Monday, September 04, 2006
Collective Punishment. posted by Richard Seymour
It seems that American employers have been collectively punishing American Arabs and Muslims for 9/11 by cutting their wages:The earnings of Arab and Muslim men working in the United States dropped about 10 percent in the years following the 9/11 attacks, according to a new study.
The drop in wages was most dramatic in areas that reported high rates of hate crimes, according to the study due to be published in the Journal of Human Resources.
The study measured changes in wages of first- and second-generation immigrants, from countries with predominantly Arab or Muslim populations from September 1997 to September 2005. It then compared them to changes in the wages of immigrants with similar skills from other countries.
The average wage was approximately $20 an hour ahead of the attacks in 2001 and dropped by $2 an hour after them, Robert Kaestner, co-author of the study and a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of economics, said on Thursday.
MRZine has an excellent article on Anti-Arab Racism, Islam and the Left. It provides an excellent account of the colonial background to this racism and a crucial engagement with the left on this issue. It also links to the finding that most Americans think "Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence". Yeah yeah, those guys in the White House are Muslims, right?