The myth still assiduously cultivated in some quarters is that the Negro community has been sunk in hopeless poverty and despair, because it has not been allowed to participate in the general economic prosperity of the last ten or 20 years. The actual record does not support this.

What we find, in fact, is that the Negroes as a whole have not only made great absolute economic gains in this period, but gains at least fully proportional to those made by the white population.

The median income of Negro families in 1949 (calculated in 1969 prices) was $2,538. In 1959 this had risen to $3,661, and in 1969 to $6,191. Thus the median income had risen 44 percent in the ten years from 1949 to 1959, and 144 percent in the 20 years to 1969. This was a real gain in "constant" dollars and therefore owed nothing to the steep rise in prices during the period. The percentage of Negro families with incomes under $3,000 (also calculated in constant 1969 dollars) fell from 58.1 percent in 1949 to 41.9 percent in 1959 and to 20.4 percent in 1969.

Thus the Negroes not only shared proportionately with the whites in the economic improvement of the 20-year period, but somewhat better than proportionately. Compared with the 144 percent increase in Negro family "real incomes" between 1949 and 1969, white family real incomes in the same period increased only 97 percent. (1)

Interpreting the Statistics

I have presented the figures in this way in order to emphasize the real economic progress made by the blacks in this twenty-year period. But these figures standing by themselves could give a misleading impression. They fail to call attention to the big gap still remaining between the incomes of white and black families. In 1949, when the median income of Negro families was $2,538 (in 1969 prices) the median income of white families was $4,973. In 1969, when the median income of black families had risen to $6,191, that of white families had risen to $9,794. Thus the median income of black families, which averaged only 51 percent of that of white families in 1949, had advanced to no more than 63 percent in 1969.

This, of course, is still far from satisfactory; but the comparison should not lead us to depreciate the extent of the blacks' real gains. Some writers talk as if the only gain worth talking about that the blacks have made is this gain in comparison with increased white incomes. But this is a captious and confused way of looking at the matter, and leads to some paradoxical results. Suppose in this 20-year period the gains of Negro families had been the same as they were in absolute terms, but that the real incomes of white families had shown no improvement whatever. Then though only 20.4 percent of Negro families would have had incomes under $3,000 in 1969, 23.4 percent of white families would still have had such low incomes, as they did in 1949. And though the median income of Negro families would have been $6,191 in 1969, the median income of white families (in 1969 prices) would have been only $4,973, as it was in 1949. In both respects the Negro families, though with no better incomes in absolute terms than they actually had in 1969, would have been better off than the white families. Could this be seriously regarded as a more desirable all-around situation?

In still other ways the Negro has made great progress in the last ten or twenty years. A leading example is in the field of education. In 1957, the median years of school completed by nonwhite men (who were eighteen years of age and over, and who were in the labor force) stood at 8.0 years; for white men the corresponding figure was 11.5 years, a gap of 3.5 years. By 1967, however, the median years of schooling for nonwhite men increased to 10.2 years, and for white men the figure had increased to 12.3 years, reducing the difference to 2.1 years.

Differences Within Groups

One trouble with all the comparisons I have made so far is that, because they arbitrarily group all whites together on the one hand, and all blacks together on the other (for the sake of making over-all comparisons), they may help to encourage the naive tendency of many people to think of the black community as a homogeneous, undifferentiated group all in the same circumstances and with the same outlook. But as Negro leaders have reminded us, for example: "Young Negroes are at least as hostile toward their elders as white New Leftists are toward their liberal parents." (2) In addition Negroes are separated by great gaps in experience -- Northern from Southern, urban from rural -- and great differences in income. In 1967, for example, the relative spread in incomes among the nonwhite population was even greater than among the whites. The lowest fifth of white families received 5.8 percent of the total income of such families, the highest fifth received 40.7 percent, and the top 5 percent of families 14.9 percent. But among nonwhite families, the lowest fifth received only 4.4 percent of the total income of such families, the highest fifth 44.7 percent, and the top 5 percent received 17.5 percent.

These differences are emphasized further when we compare selected groups of black families from different regions, with the corresponding white groups. In 1969, for the nation as a whole, black families earned 61 percent as much as their white counterparts (compared with 54 percent in 1960). But in the North and West, black families over-all earned 75 percent as much as white families. More striking, Northern black families with the husband and wife under age 35 both present, averaged an $8,900 annual income in 1969, or 91 percent of the average of their white counterparts, compared with only a 62 percent average in 1960. Still more striking, Northern black families with the husband and wife under age 24 averaged 107 percent of the income of their white counterparts. (The Census Bureau thinks this is probably the result of a sampling error. But that the income of such black families is at least equal to that of their white counterparts is suggested by the result of a similar sampling in 1968; this showed such black family incomes averaging 99 percent of corresponding white incomes.)

It is significant that where we find the Negroes making the least progress comparatively is in the areas where the free market is not allowed to operate. This is particularly striking in labor union membership. In the unionized trades the unwritten rule seems to be that the higher the pay, the harder it is for blacks to get in. They make up 11 percent of the labor force. But at latest count, in such high-paying trades as plumbers, sheet-metal workers, electrical workers, and elevator constructors, less than 1 percent of the workers are black. (3)

Minimum Wage Laws and Other Interventions Cause Unemployment

In one important respect, the position of the Negroes has retrogressed. An increasing gap has developed between the respective rates of unemployment of whites and blacks. In June of 1971, the over-all rate of unemployment among whites was 5.2 percent, among Negroes 9.4 percent. A difference of this sort has long existed. For example, even in the relatively good employment years 1950 to 1954 inclusive, when the white unemployment rate averaged 3.7 percent, the rate for Negroes averaged 6.8 percent. Part of this difference probably reflected discrimination by employers, and part of it the exclusion of Negroes from unions. In those five years unemployment among teenagers (16 to 19) was also higher, as it is now, than in the working force as a whole. But the gap in this respect between white and black teenagers was comparatively small. Unemployment among white teenagers in 1950 to 1954 averaged 10.3 percent, and among black teenagers 11.1 percent.

Since that time the situation has been steadily deteriorating. In June of 1971 the unemployment rate among white teenagers was 13.5 percent, while among black teenagers it reached the appalling level of 33.8 percent.

By far the main cause of this has been the Federal minimum wage law. Minimum wage legislation has been on the books since 1938, but in March 1956 the minimum rate was jacked up from 75 cents to $1 an hour, and it has since been raised by successive jumps to $1.60 an hour in February 1968. But the law cannot make a worker worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him less. It can merely make it unprofitable for employers to hire workers of low skills, and therefore forces such workers into unemployment. One of the greatest helps we could give the Negro today would be to repeal the statutory minimum wage.

What our politicians still do not realize is that the greatest counteracting force to racial discrimination is the free market. As the economist W. H. Hurt has put it, "The market is color-blind." If an employer can make a greater profit by employing a Negro than a white man at a given job, he is likely to do it. Even the militant Negro Marcus Garvey recognized this, though in a somewhat cynical manner:

It seems strange and a paradox, but the only convenient friend the Negro worker or laborer has in America at the present time is the white capitalist. The capitalist being selfish -- seeking only the largest profit out of labor -- is willing and glad to use Negro labor wherever possible on a scale reasonably below the standard union wage ... but if the Negro unionizes himself to the level of the white worker, the choice and preference of employment is given to the white worker. (4)

In a free market, however, Negro employment does not necessarily depend on acceptance of a lower wage rate. If a Negro -- say an outstanding professional baseball player or musician -- is clearly superior to the best white competitor, he is likely to be employed in preference, at an even higher rate, because the employer expects to make a greater profit on him.

Not a Separate "Black Economy," but Full Admission to the Market

The chief hope for the economic progress of the Negroes lies not in some dream-world effort to form a separate "black economy," but in their becoming and being accepted as a more fully integrated part of a great expanding capitalist economy. In spite of the discrimination that still exists, the economic position of the Negro in the United States is not only incomparably higher than in Haiti or in any of the all-black countries of Africa, but higher than most whites even in the industrialized countries of Europe.

For what the best available statistical comparisons are worth, here they are: As compared with a median annual income of $2,138 for Negro unrelated individuals in 1968, the per capita gross national product for that year was $91 in Haiti, $238 in Ghana, $298 in Zambia, and $304 in the Ivory Coast. In Chad, the Congo, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, it ranged from a low of $63 to a high of $88. (5)

Turning to European comparisons: In the early 1960s, when it was calculated that some 44 percent of America's nonwhite population was below the so-called poverty line of $3,000 a year, it developed that some 75 percent of Britain's entire, predominantly white, population was also below that line. (6) The $2,138 median income for American unrelated Negroes in 1968 compares with a per capita gross national product for that year of $1,544 in Austria, $2,154 in Belgium, $2,206 in West Germany $1.418 in Italy. and $1,861 in the United Kingdom.

What chiefly counts is the productivity of the whole economy; what counts is the maximization of the incentives to that productivity. And those incentives are maximized when opportunities are maximized -- when we neither favor nor discriminate against any man because of his color, but treat everyone according to his merits as an individual.

Notes

*  From the November 1971 issue of The Freeman.

1. Source: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census; Economic Report of the President, February 1971, Table C-20, p. 220.

2. Bayard Rustin in Harper's Magazine, January 1970.

3. Author's source: Time, April 6, 1970.

4. Quoted by Bayard Rustin, Harper's Magazine, January 1970.

5. Source: Statistical Abstract 1970, p. 810.

6. Author's source: M. Stanton Evans in National Review Bulletin, February 3, 1970.

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