Let’s begin with segregation, the practice of separating the races that began after the Civil War. In slavery, of course, the races were very close together. But after the Civil War a humiliated South decided, once the Northern troops went home, to take it out on the blacks. The infamous Ku Klux Klan, for instance—begun after the Civil War as a secret paramilitary resistance group against Reconstruction, and then openly revived in the early twentieth century—visited lynchings and other horrors on African Americans. In the late nineteenth century, a coalition of Southerners—including the conservative ruling class of the region—passed laws mandating the segregation of the two races. As a consequence, railway cars, steamships, and ferries had separate sections for whites and blacks. So did post offices, prisons, restaurants, theaters, swimming pools, bowling alleys, and churches. Schools, hospitals, and retirement homes were also segregated. Blacks and whites used separate public toilets and drinking fountains.
Remarkably, for some Southern conservatives, segregation was a way to protect blacks from the wrath of the Klan and other radical racist groups. Historian Joel Williamson writes, “Conservatives sought segregation … to protect black people and their dignity. For conservatives, segregation meant giving the black person a very special place in which he would be protected. Far from putting down the self-esteem of black people, conservative segregation was designed to preserve and encourage it.”2 Today this seems incredible; it runs completely counter to the progressive propaganda against a uniformly racist South. But Williamson points out that there were different elements in the South—the radicals and the conservatives—and for the latter group, segregation was considered preferable to leaving blacks at the mercy of lynchings and flaming crosses.
Who fought segregation? Not the liberals; in the South, there were few outspoken liberals and their opinions were irrelevant. Rather, private streetcar companies mounted the only significant, albeit unsuccessful, opposition. Private companies were concerned about the higher cost of doing business under segregation. Economist Jennifer Roback, in her study of streetcar segregation, shows that companies did not want to provide separate cars for different racial groups. Some even refused to enforce segregation ordinances until they were coerced by the government into compliance through fines. Segregation was “free” for the government because any additional costs were simply passed on to the taxpayer. Segregation therefore, represented a triumph of government regulation over the free market.3
Under segregation, blacks had no alternative but to adapt, and the evidence shows they did. The most resourceful blacks realized that in a perverse way segregation created economic opportunity, because it kept whites out of businesses and professions that served the black community. Economist Thomas Sowell writes, “The reluctance of whites to minister to the hair, the bodies, or the souls of blacks created a class of black barbers, physicians, undertakers, and religious ministers.” Black masons, jewelers, tailors, repairmen, and teachers made a modest living in the segregated Jim Crow world. In several Southern cities and towns, blacks developed flourishing banking, real estate, and insurance industries. In a few areas—notably entertainment and athletics—blacks were able to thwart segregation and achieve fame and affluence by catering to white audiences.4
While segregation represented a burden and imposition on blacks, it does not follow that segregation by itself constituted theft. Obviously there is no theft involved in voluntary segregation. People are free to associate with whomever they want, and if they choose not to associate with someone they are not thereby depriving that person of rights. This principle, of course, applies equally to blacks and whites. If a black man, for instance, wants to live in a predominantly black neighborhood he is not by that decision depriving anyone of his property or rights. By the same token, if a white man wants to have only white friends he is not thereby taking something away from blacks or anyone else. Voluntary segregation may be distasteful and even objectionable but it is not stealing.
State-sponsored segregation is a different matter. We are entitled as citizens to equal rights under the law. Therefore when legal segregation is imposed, it forcibly separates groups that have every right to live together, eat together, and work together. To the degree that segregation deprived blacks from freely interacting with whites, to their economic disadvantage, legal segregation did constitute a “taking” from blacks. This “taking” is undeniable, even if it is hard to quantify. Sure, blacks may have established productive niches within segregation, but undoubtedly at least some of them could have established even more productive enterprises that served both blacks and whites. Happily segregation was ended by the 1960s through a series of government and court decisions.
While segregation is now behind us by half a century, racism continues. Thus racism seems to constitute ongoing theft. Still, we should be precise with language. Strictly speaking, racism cannot be a form of theft because racism is a perspective or point of view. Racism is simply the doctrine or belief in the inferiority of another group, in this case African Americans. How can you steal from someone by thinking badly about them? What we are concerned about, therefore, is not racism but discrimination. Racism is the theory and discrimination is the practice. It is discrimination, not racism, that we should examine for the deprivations it imposes on blacks.
Racial discrimination, like segregation, can be voluntary or involuntary. To put it differently, discrimination, like segregation, can be private or state-sanctioned. Private discrimination is voluntary; it involves private persons or entities that choose to discriminate. State discrimination is compulsory; it involves laws that discriminate. As with voluntary segregation, it is hard to see how voluntary discrimination constitutes any kind of theft. Consider the example of a person or company that refuses to hire or rent to an East Indian. Is that person or company thereby stealing from the East Indian? Clearly not. When people enter into contracts to rent or work, the parties do so because of their mutual benefit. It benefits the landlord or employer on the one hand, and the renter or employee on the other. Either party, for any reason, may decline to make the contract. Private employers should no more be forced to hire employees than employees should be forced to work for employers against their will.
Now if an employer discriminates against any group—or refuses to hire members of that group—this is clearly to the detriment of members of that group. What is often missed, however, is that such actions are also to the detriment of the employer. Employers obviously benefit from having the widest pool of potential recruits, in order to be able to choose the most productive and competent employees. By excluding groups from consideration, discriminators narrow their own pool of selection. Therefore discrimination is good neither for employers or employees.
Is a worker who refuses to work for a particular company “stealing” from it? Obviously not. But why not? Perhaps the worker has valuable skills that could benefit the company. By depriving the company of his or her services—by “discriminating” against it—the worker could arguably be preventing the company from realizing its full profitability. Still, workers are not obligated to maximize anyone else’s full profitability; they can work for whomever they want. The reason workers don’t hurt companies by “discriminating” against them is that the company is not worse off than it was before. By the same logic, employers who discriminate against workers may indeed limit their options. But even if they refuse to hire them, without giving a reason, they are not leaving workers worse off than they were previously.
Stealing, by its very definition, means making someone worse off. If I have a valuable benefit to give to you, or a beneficial deal to make with you, but for whatever reason I withhold that benefit, or refuse that deal, you are in the same position as before. You are not entitled to that deal. You are entitled only to attempt to secure it through my consent. If I refuse consent, you have every right to be disappointed, but you cannot cry, “Thief!” I don’t “owe” you the benefit or the deal. It is mine to give, and yours to tak
e if you want it. Both sides have the same right of consent, and neither is robbing the other by refusing that consent.
Of course, we can all envision a serious problem if everyone refuses to hire a particular individual or group. Let’s call this system-wide discrimination. This problem becomes especially acute when you consider the unfortunate predicament of former slaves who are now free in a country where widespread discrimination prevents them from getting jobs, housing, and other benefits that others take for granted. Many people think that America desperately needed a Civil Rights revolution—and strict laws mandating non-discrimination—because blacks were in precisely this situation. Yet even in the South, not everyone was opposed to hiring and associating with blacks. How do we know this? Because of the very attempt to impose Jim Crow and segregation laws. The laws wouldn’t be needed if everyone agreed not to hire or associate with blacks. The laws were necessary to force white Southerners to comply with rules they might otherwise have violated. If blacks after the Civil War had faced only private discrimination, quite possibly the discrimination would have eroded without the need for a Civil Rights movement, because whites who practiced racial discrimination would have been at a competitive disadvantage in terms of both employees and customers. This is essentially what happened in professional sports.
Blacks, however, faced another and more invidious type of discrimination: discrimination by the state. Here I refer to the segregation laws in Southern states and also to federal segregation in the military and other institutions. State discrimination, unlike private discrimination, does constitute a “taking” from African Americans. Why? Because the state is a monopoly and if the state doesn’t do business with you, you don’t have any alternative short of leaving the state or the country. As citizens, we are entitled to have our government—both state and local—treat us equally, and a government that doesn’t do that is in fact infringing on our rights. A government that discriminates against some of its citizens is in fact “taking” from them something to which they are entitled. When there is a material deprivation, the “taking” can reasonably be described as “stealing.”
The Civil Rights rulings and laws of the 1950s and 1960s were necessary and just in establishing equality of rights under the law. Somewhat weirdly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not merely outlaw discrimination by the government; it also outlawed most forms of private discrimination. While I consider these restrictions on the private sphere to be unwise and unnecessary, they are also understandable. There was a powerful urgency about putting blacks on an equal footing with whites, and outlawing private discrimination was considered a price worth paying. Moreover, starting with President Nixon and continuing to the present, the federal government established a series of racial preferences in favor of blacks aimed at correcting for the wrongs and thefts of the past. Again, these preferences were unwise and unjust—they sought to cure discrimination by practicing it. Yet initially racial preferences could be defended as an extreme measure to kick in the closed door of entrenched state-sponsored discrimination.
Today, however, there is little reason to continue such preferences. The main reason is that racism today is vastly weaker than it used to be. One obvious proof of this is the election and reelection of President Obama. It is simply inconceivable that a white racist country would twice choose an African American to be its highest executive officer, in charge of its security and prosperity. Interestingly Obama seems to have endured virtually no discrimination while growing up. The best evidence is that his race worked in his favor. It is extremely rare, for instance, for someone to be able to transfer from Occidental College to an Ivy League institution like Columbia. Yet Obama did it with a mediocre academic record, and being African American was probably the deciding factor. Race may also have played a key role in Obama getting full scholarships to Columbia and Harvard Law School. As president, he enjoys a level of media sycophancy never before seen in American politics. If Obama were a white guy, is there any doubt that he would not be where he is today? None of this is a tribute to Obama. It’s a tribute to how much Americans today want to see an African American represent them, and rise to the top, and succeed.
Racism—or the absence of it—can also be discerned in survey data about white attitudes not only toward black inferiority but also toward racial intermarriage.5 Blacks know it too: ask blacks today to recall when they personally experienced racism—when for example someone called them “nigger”—and many are hard pressed to give a single example. While old-line activists continue to recycle horror stories from decades ago, the new consensus is reflected by sociologist Orlando Patterson: “America, while still flawed in its race relations, is now the least racist white majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all of Africa; and has gone through a dramatic change in its attitudes toward miscegenation.”6 Patterson wrote that in 1991 and it’s even more true today.
Among the younger generation, racism is virtually a non-issue. This is not to say that racism isn’t endlessly talked about in diversity workshops and mandatory seminars in schools and colleges. Such events, however, have assumed a surreal quality. The only race-based discrimination that young people actually experience is affirmative action policies that benefit blacks and Hispanics and disadvantage whites and Asian Americans. If racist countries don’t elect black presidents, neither do they establish preferential policies benefiting minority groups over the majority. So the persistence of affirmative action over more than a generation is, like Obama’s success, a testament to how far racism has receded in America.
Why did racism decline? It is tempting to answer: because of the Civil Rights revolution. In reality, however, there wasn’t much of a “revolution.” Ask yourself: If it was a real revolution, how come hardly anyone died? The very fact that we can remember the isolated incidents shows how isolated they were. Martin Luther King scored an easy intellectual victory over the Southern segregationists and racists. The best they could do against him was to unleash police dogs and water hoses. Yet, dogs and hoses were no match for federal troops that were eventually sent in to enforce court decisions and federal legislation. So why didn’t the South answer Martin Luther King? Why didn’t Southerners say, “Of course we think blacks are inferior and we are justified in thinking that way.” The simple answer is that racism had greatly eroded before the Civil Rights movement. The biggest reason for this is World War II. It was Hitler who helped to discredit the idea of racial supremacy, and ever since 1945 racism has been on the defensive.
Incredibly, there are Civil Rights activists who deny the magnitude of racial progress, and the massive falling-off in discrimination against blacks. I am not suggesting that we have reached the “end of racism,” a title of one of my earlier books. That title was intended to convey a goal—where we are heading—rather than to announce racism’s disappearance. Obviously, in a big country like America we can find examples of racism, but consider this: if you look at the crime statistics, there are innumerable black assaults on whites every day and no one notices; one black delinquent like Trayvon Martin gets shot and there is a national scandal. Perhaps the best way to summarize is that racism used to be systematic, but now it is merely episodic. Racism today is not strong enough to prevent blacks or any other group from achieving its aspirations.
Still, racism used to be a very powerful force in America. For the first half of the twentieth century black inferiority was pretty much taken for granted. In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had more than two million members. The group organized a march in New York that attracted more than fifty thousand Klansmen. Today the Klan could scarcely drum up a hundred marchers, and they would be vastly outnumbered by protesters against the Klan. So things have changed for the better. During the very heyday of racism, however, two very different strategies emerged for combating it. These were the protes
t strategy of W. E. B. Du Bois and the self-help strategy of Booker T. Washington.
Du Bois argued that blacks in America face a single problem: white racism. And he recommended a simple strategy to fight it, summed up in a phrase first used by Frederick Douglass: “agitate, agitate, agitate.” As Du Bois himself wrote, “We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a free American, political, civil and social, and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.”7 In keeping with this approach, Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which quickly established itself as the leading Civil Rights organization in America. Its approach could easily be summed up in that slogan, “agitate, agitate, agitate.”
Booker T. Washington argued that blacks face two problems in America. One was racism, and the other was black cultural backwardness. As Washington put it, “The Negro should not be deprived by unfair means of the franchise, but political agitation alone will not save him… . He must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character. No race without these elements can permanently succeed.” Washington believed in the ultimate triumph of the meritocratic idea. “Merit, no matter under what skin found, is in the long run recognized and rewarded… . Whether he will or not, a white man respects a Negro who owns a two-story brick house.”8 Here Washington is saying that just as important as rights is the ability to compete effectively and take advantage of those rights. Moreover, he added that black success and achievement are the best ways to dispel white suspicions of black inferiority.
Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her Page 14
