Reproducing racism: how everyday choices lock in white advantage

Abstract

The preceding chapter does not purport to provide a handbook for policy makers to prescribe ways to dismantle feedback loops or to unlock lock-in. Rather, it points to some very practical implications from the lock-in model that policy makers will have to take into account. First, time matters. The lock-in process is a dynamic one, and in the case of racial disparity, time makes the problem worse. Where many policy makers assume that the racial gap will eventually narrow, given Becker’s arguments about the costliness of discrimination, the lock-in model assumes that time will actually make things worse, as advantage and disadvantage become further entrenched. Second, the end of discrimination on the basis of race necessarily requires more than the end of intentional discrimination. In the Court’s recent decision in Parents Involved vs. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), Justice Roberts famously declared that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race was to stop discriminating on the basis of race. The lock-in model demonstrates why Roberts is wrong—facially race-neutral processes like property taxes and job referral networks reproduce the discrimination of the Jim Crow and slavery eras. Moreover, this book suggests that persistent racial gaps in education, jobs, housing, and wealth are at present as significant or more significant a problem than intentional discrimination. Third and finally, the concept of critical mass complicates our predictions about what might remedy persistent inequality. Recall from the discussion about tipping points and Polya urns that the dynamics of self-reinforcement frequently involve some dramatic phase transition when the dynamic system hits a critical tipping point. In the urn example, at some key tipping point the variation in the number of colored balls settled down and became locked in. This concept of tipping point and critical mass has significant implications for remedy as well as cause. For example, a children’s trust fund might be completely ineffective until the amount in the fund is large enough to make college a real possibility, or to put a down payment on a house. Short of that number, the children’s trust fund isn’t really likely to do much work. Once the trust fund hits that critical number—whether it be $80,000 or some other amount—change might begin. In many conversations about public education, conservative commentators and politicians have argued that money won’t solve the problem. These commentators usually cite to the fact that some school districts are enjoying a much higher per capita spending level than other districts, with no appreciable difference in performance. But if the system exhibits increasing returns or network effects, policy makers might in fact have to throw a lot more money at the problem before the money triggers real change. We understand this intuitively when it comes to physical systems. When heating water, adding more heat might make no appreciable difference for a long period of time until the water hits a critical temperature and then begins to boil. In the same way, critical thresholds might affect the points of change when it comes to persistent racial gaps. Calculating those critical points constitutes an important agenda for scholars of racial inequality to carry forward from here.