PSA: Dear White America Racism Still Exists

One of the problems with writing a blog like this is that you end up covering the same topics over and over again. So there must be some effort on my part to make sure when I do, I at least bring something new to the discussion. This may not prove to be one of those kinds of essays. If you recall back during the 2010 elections Rand Paul got into a bit of hot water over some comments he made about The Civil Rights Act. He was called to task on MSNBC by Rachel Maddow. I discussed the whole incident here and again here.Well it is almost deja vu because just recently someone with the last name Paul was on MSNBC and got called out for the exact same thing. Only this time it was Ron Paul, getting called out by Chris Mathews.Over the last thirty years many in America have come to think racism is over. We’ve gone over this before. The thing is many libertarians seem to think the end of racism was just a natural evolution in our society. In the latest interview with Ron and Chris, Ron Paul makes the staggering claim that even without the civil rights act there would be no “whites only” shops in business. We are no where near the promise land of racial equality many, and I have to say this bluntly, many white people, seem to think we’re at.
Essential Ron Paul thinks one of two things would happen. One that people in the Jim Crow south would just eventually grow disgusted with the idea of treating an entire race as sub-human, and would no longer patronage discriminatory stores. Or he believes that businesses would look at the vast untapped markets of black people and start selling to them to increase their profits. Either way eventually everyone would be on the whole tolerance band wagon and we wouldn't need to worry about those pesky federal laws interfering in our daily lives which is the true assault on freedom, because again it’s all about the freedom of the purse.
I’m going to tackle the economics of this first. Ron Paul wants us to believe that it would be financially stupid to not tap into the black market. For those unfamiliar the median income in America is around $44,000 for black America the income drops to $30,000. After nearly 50 years since the passage of the civil rights act, Black America has been able to reduce the income disparity to only 30% of the national average. Before its passage this was exponentially worse. So the question becomes what business would look at this demographic and feel the need to change any policy to better attract it. Paul might try to argue that the income disparity was also bound to disappear. Except that without the civil rights act, there is literally no incentive to stop discriminating in hiring practices either. In fact businesses in the south could legitimately make the argument that hiring a Black person to a prominent position in a business with a livable wage would do harm to the business.
As for the idea that Americans would grow disgusted by the notion of treating an entire race as sub-human lets take a look at the news for the past ten days. Newt Gingrinch went on the news and called Obama the biggest “food stamp” president in this countries history, and he’s a top tier presidential candidate. All of Fox News threw a shit fit because the Whitehouse hosted a poetry reading and invited Common, perhaps one of the more socially conscience musicians today, because if you listen to a heavily edited piece of his work you can be convinced he promotes violence. Oh and in case you needed something to literally set fire to your hair over Psychology Today published an article titled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive than Other Women?” Forgive me I won’t hold my breath waiting for America to show sufficient disgust over this.
I applaud the gains we have made in this country towards racial equality. There is no question that today is better than July 1st 1964 the day before The Civil Rights Act was signed into law. But this journey has really just begun. The Civil Rights Act was designed to combat institutionalized racism. It was not, as the Pauls like to think, a way to stop racism on government property. It was designed to combat racism full stop. It was passed because, for what is beginning to feel like a brief moment in time, we thought that racism in America was so unconscionable, and so against the very nature of a country founded on freedom, that we made laws against it. It was passed not because it was inevitability, but because the racial strife was eating the soul of this country. To argue, like the pauls do, that the property rights of an individual supersede the rights of any law abiding person is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of freedom. And unless every time, and I mean every time someone spouts such inane drivel in the public square, we don’t ridicule and lambaste them as imbecilic and irrelevant we do a disservice to all those who have struggled to make America a better place.