From Beckers theory and evidence, racial discrimination in America is on life-support and it is Government and its race based discriminatory policies which is the life-support.

When I was young, the world was full of facts to be discovered.  

As I grew older, there were facts to be categorized - more or less reliably true.

At some point I reached a tipping point where insights about the assemblage of facts became the new frontier of discovery.  I knew the facts, I just had not thought about them together in that way before.

As I grow older still, I am discovering a new phase.  I knew the facts.  I was reasonably attuned to the certainty with which we understood the facts.  I had a pretty good insight on interpreting the fact.  

In the past couple of years I more frequently encounter instances where I knew all these rudiments and what I now discover is that the conclusion I reached was to some degree undermined (made weaker or stronger) simply because I underweighted an insight I already knew.  

I suppose it is a process of increasing nuance or sophistication but it is frustratingly humbling.

From How Gary Becker Saw the Scourge of Discrimination by Kevin M. Murphy.  The subtitle is Becker’s analysis would extend the reach of economics, and completely reshape the field—and social-science research in general, but it took decades to do so. 

In particular:

Becker’s work suggested that an incentive existed for nondiscriminating employers to hire black workers: they could increase profits by hiring black workers rather than whites. Since black workers were paid less than white workers in equilibrium, if enough nondiscriminating employers entered the market—to hire a relatively cheap source of labor—they could even eliminate the wage differential between races.

Becker therefore thought that greater competition would act as a strong force in reducing labor-market discrimination. 

Because of Becker, the above has been reasonably well known for three decades or more.  The freer and more competitive a market, the less discrimination.  There is plenty of evidence to support this insight now and we have moved on to a different stage of understanding.  What we once considered race discrimination now is seen more clearly as discrimination based on behaviors and decision-making habits (a product of education/knowledge and of risk sensitivities).  Behaviors and decision-making are far more correlated with class, culture and religion than they are race.

Academics and Marxist derivative ideologies (Social Justice, Intersectionality, Affirmative Action, Gender Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Deconstructionism, Postmodernism, etc.)  still want to insist on fighting the simple moral battles of race discrimination of the 1960s even though we now understand that this is not a moral battle and it is not about racial discrimination.  We are now grappling with the fact that in a free and competitive market with few barriers to entry, outcomes will be determined largely by individual attributes and that there are patterns of attributes which vary by groups such as class, religion and culture.  

That is a tough reality to confront.

As I say, this is all reasonably well known and evidenced outside the clusters of ideological fanatics and central planners.  

For some reason, though, the above passage brought home to me a second order implication I had not before considered and which I have not seen discussed.  

To some degree, government has been seeking to increase competition in markets as a fairly standard policy since the 1930's principally in terms of anti-monopoly regulatory and legal decisions.  It is a heavy handed strategy and not especially effective, but it does establish at least the basics of a preference for competition.

On the other hand, government loves itself some discrimination.  Virtually all regulatory decisions are discriminatory in some fashion and in the past ten or fifteen years there has been a strong Federal Government disposition to discriminate based on race.  For Blacks, against Whites and Asians, and with Hispanics in an ambiguous place where they are both benefited and discriminated against at the same time.  

As everyone keeps saying, the best way to get rid of discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.  But the Federal Government just can't bare to let that go.  You can centrally plan discriminatory laws (affirmative action, quotas, DEI, etc.), you can't centrally plan the actions of a free market.  

The government wants less racial discrimination.  It knows that the more competitive you make a market, the less discrimination there will be (of whatever sort, race, sex, religion, class, etc.).  

On the other hand, for a range of reasons, the government simultaneously relies ever more heavily on central planning, regulatory rule making, structuring incentives based on taxes and subsidies.  The government wants to use all the tools available to discriminate and choose winners and losers, to effectively get rid of competition and emergent order.

Just because the government wants things does not mean that they achieve them or execute well.  The dismal track record of poor execution and failure is overwhelming and much remarked.  Hardly any social policies or centrally planned economic policies work (in terms of outcomes achieved, costs incurred, schedules kept, and unexpected negative consequences encountered.)

The government, were it seriously committed to eliminating discrimination, would avidly pursue policies which make it easier and cheaper to form companies and for those companies to compete on a level playing field based on rule of law.  Basically, the Federal Government would double down on policies which enhance freedom and individual agency.

By doing so, the government would be the catalyst to drive discrimination out of the market. 

Instead, the government chooses in the past fifteen years to insert itself and its central planning (via agencies) by erecting an ever more cumbersome infrastructure of regulatory costs, burdens, delays, and preferences which reduce competition and make discrimination much easier.

The second order insight is that when forced to choose between reducing discrimination by encouraging market freedom (and the emergent order and variant outcomes that come with that), and choosing to foster discrimination by increasing market interventions and control, the Federal Government has chosen to foster discrimination.  

Many others have reached the same conclusion but I am not sure I have ever seen the conclusion reached via Becker principles.  

I would go further and argue that for most people in most activities in America, consciously bigoted actions are vestigially small (based on race, religion, sex, class.)  Where they do occur I would say that the prevalence is Class then Culture then Sex then Religion then Race.  And that it is a steep gradient down from the most frequent discrimination based on Class to the least frequent based on Race.  

Basically, racial discrimination in America is on life-support and it is Government and its race based discriminatory policies which is the life-support.