¹ See generally Bolick, Clint, Changing Course: Civil Rights at the Crossroads (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988).Google Scholar At the moment I will not define the protean term “discrimination” precisely; instead, I will rely on commonsense intuitions to the effect that the term prohibits differential treatment of one person because of his or her group membership. I deal here with discrimination, thus understood, on the basis of race, sex, and disability. Other bases for discrimination – age, sexual orientation, religious belief – raise overlapping questions, but they also call up considerations that would complicate the analysis here if they were to be discussed in detail.

² Even if this is so, the argument for anti-discrimination measures is not complete. It would be possible to acknowledge that markets will perpetuate discrimination and also to argue that governmental controls do not solve the problem, or impose large ancillary causes, or are inefficient, or are unjust. I do not accept these arguments, but will not deal with them here. Instead, I focus on the more narrow claim that markets are an effective anti-discrimination policy.

³ Consider also the fact that nonmarket societies quite frequently reflect pervasive discrimination. Discriminatory attitudes can be comfortably accommodated in both market and nonmarket economies.

⁴ See, e.g., Donohue, & Heckman, , “Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Affirmative Action and Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks,” forthcoming in Journal of Economic Perspectives (1989)Google Scholar, and sources cited therein; Heckman, & Paynor, , “The Impact of Federal Antidiscrimination Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks: A Study of South Carolina,” American Economic Review, vol. 79 (1989), p. 138Google Scholar; Freeman, , “Black Economic Progress After 1964: Who Has Gained And Why?”, in Studies in Labor Markets, ed. Sherwin, Rosen (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981).Google Scholar But see Posner, , “An Economic Analysis of Sex Discrimination Laws,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 56 (1989), p. 1311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ See, e.g., Dipboye, , Arvey, , & Terpstra, , “Sex and Physical Attractiveness of Raters and Applicants as Determinants of Resume Evaluations,” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 62 (1977), p. 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mischel, , “Sex Bias in the Evaluation of Professional Achievements,” Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 66 (1974); p. 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Etaugh, & Kasley, , “Evaluating Competence: Effects of Sex, Marital Status, and Parental Status,” Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 6 (1981), p. 196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The reasons for this may range from hostility to statistical discrimination, discussed below.

⁶ See Fishback, , “Can Competition Among Employers Reduce Governmental Discrimination?”, Journal of Late and Economics, vol. 32 (1989), p. 311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ This view finds its origins in Becker, Gary, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957).Google Scholar

⁸ Becker, ibid., in fact makes this point, describing the “taste” for discrimination as including fellow workers and customers as well as employers.

⁹ Here I follow Akerlof, , “The Economics of Caste and of the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 94 (1978), p. 599.Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Becker on this point.

¹¹ The point is discussed in Akerlof, , “Discriminatory, Status-Based Wages Among Tradition-Oriented, Stochastically Trading Coconut Producers,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 93 (1985), p. 265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² See Phelps, , “The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism,” American Economic Review, vol. 62 (1972), p. 659Google Scholar; in law, see Strauss, , “The Myth of Colorblindness,” 1986 The Supreme Court Review, eds. Kurland, , Casper, , and Hutchinson, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986), p. 99.Google Scholar

¹³ This phenomenon, of course, does not mean that differential treatment is permissible. Whether such treatment should be allowed need hardly be made to depend solely on the fact that it is economically rational.

¹⁴ Compare Lakoff, George, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ See Aronson, Elliot, The Social Animal (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁶ The points made in this paragraph can be found in Strauss, “The Myth of Colorblindness.”

¹⁷ Arrow, , “Models of Job Discrimination,” in Racial Discrimination in Economic Life, ed. Pascal, Anthony H. (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1972)Google Scholar; Lundberg, & Startz, , “Private Discrimination and Social Intervention in Competitive Labor Markets,” American Economic Review, vol. 73 (1983), p. 340.Google Scholar

¹⁸ But compare Donohue, , “Is Title VII Efficient?”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 134 (1986), p. 1411CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who appears to be relying on a conception of “efficiency” not based on this criterion but instead based on a notion of social output or production. The same criterion can be found in Schwab, , “Is Statistical Discrimination Efficient?”, American Economic Review, vol. 76 (1980), p. 228.Google Scholar

¹⁹ But see Schwab, “Is Statistical Discrimination Efficient?”; Donohue, “Is Title VII Efficient?”

²⁰ See Lundberg & Startz, “Private Discrimination and Social Intervention in Competitive Labor Markets.”

²¹ See Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1957)Google Scholar; in the particular context, see the notation in Arrow, “Models of Job Discrimination,” at 26. In general, see Elster, Jon, Sour Grapes (1983).Google Scholar

²² See Elster, Jon, Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ See Elster, Sour Grapes; Lerner, Melvin J., The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion (New York: Plenum Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ See, e.g., Aronson, The Social Animal (1988); Carli, Janoff-Bulman, and Timko, , “Cognitive Biases in Blaming the Victim,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 21 (1985), p. 161Google Scholar; Gunter, & Furnham, , “Just World Beliefs and Attitudes Towards the Poor,” British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 23 (1984), p. 265.Google Scholar

²⁵ If it is to be made plausible, this is not a conspiracy theory. There has been no self-conscious decision by whites or men to do something of this sort. The phenomenon is instead a consequence of a collection of small decisions without global or world-transforming aspirations – in short, of a market.

²⁶ See Strauss, , “Discriminatory Intent and the Taming of Brown,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 56 (1989), p. 936.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ See MacKinnon, Catharine, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Strauss, “Discriminatory Intent.”

²⁹ See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 102Google Scholar; MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified.

³⁰ Compare Strauss, “Discriminatory Intent,” “The Myth of Colorblindness.”