Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, we're talking about inclusion, right? And you know, it's interesting because, for a while there, it looked like things were, you know, *really* starting to get better for everyone. Like, from, you know, around 1800 to 1870, there were, like, all these new technologies and ways of organizing things. And it seemed like maybe humanity wouldn't be, you know, trapped in this constant state of poverty.
And it seemed like we were heading towards a utopia. But then, uh, things got messy. You had these world wars and a major depression. And then, like, in China, you had this crazy famine that killed, like, a ton of people. I mean, it was like technology and organization were being used more to, like, kill and oppress than to, like, help people.
If you only looked at the political stuff from that time, you wouldn't have been too optimistic after World War II.
But, here's the thing: after World War II, the global north, anyway, kind of just, like, picked itself up and started *running* towards a utopia. You had high taxes that hit the rich hard, and their wealth had already been, like, majorly reduced by the Depression. And, uh, in the US, there was this huge demand for workers, which drove wages up, you know? And wages became more equal, too. Unskilled workers saw their wages rise more than skilled workers. And after the war, strong unions made it, like, risky for bosses to give themselves crazy high paychecks. Growth was faster than ever, unemployment was low, and incomes weren't, you know, *too* unequal – at least, if you were a white guy in the global north. It was closer to, like, a material utopia for them than ever before.
But, I mean, still, that was only for white guys. For everyone else, things were, well, a bit better than for their ancestors, but, you know, not *that* much closer to utopia. But things *were* getting better for everyone, even if the gap was still, like, huge.
We can talk about people like W. Arthur Lewis, born in Saint Lucia, who, even though he was super talented, couldn't become an engineer because he was Black. He ended up being a super important economist, but he was always fighting for, like, reparations and bringing attention to the, uh, issue of underdevelopment. He saw it as a form of economic change imposed on the global south by how the market economy globalized.
You see, for a super long time, social power was only for men, and even then, only for, like, a select few. That's just how people thought it would always be. But gross inequality, that didn’t mean status was, like, fixed. The centurion stops and, like, vouches for Saint Paul as a Roman citizen, and suddenly, he's no longer getting beaten.
And then, as time went on, Europe, like, increasingly chose violence. The Atlantic slave trade grew, and a bunch of people were kidnapped from Africa and enslaved. And there was this growing guilt in Europe. It was a profitable crime, unless there was some reason that Africans deserved to be enslaved.
The overwhelming bulk of the human race’s genes passed through a very narrow bottleneck some 75,000 years ago. So, like, all humans are actually close cousins.
And, yeah, humans have, you know, evolved differently based on where they live and their culture. Those who moved away from the equator had mutations to, like, produce Vitamin D from sunlight. Some people think there are, like, important genetic differences between different groups that explain social and economic outcomes.
It's really exhausting, and, like, kind of offensive, to have to constantly, you know, refute claims that, like, Black Americans are poor because they're genetically predisposed to be, you know, "dumb." And it's hard to even talk about these things rationally these days.
Even Abraham Lincoln, who was, like, a huge advocate for equality, said that there was a difference between the white and Black races that would probably forever prevent them from living together on equal footing.
So, yeah, after World War II, when things got better for the global north, white men got a massive head start. But, you know, Lincoln also believed that Black Americans deserved the same rights as everyone else.
You had Martin Luther King Jr. talking about this "promissory note" that had been signed by the writers of the Declaration of Independence, which still hadn't been paid to Black Americans. Even now, half of the states have, like, election laws designed to suppress the Black vote.
But still, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was a big step towards inclusion. And throughout the twentieth century, things have, like, at least started to change. It became less and less important to be a male of the right tribe to have social power.
But property and education were still crucial. And where you were born still shaped your opportunities. So, "inclusion" was, like, more of a goal than a reality.
The US was really at the forefront of this social movement. It wasn't that it was, like, doing better than other countries, but the gap between its ideals and its reality created a lot of tension.
After World War II, it looked like discrimination against Black Americans would continue indefinitely. Gunnar Myrdal called it "An American Dilemma"—the conflict between the ideal of equality and the reality for Black people.
Even a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, official discrimination still existed. Black people were largely disenfranchised.
In the North, until the Great Migration, there weren't enough Black people to elect a Black representative. And even after the migration, there weren't many. It wasn't until 1929 that a northern Black congressman was elected. And, like, before the Voting Rights Act, there were only four Black congressmen.
And, like, today, nearly half the states have voting restrictions targeting Black voters. The Supreme Court pretends these are just partisan, not racist. Even in the later part of the twentieth century, you had politicians making racist comments.
If a political party wants to widen inequality in a democracy, what does it do? It needs to give a potential majority reasons to vote for it. It can claim to be better at generating economic growth. But eventually, it needs to actually deliver on that promise.
Failing that, the party can try to make economic inequalities less important. It can play the nationalism card or find an internal enemy to rally against. And in the US, that enemy has often been the Black population. And the Democrats did it too, up until the 1940s.
The damage done by the rollback of freedoms for Black Americans during the Progressive Era is often underestimated. Emancipation was followed by Reconstruction, which was then rolled back.
As of 1940, the average Black worker had fewer years of education than the average white worker. Most white Americans approved of discrimination. Black people were concentrated in low-paying, unskilled jobs. Black men and women earned much less than their white counterparts. Most Black families were in poverty.
By the later part of the twentieth century, things had changed a lot. Almost all whites publicly supported equal opportunity. Education levels were almost the same for Black and white students. Black men's wages were two-thirds of white men's; Black women's wages were almost the same as white women's wages.
We have to give credit to the wise leadership and skill of civil rights leaders. They played a weak hand really well and achieved amazing long-term success.
Several things were super important in bringing about gains between 1940 and 1970: the end of legal discrimination, the migration of Black Americans from the South to the North, and the shift from agricultural jobs to industrial and service jobs. Also, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made employment discrimination illegal.
But after 1970, progress slowed down. By the end of the 1980s, many Black men reported no annual earnings at all. And today, Black family income is still only 60 percent of what it is for white families. Most white Americans think there's no more racism, but what else could be keeping Black incomes so low? A lot of it is structural racism.
The growth in income inequality and changes in family structure made progress for Black families even more difficult.
The right-wing explanation was that welfare payments incentivized the collapse of two-parent Black families. But welfare payments actually declined by the mid-1990s.
A better explanation is that Black families were caught in the backwash of society-wide changes.
Let's go back to the post-World War II period for a moment. Growth was fast, unemployment was low, incomes weren't *too* unequal—if you were a white guy. But what about the women?
Plato's Socrates thought women should be Guardians, because men and women were the same. But Aristotle thought there were significant differences: men were better at commanding, women at obeying.
Why male supremacy became so established is not obvious. It was important to have surviving descendants. The typical woman spent 20 years pregnant and breastfeeding. And breastfeeding required women to stay close to their children.
But men still got tangible benefits from further oppressing women.
We don’t know for how long patriarchy has been around for. But we do see a sudden drop in humanity’s “effective” male population about 5,000 years ago – that is, the number of men alive then who have living descendants today. So, did nearly all surviving women share husbands? What pressure was put on them? What institutions were there?
If I were a woman, I’d see a remarkable change in the position of women in history: a shift from 8 or more pregnancies to 1 or 2, a much reduced chance of dying in childbirth. Is the rise of feminism the biggest news in history?
In 1900, there were four times as many paid male workers as paid female workers. By the end of the century, the paid labor force was nearly half female.
In 1900, most female workers were unmarried. By 1980, most married women worked.
But the increase in female labor force participation wasn't accompanied by a rapid closing of the earnings gap. Women's wages remained roughly 60 percent of male wages.
One reason was that women were expanding into the labor force so fast. A relatively low share of the female labor force had a high level of experience.
Another factor was occupational segregation by sex. Women were concentrated in relatively low-paid occupations.
A third factor was that women didn't have the qualifications that employers valued.
Today, the pay gap is less attributable to differences in experience and education than to simple wage discrimination. Companies pay women less because they are women.
Before big firms, the market provided insulation against discrimination to women. If a firm discriminated, women could go to another employer.
But big firms with centralized HR policies realized that many women wouldn't stay on the job long enough to take advantage of wage increases. And men and customers were prejudice too.
The fact that the transformation of women’s role in the economy took so long is surprising. After World War II, the birth rate had fallen, a large clerical and retail sector emerged, and female education had taken hold.
The federal government had to act to erode the restrictions and customs that kept women's economic roles from expanding. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. Even so, courts decided that it didn't need the same scrutiny as discrimination based on race, color, or religion. So, the legal environment mattered.
We can see that “we can forecast the future by observing the experiences of young cohorts today, and these experiences give us ample ground for optimism.”
Even in the Agrarian Age, a shift to less male supremacy would have been a positive-sum change. Women as equal participants could have contributed much more. Optimistic economists believe that groups will become more inclusive, share, and be more productive. Productivity depends on the division of labor. And more people in the tent makes that division of labor even more efficient. But that's not how people saw it for a long time.
The underpinnings of male supremacy began to erode before 1870. But it was over the long twentieth century that they dissolved more completely. Reductions in infant mortality, increasing age of marriage, and the increasing costs of child-rearing decreased fertility. Technology made household tasks easier.
Women can now be redirected towards other purposes and find work where they’re given credit. As long as women were confined to separate, domestic occupations that the market did not reward with cash, it was easy for men to denigrate and minimize their labor.
The explosion of wealth that started in 1870 increased some brutal tyrannies, while two more tyrannies—racism and sexism—slowly lessened. How could those whose privilege was being eroded by the tide of inclusion reconcile themselves to what was happening? The answer, for the first post–World War II generation in the global north, was through unprecedented rapid income growth, opportunity, and upward mobility.