[Elephant Walk]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

Wait, so because a minimum wage doesn't let a racist employer pay black people less, it's the law that's the problem?

When it doesn't allow them to pay less, that means they're unemployed.

Unemployment is the problem as it further marginalizes minorities by making it difficult to acquire workplace skills as well as drops their income to zero.

How would the alternative, hiring only minorities and paying them less than white people be any better?

Give them the ability to be unemployed, while gaining on the job experience and also possibly overcoming racism through interaction (ideally).

And the origin of minimum wage dates before civil rights, the odds that minority unemployment was being adequately counted and that the wars didn't have a huge impact seems unlikely.

Possibly. But the mountains of recent evidence at least points to current time. Whether or not it has historically happened, doesn't really matter if the correlation is there now. Especially the ones where the increase in minimum wage increases minority unemployment, which shows correlation nearly every time.

Here's an example article:
http://epionline.org/news_detail.cfm?rid=180

The author found that for every 10% increase in the minimum wage:
• Minority unemployment increased by 3.9%
• Hispanic unemployment increased by 4.9%
• Minority teen unemployment increased 6.6%
• African American teen unemployment increased by 8.4%
• Low-skilled unemployment (i.e., those lacking a high school diploma) increased by 8%

But there are alot more. I'm not sure why this is so difficult for y'all. While economics can't be absolutely established because of the human element that lies within, these theories are as close to it as possible.

How would this not bring back sweatshops?

If workers are interested in working in sweatshops, how is that a bad thing?

Why is the assumption that the employer would eventually pay the worker better? Why not fire the employee and hire someone else at a cheaper wage if they caused a fuss.

So what?

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

I am not getting this point, though. Minimum wage in and of itself doesn't act as a barrier -- it's actions like the one in the previously quoted section. Hiring someone on at minimum wage does not prevent that person from gaining experience and moving up within the company.

How does minimum wage not act as a barrier? If someone has absolutely no experience doing something, one could theoretically (without minimum wage) be hired for two or three dollars in order to gain experience needed. But, when minimum wage exists, this person would not be hired in order to gain said experience.

And another reference to racism is that within the unions. Many unions were established in South Africa to establish wage floors which kept out blacks. While I'm not saying that all unions act as such today, it is an easily understood example of the power of a wage floor in maintaining economic power status quo.