Arkansas Barber Licensing Exam Pass Rates By Race,1937-1950
A historical lesson in unintended consequences
The concept of unintended consequences has a long history. Though it goes back further, one can find the concept as early as the 1700s in the writings of Adam Smith. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith uses the example of someone throwing a rock over a wall into a street without warning. Though the person may not intend to do any harm, their actions have the chance of hurting someone. As such, Smith argues that the person should be chastised, even if the rock does not hurt anyone and the person had no intention of hurting anyone. Smith is showing a concern for consequences, not intentions (93).
Though it might sound like something confusing you learn about in an econ 101 class, it’s pretty intuitive. We’ve all been in a situation in which we try to make something occur, but instead something unexpected happens. Often, we think about this as something bad. You try to help a friend or peer and just end up making them mad. Or you start working out to get healthy and end up injuring yourself.
However, it can also be a good thing. For instance, much of the policies that were attempting to slow the spread of COVID also slowed the spread of the flu. That’s a positive outcome that was not necessarily intended.
The type of unintended consequence that this post is interested in is the perverse unintended consequences. This occurs when a government or state attempts to solve a problem but makes the problem worse. Often the reason this happens is that politicians and states fail to recognize how complex society is. It may seem like politicians can pull levers to produce the outcomes they want, but that is just not the case. While it would take a whole other post to fully explain this idea, Friedrich Hayek discusses it in detail in much of his writings. In “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” Hayek talks about knowledge, and how in a free-market economy knowledge is dispersed. Everyone in society has specific knowledge (time and place at least) and so it’s impossible for a government or politician to know all of that dispersed knowledge. Because of this, Hayek was in favor of small government (and a price system that coordinates action) because he thought politicians would often attempt to make society better, but in reality—make things worse.
To see how this theoretical concept of unintended consequences works in real life, we turn to none other than—barbers in Arkansas. In Arkansas, barbers (mostly white and mostly union) lobbied for a licensing law. The intended consequence of this policy was to clean up barber shops and prevent disease. Also, the policy was supposed to guarantee that all barbers in the state were competent. Overall, that’s a noble cause. Who wouldn’t want sanitary barber shops and competent haircutters? If we were to judge this policy based on its intention, there would be no reason to object to it. However, if we judge the policy based on its consequences, we come away with a different evaluation.
The barber licensing law in Arkansas had a negative effect on Black barbers in the state. Indeed, from 1930 to 1940 (law was passed on 1937), the number of Black barbers decreased by 41%. From 1930 to 1940, the number of white barbers decreased by 21%. Licensing laws make it more difficult to enter the given vocation, so we should expect the numbers to go down, but there’s no reason, necessarily, to believe that the law was going to have a different effect on white and Black barbers. The law doesn’t mention race, nor does it treat the two races differently.
Black and white barbers also passed licensing exams at different rates. From 1937 to 1950, 77% of white barbers passed the written licensing exams in Arkansas. During the same period, 63% of Black barbers passed the written licensing exams in Arkansas. Again, white and Black barbers were taking the same exams, but the outcome was disparate [these numbers come from Census data and data that I collected in Arkansas’ Board of Barber Examiners minutes where pass rates by race were recorded by the board].
Though this is a good example of politicians having a goal that at least sounds good, while the outcome was unintended (a racial disparity), there might actually be reason to believe that politicians knew (or could have assumed) that this would happen. The reason Blacks and whites did not pass at an equal rate is that educational opportunities were different for the two races in Arkansas (and the entire South). It can be difficult to find specific data for Arkansas, but in the entire South in 1930, 19.7% of Blacks were illiterate. In 1930, only 3.8% of whites in the South were illiterate. Again, to explain why that is the case would take another post, but a combination of post-Reconstruction political backlash and white supremacy are the reason (Michael Perman’s Struggle for Mastery would be a good place to start learning about that history).
Recent (and past) scholarship has often been concerned with overt racism. When people intend to do harm to minorities, and then do it, that should most certainly be pointed out and condemned. Throughout the South’s history, racial minorities have been treated unfairly and the perpetrates made obvious their intentions. However, often racial discrimination or harm done to minorities is not intended—and yet it affects lives all the same. While it is important to point out overt discrimination, scholars should also consider how regulations and legislation affects minorities, absent the overt intent to discriminate. The concept of unintended consequences may be simple and intuitive, but again and again politicians make the mistake of passing well-intended policies that result in harmful consequences.