Guilds reflect the societies they are in. Society had more bigotry in the past, and so did the various institutions within it.

Also, it's weird that you call out guilds for being discriminatory but then give an example of discrimination in employment. We have fair employment laws to prevent this type of behavior and arguably could have "fair guild membership" laws if it became a problem.

It's fair to argue against guilds for driving up prices by limiting membership.

You’re overlooking that the non-white population is much younger (the median white person is 42, the median Hispanic person is 28) and they are driving all population growth in the country. (The absolute number of non-hispanic whites started declining in 2010). Given those changing demographics, when guilds act to limit membership (as you acknowledge they do) the bulk of those excluded are going to be non-whites.

And employment discrimination laws won’t solve the problem because the discriminatory effect arises from the legal practice of protecting existing members at the expense of potential new entrants.

I proposed guild discrimination laws similar to employment discrimination laws, making it illegal for guilds to exclude on the basis of protected categories.

That wouldn’t help. In a country where the non-white population is rapidly growing and the white population is shrinking, and also is trying to catch up in terms of education and income, the population of guild members will be whiter than the population of potential new members. Limiting supply (favoring existing members over potential new members) will in practice disadvantage non-whites.

There was a very clear example of this recently in Chicago. Lori Lightfoot explained that she wouldn’t pursue police funding cuts because under the union contracts, cuts would have to be made from newer employees first. (Last in First out.) That would mean that 2/3 of the cuts would be Black and Hispanic officers, even though less than half of the overall force is Black and Hispanic.

Oh interesting. That's a good point.

I’m trying to think of why it would be worse. Is it because skills become less transferable, thus making it harder for an apprentice to move from one master to another?

Perhaps that is by design - companies are wary of investing time and money training junior employees because they can just leave before the investment pays for itself?

Not sure what the answer is here; just playing devil’s advocate.

It’s because it gives guilds the power to control the pipeline of skilled labor and exclude new entrants to limit supply. Guilds are generally run by their members, and the existing members are much more likely to be white and native born than potential new entrants. Their management structure also makes it more likely that prejudices will be acted upon.

When public unions became a thing in the 1960s and 1970s, they systematically excluded Black people, for example.

A federal government can dictate what it thinks morality should be, but in practice cannot enforce morality in a free country.

Even in the US South, the vast majority of millennials and gen Z are not racist. They aren't in political power yet, but in the next 20 years or so, they will be and the zeitgeist of the area will finish its shift (even the people currently in power are abolitionists compared to the previous generations). Travel the world and you'll see that (perhaps outside some European countries) the US of today is just about the least racist country in existence.

Guilds/Unions formed today won't have the same issues as ones from 50-60 years ago because the general view of people today isn't what it was back then.

Guilds and unions are not the same thing.

No matter what the "zeitgeist" is 20 years from now, guilds will still have the effect of artificially limiting the supply of labor to the fields they control, which has been a disaster for fields ranging from medicine to cosmetics.

Craft unions, like in construction, are more like guilds than the industrial unions. You must qualify in one way or another to be a union member before you can get hired by a union company.

But in an industrial union, as an example get hired by an automaker with a UAW contract (and not in a so called right to work state), you are a UAW member.

I think you mean the very early years 1870's and 80' unfortunately the AFL did discriminate against Black and Female Workers.