Economic protection for white workers was justified as necessary racial policy

Evidence

“When economists declared that higher wages were a form of bounty, and that protected labour was uneconomical, the answer was given that the sacrifice was well made if the unfortunate elements in the white population ultimately found an assured footing in modern life.” “But it has not been in South Africa alone that the voice of the conventional economist has gone unheeded since the end of the Great War… In a generation which saw England abandon free trade, America leave the gold standard, the Third Reich embrace autarchy, … South Africa’s insistence that its economic life must be organized to secure the dominant position of the white race is not seriously out of place” (Kiewiet, op. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2354

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Arendt’s broader claim about race-thinking structuring economic policy in South Africa, and to the field’s toolkit on scientific racism legitimizing exclusion. — connects to: White workers cemented segregation to protect their labor advantages — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1459