> Were ... If so, I feel like the conversation might shift. This is a bizarre way of looking at the world. The question is about the state of the world decades

> Were ... If so, I feel like the conversation might shift. This is a bizarre way of looking at the world. The question is about the state of the world decades ago (were the laws written to further racist goals?). Yet you posit that the answer to this question might have some effect in the future. It's an excellent way to deflect from facing facts; suggesting that somehow we couldn't have known about what happened. We can, though. It's trivial to look up the history of minimum wage (without even checking Wikipedia, though, I'm sure it has a censored version of the history so you'll have to look elsewhere). Why do we get to deflect the consequences of the past to the future, to a "might", to a mere "shift"? Minimum wage is and always has been a way to keep minorities from getting jobs by carefully drawing a line - and redrawing it, so the whole racist enterprise has surely been up and running this whole time - to be just above where it's worthwhile to hire people with poor job history (a proxy for minorities, just redlining with wages). As the economy improves of course this line has to be drawn higher and higher because it becomes more and more economically viable to make risky hires.