ABSTRACT
A great many people in the United States believe that racial prejudice and discrimination, racism, will eventually be eliminated from American society. The question of the permanence or impermanence of racism is also a critical theoretical and empirical issue in orthodox and heterodox economics where it is framed in terms of black-white inequality in wages, earnings, employment, occupation, capital ownership, and wealth. Economic orthodoxy acting au fond in defense of free-market capitalism predicts the demise of racism in the long-run as a cause of racial economic inequality. Orthodox theory predicts that the proportion of the black-white economic gap that is caused by racism will disappear in the long-run and any economic differences remaining thereafter will be solely due to differences in black-white human capital endowments. Racism and racial economic inequality also well serves the interests of capitalism. White capitalist employers vouchsafe white workers control over the ports of entry to most jobs and occupations along with their internal promotion ladders.
