Supply and demand, Tuomas. Choke off the demand and there’s no economic incentive to creating a supply.

What constitutes the true source of the demand is worth considering, though. How many suburbanites turn a blind eye towards who’s mowing their lawns and taking care of their kids? How many corporations are disavowing any responsibility for who’s cleaning their buildings and maintaining their landscaping by saying, “oh, those are subcontractors”. Time to start holding those folks responsible.

So, the piece took the racist fantasy that New Orleans collapsed into criminality in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (it didn’t) and then claimed that a significant part of the explaination came from the fact that black people are stupid, and that stupid people (and therefore black people) are criminals. It couched it in statistical language, but only in gross and slovenly fashion (see the 18% who stayed = the stupidest 18% of the population). Had it actually worked out the math in a meaningful fashion, I doubt that the proportional increase in crime rate expected would be at all relevant to the collapse of the infrustructure of New Orleans (particularly since the actual collapse of infrustructure had nothing to do with an actual increase in crime).

So the Gene Expression writer made a weak argument (marginal decrease in IQ might correlate to marginal increase in crime rate, although those sorts of multistep uses of weak correlations are no where near inherently valid) to try to explain an event that only actually happened in the collective racist imagination of America, and used racist ideology (black = stupid = criminal) to make it seem as though it had any significant explanitory power. So, the article took a racist myth, treated it as truth, and did a very weak job of explaining it by using vaguely racist and extremely weak arguments that were then magnified into a strong argument by the addition of racist ideology (and some very sloppy and highly classist assumptions as well). That is why I thought it could reasonably be described as a racist argument, and one that suggested that someone who linked to it approvingly should be considered a racist.

I’m not going to bother to argue the question of whether or why black people have a lower average score on IQ tests than white people. I don’t find it particularly interesting or relevant.

I thought it was germane.

But it had the appearance of sympathy for a White employer over a Black employee. Never mind then. My mistake.

And yes, “POC” = People of Color. Read some blogs by Blacks, Latinos, Asians, et al. You’ll see it quite a lot.

Could you please explain how?

Ummm… no. Don’t try to divert me, Robert. You can call your mention of anti-discrimination laws buttermilk waffle mix for all I care. It smells of excuses to me, and I don’t go for it. End of story.

all of them have similar decisions to make, and all of them are presented with similar incentive structures.

How nice that you have such great insight into the lives of other races. Oddly enough, I think I’d prefer to hear from them rather than you about such things. Are you implying that the demands of being a boss actually override those of all other social or economic factors, including class and race ? Beware, Robert, you’ll become more of a Marxist than I could ever hope to be, if you keep this up. :p

Anyway, I’m done here. You can have the last word. Enjoy.

What’s a POC?

Unless I’m completely misguided, it is Person Of Color.

Btw, I also think that the problem of illegal immigration is in large part caused by employers hiring illegal immigrants, and the fact that they are not penalized by doing so. The whole problem is of incentives: The incentives of employers and of illegal immigrants. In other words: Both benefit from illegal immigration to the U.S. (and U.S citizens suffer).

I quoted the anecdote I did to show that I had a real-life experience of an employer desiring to avoid hiring a black person because they were afraid they’d be harder to fire than a non-black. I thought it was germane. I can’t offer an opinion on what she thought of black people in non-employment scenarios.

What’s a POC? I meant to ask you before ….

That’s not at all what the argument is. The argument is that the mean IQ of the people remaining in New Orleans after the storm was significantly (perhaps by one standard deviation or more) below the mean IQ of the people living there prior to the storm, and that this may have been a contributory factor (not the only one) to the collapse of society following the storm.

No one said that “black = stupid.” The idea is that most of the more intelligent people—black or white—got out before the storm hit, leaving behind a population which was substantially less intelligent on average.

What exactly do you object to in this line of reasoning? Do you doubt that the people who left were, on average, no more intelligent than the ones who stayed? Do you doubt that there’s a negative correlation between IQ and criminal behavior?

an apologia.

Could you please explain how?

To me it appears to be a neutral description of what is motivating some people. I don’t see a syllable in there that comes from me.

Oy. Robert, let’s assume that most bosses are White. Unless you’d like to trot out statistics proving otherwise, eh ?

I imagine that most employers in the US are white. Most people in the US are white.

The incentive structures set up (including by anti-discrimination laws) function universally. They do not discriminate by skin color. Black employers, Asian employers, white employers, Hispanic employers, native employers - all of them have similar decisions to make, and all of them are presented with similar incentive structures.

I don’t follow. How does that paragraph say that I think that an employer should have the right to hire illegal aliens in preference to black Americans, or to hire or fire employees in violation of anti-discrimination laws, or for “employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities”?

Fine. I retract my earlier speculation as to what you think of employer practices regarding immigrants over American-born Blacks, or vice versa. The fact remains that you mentioned the annecdote of your own accord, without any deliberate prompting from me. If your point was not to express sympathy for your boss and the attendent fear of the big, bad, angry POC who was likely to sue on a whim (not out of a real sense of deprivation, unfairness or justified anger, but rather to cause trouble or to trash some well-meaning employer’s rep), what was your point in bringing it up ?

But I get suspicious of films; even straight documentaries sometimes don’t resist stretching the truth to make an advocacy or dramatic point, and I don’t know if this film was intended to be documentary or drama. How factual is this film believed to be?

I hope you’re suspicious of every film you see then, since what you are describing is the goal of most filmmakers: To tell a dramatic and moving story even if it doesn’t unfold exactly as it would in a comparable real-life situation. If you want to stack up the film’s depiction of events against real-life accounts, my advice would be to hit the library or Amazon.

You are mistaking explication for apologia.

Oh ?

Alsis, many employers would rather hire illegal immigrants than black Americans because of anti-discrimination laws.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc…

Does this justify breaking the law? No. So what? People do it anyway.

Yep. And I had invited, earlier in this thread, the folks of your political stripe to question why the bulk of retaliation for law breaking should rest low on the food chain rather than higher. I realize that you and Ron won’t, but who know ? Perhaps some lurker out there will.

I had also attempted to invite folks like Zakia to consider those who hire illegal workers as visible, rather than invisible factors in the equation. As I said wayyyyyyy earlier, the trouble with opinions like Ms. Cannick’s is that they do indeed treat illegal workers as holding all the cards in this little poker tournament. When in fact, they do not. End of story on that, thank you for your time, etc.

Who said anything about the color of the employer’s skin? Non-white people get sued for discrimination too, you know.

Oy. Robert, let’s assume that most bosses are White. Unless you’d like to trot out statistics proving otherwise, eh ?

It’s invalid to compare risks in the fashion you’re attempting.

Dude, I wasn’t the one who trotted out the comparitive risk of hiring a Mexican illegal to shell beans vs. an American-born Black to do it because I dislike against anti-discrimination laws. You were.

Other people’s risks are other people’s problems. Pretty much every single person on Earth acts in accordance with the incentives set before THEM - not the incentives set before other people.

What I love is that you invoke the “each-man-is-an-island” schtick here, even though the very existence of this thread demonstrates what nonsense that POV is. We are talking about illegal workers, folks who were expressly not invited to this country –except perhaps under the table– to do anything. How strange that you assume them as a group to have incentives presented to them on a silver platter. Later, you go on to make your comparison of the inherent risk of hiring an illegal Mexican worker vs. hiring a native-born Black worker. There may be regions of the country where these two people are not aware of each other’s existence, but I doubt that there are that many such regions left at this point. In any case, either potential employee would certainly be aware of their superior’s existence, since the superior is standing right in front of the worker deciding whether or not he/she will work. People who end up doing mindless work for a living aren’t de facto idiots who are incapable of realizing that other people’s interests directly effect their own interests. Again, that’s pretty much the point of this entire thread. Yeesh.

Nobody is chafing under any burden.

Except the burden of anti-discrimination laws. Or so you say.

You said to me:

IOW, you’re talking about how the emplyor’s word that “it’s just not working out, but I’m not a racist or anything” should be the final word, even if the employee knows that he/she lives in a racist society and vehemently disagrees. Like Robert, you seemingly want employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities.

I asked where you think I said that, and you printed out this paragraph that I wrote:

“No, it’s no winning scratch ticket for the fired person. But it doesn’t have to be. The employer isn’t just considering whether a suing ex-employee will win the suit; they’re considering how much money they’d have to spend if 1 out of 100 ex-employees sued and the employer successfully defended themselves. There’s litigation costs, community goodwill lost, attention drawn to their hiring practices, etc.”

I don’t follow. How does that paragraph say that I think that an employer should have the right to hire illegal aliens in preference to black Americans, or to hire or fire employees in violation of anti-discrimination laws, or for “employers to have all of the power but no attendent responsiblities”?

Summary: Black workers from the South migrate North during WWI to look for jobs left vacant by people going off to war. They were often relegated to the most undesirable jobs and faced some prejudice. Some of them join the local labor unions and find themselves being paid substantially more than they would have if they had stayed in the South. After the war ends, the labor union loses influence as there are men who want their jobs back that these workers filled. We see employers using race to try to break up the union and there are accurate depictions of the Chicago race riots that occurred in 1919. There were massive strikewaves after WWI when many workers were laid off or had their wages cut. This film is useful to anyone interested in the labor movement.

How much of this movie was dramatization and how much was documentary? I’m not saying that these people didn’t face predjudice; of course they did. Many were killed due to it. I’ve lived around Chicago for about 35 years now, have read some history, and read the paper every day. But I get suspicious of films; even straight documentaries sometimes don’t resist stretching the truth to make an advocacy or dramatic point, and I don’t know if this film was intended to be documentary or drama. How factual is this film believed to be?

Well, if it actually is meritocracy, then no, that wouldn’t be wrong.

It was you who claimed that the employer was bound to break the law

No I didn’t.

You are mistaking explication for apologia.

…and end up condoning other lawbreaking actions that you claim to dislike, becuase the employer’s risks were too great otherwise. It was you that blamed anti-discrimination laws for this.

I didn’t blame anything for anything. I said that many employers prefer to hire illegals over blacks because anti-discrimination law makes the illegals less risky in some circumstances. That’s a description of a heuristic being followed by a thinking being, not an instance of “blame”.

By implication then, the risks of being a White boss outweigh the risks of being a native-born Black person living in a White-dominated society.

Who said anything about the color of the employer’s skin? Non-white people get sued for discrimination too, you know.

It’s invalid to compare risks in the fashion you’re attempting. As a species, we generally weigh our own risks. Other people’s risks are other people’s problems. Pretty much every single person on Earth acts in accordance with the incentives set before THEM - not the incentives set before other people.

The flipside of privilege is responsibility, or it ought to be. Those who claim to chafe under the burden of responsibility should perhaps re-examine their privileges. Perhaps they should explore more ways to relinquish some of that privilege, if they dislike the Kipling-esque burdens…

What the heck are you talking about? Nobody is chafing under any burden. All this is your own injection into the conversation. All Ron or I have done is discuss a non-controversial case of a perverse incentive.

I don’t understand your question about risks. Everyone has to bear risks to go on existing.

I think that you do understand. In your original response to my post about Zakia’s earlier comment, I wanted to know whether you, or others like you, could entertain a belief that de-regulation bringing about a better world of meritocracy galore might be wrong. It was you who claimed that the employer was bound to break the law, and end up condoning other lawbreaking actions that you claim to dislike, becuase the employer’s risks were too great otherwise. It was you that blamed anti-discrimination laws for this. By implication then, the risks of being a White boss outweigh the risks of being a native-born Black person living in a White-dominated society.

I have now gone on record several times as finding that impossible to swallow. The flipside of privilege is responsibility, or it ought to be. Those who claim to chafe under the burden of responsibility should perhaps re-examine their privileges. Perhaps they should explore more ways to relinquish some of that privilege, if they dislike the Kipling-esque burdens that –at least according to what you and RonF have written, appear to be the logical outgrowth of White privilege.

Or not. [shrug] I’ve made my point as best I can. Now I need some fresh air. Excuse me.

RonF:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087554/

I took a couple of night classes in Labor Studies back in 1986-7, at Rutgers. The programs appear to have gotten a lot more sophisticated since then.

What is the movie Killing Floor about?

You ask what I assess the real risk of a lawsuit to be; that’s a tricky one to answer. If you hire 100 people, and the risk of a suit over a career for each such person is one tenth of one percent, the net probability of at least one lawsuit in that group is about 10 percent. In a glorious-case scenario where you only have to pay your lawyer because you are virtuous and never discriminate and the court buys it, you’re going to drop maybe 10 Gs (which is wildly optimistic). That’s a back-of-the-envelope risk premium of 10,000 * 0.1 / 100 = $10 per person. It costs $10 more to hire the protected guy than the unprotected guy - in this best of all possible worlds.

If the risk is one percent per career, and you end up getting screwed out of $250G (which seems like a good conservative estimate) the premium is 250,000 * 0.64 / 100 = $1600 per person.

Does this justify breaking the law? No. So what? People do it anyway.

I don’t understand your question about risks. Everyone has to bear risks to go on existing.

I really would like to see what you think I said that meant that…

No, it’s no winning scratch ticket for the fired person. But it doesn’t have to be. The employer isn’t just considering whether a suing ex-employee will win the suit; they’re considering how much money they’d have to spend if 1 out of 100 ex-employees sued and the employer successfully defended themselves. There’s litigation costs, community goodwill lost, attention drawn to their hiring practices, etc.

Paragraph 2, meet Sentence 1.

Read some of the blogs by POCs linked to in this space. I have, and I don’t believe that the employer’s right to live without risks borne of racial privilege should trump the employees right to live without risks borne of being a person of color in a racist society.

From a purely economic viewpoint, maybe not. Depends on the value of the labor vs. the cost of dealing with any legal problems that may ensue. For a high-value labor situation, it pays to get an H1-B visa. For a low-value labor situation (shelling beans), a purely economic assessment might point to hiring an illegal alien over a low-skilled American citizen; even a low-skilled non-minority American citizen who has no reason to invoke anti-discrimination laws. No matter how highly skilled you are, you can only shell so many beans in an hour. Again, we are positing an amoral employer here who doesn’t care that violating labor and immigration laws is wrong; all he or she cares about is weighing cost vs. value vs. risk.