In "The Economics of Discrimination" I pointed out that companies which engage in discrimination automatically penalize themselves by doing so. By discriminating against qualified applicants, and hiring less qualified ones, a company gives business to it's competition and makes less money. In other words, there's an automatic, build-in penalty for discrimination by any other criteria than merit. The more you discriminate, the more you hurt (penalize) your own company.

Sadly, it seems minority firms haven't learned this lesson yet:

Perhaps the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) should look into this. According to the African-American Chamber of Commerce, 81.8 percent of black firm employees are black. Given that blacks are only 12 percent of the population, something’s not quite right, is it?

That's an extraordinary amount of discrimination. What do you think will happen to these companies? You've got it: They will be very uncompetitve because they pass over so many qualified applicants.

If they operate in a market situation, they will lose business like crazy. That result, then, will be used to show that the same black-owned businesses make less money than other similar companies. This finding will then be produced as evidence of further "discrimination", and will result in more cries for the same wrong-minded policies. Liberals hurt people, blame their opponents, and then use that as justification to seize still more power and exert more control.

If these companies operate in an uncompetitive situation -- say, becuase they are guaranteed contracts from the government -- then the taxpayers will simply get an awful deal for their money, diverting necessary funds away from other more useful causes like saving tsunami victims, fighting domestic terrorism, or providing tutoring for inner-city children.

American blacks have been taught that "racism" is a white man's disease. No, racism is an equal-opportunity employer. It is not morally wrong because you are in the majority; it is morally wrong period. It is not unwise because you are white. It is unwise, period.

Racism hurts its sufferers by denying them a sound frame of mind, teaching them to ritually dehumanize others according to some unchosen, irrelevant external characteristic, and impeding their happiness, generosity, ability to make friends, money-making prospects, and relationship with their creator.

Racism is a sickness of the human heart, a sickness no government program can cure, and a sickness we have encouraged in the black community -- as if all the other things which befell them in history weren't bad enough already. Each time we "look the other way", we encourage the spread of the disease and it's baleful effects upon it's sufferers, black, white, or otherwise.