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Chapter 15. The Negro in the Public Economy 337
guarantee individuals their right.* It has its utility only as a practical yard-
stick in the fight against discrimination. Its very presence in the public
debate, and sometimes in public regulations, is an indication of the existing
discrimination.**
Quite apart from the inappropriateness of distributing public services
to any group in relation either to its contributions to the public budgets or
to its numbers, it would be highly interesting to be able to analyze in some
detail what the Negroes, as a group, do contribute, directly and indirectly,
to the public budget and what they do get in return. No such studies have
been made. Our analysis in this chapter has to be far from complete. To
begin with, we shall have to leave out altogether, for lack of data, the
problem of how much Negroes pay in taxes. In regard to benefits, we shall
not be able to give anything like a full account.
3. Education
A great proportion of the total budgets of local municipalities and an
increasing part of the state and federal budgets are earmarked for public
education. From the individual citizen’s point of view this form of collec-
tive consumption ranks high in importance among public services. The
general facts about Negro education are well known, as they have been in
the center of public discussion for a long time. In this section we shall
restrict our treatment to a presentation of some summary figures on the
fiscal costs of education for Negroes as compared to whites, leaving it to
other chapters to analyze what these figures mean in terms of what amount
and what type of education the Negroes receive.®
There are no financial statistics for the North which separate the amount
* See footnote 2 of this chapter. The population norm lies somewhere between the con-
stitutional norm and the actual discrimination practiced in the South. In several respects,
the Negroes as a poor group do not receive a share in public services as large as their pro-
portion in the population, though there is no discrimination in the constitutional sense. Since
Negroes have fewer automobiles than do whites, for instance, they make less use of public
highways. Also Negroes cannot afford to keep their children in school for as long a time as
whites can, on the average, but this fact alone does not involve any legal discrimination. Only
in one main item of the public budgets do Negroes, in the South as well as in the North,
seem to get somewhat more than their share in proportion to their numbers: this is in social
welfare. The explanation is that their need for economic assistance is so much greater than
is that of the whites that the total sum paid out for relief to Negroes is relatively higher, in
spite of discrimination. The causes of their higher needs are, as we have seen: job restric-
tions everywhere, lack of ambition, poorer educational facilities, higher sickness and
disability rates, greater family disorganization and other direct and indirect effects of dis-
crimination.
^Theoretically, the population norm could occasionally work to the unusual advantage
of the Negroes. For example, to give them a 10 per cent share of desirable jobs would
actually wipe out almost the entire problem of economic discrimination. The norm is, of
course, never brought up when it refers to such a situation.
* See Chapter 41, and Chapter 43, Section 4.
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