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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 9. Economic Inequality - 1. Negro Poverty - 2. Our Main Hypothesis: The Vicious Circle
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Chapter 9. Economic Inequality 207
than whites, are concentrated in service industries and in certain mainte-
nance occupations (janitors, floor-sweepers, and so forth) which are
relatively well-protected from depressions. On the other hand, the Negro
agricultural laborer is more likely to be forced out by depressions than is
the white farmer and farm worker. In fact, in almost every given occupa-
tion Negroes tend to be ^^first fired” when depression comes. Even in the
service and maintenance occupations, Negroes are fired to give jobs to
white workers. When prosperity returns, the lost ground is never quite
made up. As cycle succeeds cycle, there is a tendency toward cumulative
displacement of Negroes. The general level of unemployment, depression
or no depression, is always higher for Negroes than for whites, and the
discrepancy is increasing.
Likewise the organization of the labor market by trade unions has,
most of the time, increased the difficulties for Negroes to get and to hold
jobs. Even social legislation instituted in order to protect the lowest paid
and most insecure workers—among whom the Negroes ordinarily belong
—
is not an undivided blessing to Negro workers. When the employer finds
that he has to take measures to protect his workers^ health and security and
to pay them higher wages, he often substitutes, voluntarily or under pres-
sure, white workers for Negroes. Sometimes sweatshop industries, existing
only because of low-paid Negro labor, are actually driven out of business
by legislation or union pressure, and the Negro is again the victim instead
of the beneficiary of economic and social progress.
Of course, Negroes are pressing hard in all directions to get jobs and
earn a living. The number of job-seeking Negroes is constantly increased,
as the shrinkage of the international cotton market, the national agricul-
tural policy under the A.A.A. program, and the displacement of Negroes
from traditional jobs, all create a growing unemployment. Negroes are
willing—if it were allowed them—^to decrease their demand for remuner-
ation, and they are prepared to take the jobs at the bottom of the
occupational hierarchy. But still their unemployment is growing relative
to that of the whites.
Again we are brought to ask: Why are the Negroes always the unlucky
ones? What is this force which, like gravitation, holds them down in the
Struggle for survival and economic advance? To these questions—as to the
closely related questions stated above—^we shall find the detailed answers
as diverse as the structure of modern economic life itself. But there will be
a common pattern in the answers.
2. Our Main Hypothesis: The Vicious Circle
This common pattern is the vicious circle of cumulative causation out-
lined in Chapter 3 and Appendix 3.
There is a cultural and institutional tradition that white people exploit
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