Thursday, May 22, 2014

Flashback: NAACP Leader Explains to Senator John F. Kennedy Why The Minimum Wage Is Racist

Flashback 1957 .Cafe Hayek has the dialogue between Clarence Mitchell, then director of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP concerning raising the minimum wage, and Senator John F. Kennedy. Here's Senator Kennedy :
Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too – the wages of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage – and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work – it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?
Here's Clarence Mitchell's response:
I certainly think that is why the Southern picture is as it is today on the wage matters, that there is a constant threat that if the white people don’t accept the low wages that are being paid to them, some Negroes will come in [to] work for a lower wage. Of course, you feel it then up in Connecticut and Massachusetts, because various enterprising people decide to take their plants out of your states and take them down to the areas of cheap labor.
I guess it's not difficult for white Democrats today to find some "Uncle Toms" to promote their agenda.