This passages contain explanations, some contain arguments, and some may be interpreted as either an argument or an explanation. What is your judgment about the chief function of each passage? What would have to be the case for the passage in question to be an argument? To be an explanation? Where you find an argument, identify its premises and conclusion. Where you find an explanation, indicate what is being explained and what the explanation is.

David Bernstein [in Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal, 2001] places labor laws at the center of the contemporary plight of black Americans. Many of these ostensibly neutral laws (e.g., licensing laws, minimum-wage laws, and collective bargaining laws) were either directly aimed at stymieing black economic and social advancement or, if not so aimed, were quickly turned to that use. A huge swath of the American labor market was handed over to labor unions from which blacks, with few exceptions, were totally excluded. The now longstanding gap between black and white unemployment rates dates precisely from the moment of government intervention on labor’s behalf. In short (Bernstein argues) the victories of American labor were the undoing of American blacks.