Study: Compared to whites, blacks are 1.75 times more likely to believe that there is no wrong way to make money

It is a common belief in sociology that the source of our greed is the market. Our economic system turns us into unprincipled money chasers.

If that were the case, then the people most integrated into the market would be the most unprincipled. Compared to whites, blacks are more often at the margins of the system, so they should be more likely to retain the natural, biological desire to earn an honest dollar.

General Social Survey respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: "To make money, there are no right and wrong ways any more, only easy and hard ways."

Here are the percentages listed by race of those who agreed (sample size = 4,376):

Percent agreeing there is no wrong way to make money

Whites  22.8
Blacks  39.9
Other race  33.3

Blacks are 1.75 times more likely than whites to feel there is no wrong way to make money. This helps explain their greater involvement in illegal money-making.

The hypothesis that is consistent with this data is that integration into the market makes one more honest about how to make money, and the data here contradict the Rousseauian view that innocent human nature is corrupted by social institutions.