At some point, I’m just going to beg people to start looking into the history of racism.

Capitalism and free trade were the instruments of it, not the undoing of it. https://twitter.com/sjvouilloz/status/1278686394257485826

It’s like all these libertarians: “But I don’t understand, if Black people are paid less by employers, that creates an incentive for non-racist employers to hire more Black people, which helps Black people by increasing demand!”

I mean, so close and yet so far!

What actually happens is that it creates an incentive for racist employers to hire more Black people, and to increase their racism so that they can continue to hire Black people at a lower wage.

In this case, we have Doofus McDongle saying “but why on earth would agents reduce their income by providing Black people with substandard service?“ and HELLO, the answer is obvious on its face.

If just about every agent provides Black people with substandard service, they get the *same* income by doing less work with Black people.

Racism creates its own reward under capitalism.

There are also reputational issues, but also also turf issues. As long as racism equates the existence of a reasonable number of Black people in a neighborhood with poverty, it artificially depresses demand in that area, and artificially inflate demand in other, whiter areas.

And since appreciation of homes is one of the major methods of wealth building for most middle class families...

Well. Here we are.

The existence of racial discrimination will always looks baffling if you think that “racism” is “hatred.”

It makes a lot of sense once you realize that racism started as a justification for one group of people getting wealthy at the expense of another.

Back when it started, the rhetoric may have looked like hatred—a set of reasons why Race A was Bad and Shouldn’t be Allowed to Have Personal Liberty, or why Race B was Bad and Shouldn’t be Allowed to Sell Tea for Anything Except Crates of Opium.

But the underlying logic of it was always “we will make a fuck ton of money if we don’t have to pay anyone for this” and “we will make a fuck ton of money if we make them addicted to opium.”

Racism is not an arbitrary, irrational hatred.

It is a calculated, specific animus designed to enrich.