The Economic Entrapment of African-Americans:  A Study of Discrimination in the Workplace Using If He Hollers Let Him Go and Economic Theory

Balster, Leanne

The Economic Entrapment of African-Americans: A Study of Discrimination in the Workplace Using If He Hollers Let Him Go and Economic Theory

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/35919

Author(s)

Balster, Leanne

Date Issued

April 11, 2014

Abstract

Academic discourse regarding discrimination is generally segregated along disciplinary lines without fields cooperating in a grander discussion. This paper aims to analyze the precipitating factors and results of discriminatory behaviors inflicted upon African-Americans in the United States from both a literary and economic perspective. This interdisciplinary approach improves upon separate analyses by including the superior interpretive strategies from one perspective and filling in its gaps through interpretation from another point of view. The economic analysis will incorporate both Neoclassical Economics and Political Economy, analyzing the two schools of thought in their ability to model real-world observations as presented by Chester Himes’s 1945 novel If He Hollers Let Him Go. Both the text and theories succeed and fail in regards to different manifestations of discrimination, but building upon the strength of each can provide a fuller picture of discrimination as a multidimensional phenomena.

Honors

Economics, 2014

First Reader(s)

Slote, Ben