Race: Does the Minimum Wage Help or Hurt Blacks?

... Walter Williams of George Mason University. Williams, who is black, says "there's a huge segment of the black population for whom upward mobility is elusive, and it's because of the welfare state -- because of government."

Williams elaborates in a new book, "Race and Economics." A chief culprit, he insists, is the minimum wage. "Let's not look at the intentions behind minimum wage," he said. "We have to ask, what are the effects? Put yourself in the place of an employer who must pay $7.25 no matter whom you hire. Will that employer hire a person who can only add $3 or $4 of value per hour?"

He will not. And so fewer young people get hired and "get their feet on the bottom rung of the economic ladder." This hurts all young people, but black teens most, he says, because "many of them get a fraudulent education in the public school system. So a law that discriminates against low-skill people has a doubly negative effect on black teenagers. The unemployment rate among black teens today is unprecedented in U.S. history. In the '40s, black teenage unemployment was less than white teenage unemployment."

And yet a Pew survey says 83% of Americans support raising the minimum wage.

"People have the misguided notion that the minimum wage is an anti-poverty tool."

Economists understand the truth. A survey of the American Economic Association found that 90% of economists say the minimum wage increases unemployment.

For more, see Is Government Aid Helping or Hurting Blacks? by John Stossel, June 2, 2011 at Fox News.

Race: Whites Say They, Not Blacks, Are Racism Victims

... whites believe that anti-white bias has increased as anti-black bias has decreased. On average, the researchers found, whites rated anti-white racism as more prevalent in the 2000s than anti-black bias by more than a full point on a 10-point scale. Eleven percent of whites said whites are currently "very much" targets of discrimination, compared with 2% of blacks who said blacks are "very much" discrimination targets.

For more, see Whites Say They, Not Blacks, Are Racism Victims by Stephanie Pappas, May 24, 2011 at LiveScience.

Race: Can 46% of Mississippi Republicans Favor Banning Interracial Marriage?

From a survey across America:

By 2002 it was a consistent finding that less than 10% of Americans would accede to the proposition that interracial marriage should be legally banned. So the finding that that 46% of Mississippi Republicans agree with that position, and that only 40% reject it outright, is somewhat curious.

For more, see Can 46% of Mississippi Republicans Favor Banning Interracial Marriage? by Razib Khan, April 7, 2011 at DISCOVER's Gene Suppression.

This is a response to the original post, Race: Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears April 16, 2011 at News and Old.

Race: Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears

Public Policy Polling released a survey last week that should cause stomachs to churn throughout polite society; among Republican primary voters in Mississippi, 46% of respondents believe that interracial marriage should not be legal.

Let's set aside for a moment the question of whether or not this is a uniquely Republican problem, and deduce the basic message: nearly half of the poll's respondents believe a marriage should be criminalized based simply on the skin color of its partners. Combined with 14% of those who said they were not sure, you have an astounding 60% of Mississippi Republicans believing that marriage between members of two different races may be a criminal act.

For more, see Mississippi GOP's Embarrassing Interracial Fears by Corey Chambliss, April 10, 2011 at FrumForum.