main point.

22 Mangum, Charles S. Jr., The Legal Status of the Negro (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940).Google Scholar The first chapter of this work, entitled, “What is a Negro?”, gives a state-by-state listing of the relevant statutes and case law.

23 Testimony of the Honorable William B. Allen, Chairman, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights before the Select Committee on Indian Affairs of the United States Senate, May 19, 1989.

24 See Wade, Richard C., Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

25 Lundahl, Mats, “The Rationale of Apartheid,” American Economic Review (December 1982), pp. 1169—79.Google ScholarFredrickson, George, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).Google ScholarRoback, Jennifer, “W.H. Hutt's The Economics of the Colour Bar,” Managerial and Decision Economics (Winter 1988), pp. 65–70.Google Scholar

26 Roback, Jennifer, “Exchange, Sovereignty, and Indian-Anglo Relations,” Center for Study of Public Choice Working Paper, August 1989.Google Scholar

27 Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Rabinowitz, Howard, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1980)Google Scholar; Cell, John W., The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roback, Jennifer, “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars,” Journal of Economic History (December 1986), pp. 893–918.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,… U.S. Constitution, Amendment I.