Pam Y. Fields

I was reading a book by Daria Roithmayr, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage, and she equates the way white people have systematically oppressed people of color as a cartel.  Whites engaged in “cartel conduct” utilize “economic coercion, violence and harassment” to give whites an advantage.  In posing suggestions for a political and legal fix, she uses the example of the government saying Microsoft was a monopoly and needed to be split up so that fair competition can occur.  “Restoring competition in the operating systems market required significant and dramatic legal intervention, in order to eliminate the barrier to entry created by increasing returns.”  I would add that fair competition leads to greater diversity and creativity and benefits everyone.  When we don’t diversify, we don’t expand our thinking, actions or products; whether those products are tangible or intangible.  Roithmayr also recognizes that there needs to be work done in our social networks and interactions as well as more integration in a variety of ways.

My final thoughts about her work is something I will try to incorporate in the work I do.  She resets racial discrimination as anticompetitive and antidiscrimination as antitrust.

Anticompetitive – emphasis on the economic costs and historical benefits of racial discrimination

Antitrust – emphasis on the unfairness of white advantage

Let’s all do what we can in the areas we are in to level the field.                                          Blessings

Pam