Bigotry? How many blacks did you break bread with this past year? We have people of different races and ethnic groups regularly in and out of our homes and in our lives. My late grandfather was half Scot-Irish. I've visited over 150 countries around the world, including Ireland and African countries (my ancestory). My daughter-in-law, an educator, is white with 2 biracial children. I'm currently preparing for an upcoming trip to Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, and Abu Dhabi. I enjoy different cultures and their histories.
Zero-sum outlook? You're probably more comfortable with the likes of Clarence Thomas, a black conservative meritorious manumission negro grifter? New revelations just came out about his relationship with the ultra-right Koch brothers. Meritorious manumission has always been a significant obstacle for true group black progress.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of wealth and resources. Europeans got the headstart with black chattel slavery, a racist constitution, 2 billion acres of free Indian land, and Jim Crow. The Black group's wealth of less than 2% hasn't changed since the American Civil War when there were 400 thousand semi-freed blacks and 4 million black slaves. Lots of time and opportunities were lost in accumulating wealth in this unforgiving capitalistic system historically rigged by the white dominant group. Resources are very limited, and whites mostly own the boot and loot. Scraps? Lol!!! Black slaves lived off of massa's scraps (i.e., hog guts). Some still eat hog guts (Chitterings). Do you eat hog intestines? Lol!!!!
In his book, "Powermomics," Dr. Claud Anderson states, racism is a wealth and power-base competitive relationship between Blacks and non-Blacks. The sole purpose of racism is to support and ensure that the White majority and it's ethnic subgroups continue to dominate and use Blacks as a means to produce wealth and power. Centuries of Black enslavement and Jim Crow semi-slavery resulted in the majority of society becoming 99-foot giants and Blacks one-foot midgets. This massive inequality in wealth and resources made Blacks non-competitive and totally dependent upon Whites for the necessities of life. True racism exists only when one group holds a disproportionate share of the wealth and power over another group and then uses those resources to marginalize, exploit, and subordinate the weaker group. In America, it is Whites who use wealth and power to marginalize, exploit, and subordinate Blacks. Whites can deny Blacks employment, educational opportunities, business resources, and a place to live or the right to vote. Therefore, according to this definition, Black people can not be racist. No group of Blacks has the power or exclusive control of resources to the degree that they can educationally, politically, economically ĺand socially exploit and marginalize the White race. Blacks can only react to racism and try to alter the conditions that racism creates. Despite the realities, there are numerous conservative Blacks who act as apologists for White racism and confuse the issue. A conservative Black radio talk show host in Los Angeles, for example, charges that Blacks are racist as Whites. His desire for white approval, as well as his ignorance of history, impedes him from understanding that White racism and Black prejudice are not the same thing. Blacks have a reason for their feelings about Whites based on how they have been treated by Whites. The White race, on the other hand, has never been marginalized by the Black race. Racism reinforces the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery. Blacks have been unable to escape from those legacies because the majority of society acknowledges the operation of racism in the distant past but minimizes its present significance."
DEI = Title VII + Title VI (and, in the universities those plus Title IX). Amplified in the 80s and 90s when "discrimination" was greatly expanded to include "stereotypes" and "hostile environment harassment" thru the EEOC and the courts; all of the above cemented into place through corporate liability expansions during the same time - and then consecrated in the "Ellerth-Faragher test" (1998, U.S. Supreme Court), which made clear the need for "preventive and corrective measures." All clearly "constitutional." Also, more simply, massive. There is more (a lot more) to "woke" than affirmative action and the "disparate impact" debate. It is true that the Right is now pushing back against anti-white, anti-male uses of the machinery of anti-discrimination law, but in doing so they only make it stronger, in my opinion. And now for the shameless self-promotion: spelled out in chapter 3 of my book, "American Multiculturalism and the Anti-Discrimination Regime" (out Sept. 15 from St. Augustine's Press).
I started listening to your interview with Carol Swain this morning and got halfway through. Looking forward to finishing the interview and learning about her new book.
I appreciate you asking Ms. Swain some of the common questions circulating regarding her support for Donald Trump. I make the following points that I think are relevant to your questions:
• The only election contest brought by Donald Trump was in Georgia. Georgia law required a hearing to be set within at least 10 days. The lower court simply did not set a hearing, and the Georgia appellant and Supreme Court failed to enforce the law. That reinforces Ms. Swain’s statement that there is not fair judicial relief available.
• Regarding what were the Georgia election irregularities, I believe Ms. Swain correctly responded there were many. Some of the more common ones are detailed in the Georgia case filing. I will try to attach that filing to my post for the benefit of your community.
• Finally, in response to your comment about Donald Trump conceding after not receiving remedy through the court system, in addition to the difficulty of courts appropriately responding to the relief sought by others (and Donald Trump in Georgia) that Ms. Swain referenced, it is important to note that the Constitution saw election challenges mostly having a political resolution; that is, that is why the Constitution allows for election irregularities to be brought to Congress. This is precisely what Donald Trump did as well as many other incumbents and challengers over the history of our founding.
Ms. Swain reference all these points, in general, which your listeners would benefit I believe from a much more detailed discussion. I recommend you interview Robert Barnes, a constitutional and civil rights lawyer who has done many election challenges and was heavily involved in the Georgia court filing. He can be found on Locals at vivabvarnes.local.com. Glenn, Robert and Viva had you on his show. He's the best I've heard at articulating the details of these election challenges and does so even handily. I think your board would enjoy him.
Why have an election at all. Just go straight to Congress and let them decide. Anyone can say the popular vote count of 150M secret ballots is fraudulent. If nothing else Congress has only 50 votes to count and they are all a matter of public record don't you think.
I think there is a benefit to having a national discussion around values and principles impacting national public policy. Admittedly, we have gotten away from that, but I continue to hope we are finding our way to encourage that level of discourse.
Oh, man. The internet "legal advice" I have received is that most corporate DEI programs inasmuch as they emphasize the "I" will clear the SFFA v. Harvard test.
Unconstitutional sounds crazy, but I think you could pick out “equity” particularly and say that where 14th amendment claims about “equal treatment” come into conflict with “equity”, equity loses.
There’s another argument that you could construct where DEI is essentially like “separate but equal”, a concept that may work in some purely theoretical context but in practice almost always constitutes prohibited discrimination.
Slavery is one thing that the Constitution got wrong from the beginning, and we're still living with this burden. The "Articles of Confederation" was the original organizing document after the American Revolution. There was so much wrong with the Articles that it had to be scrapped. The US Constitution took its place. The reason I bring this up is that the Articles of Confederation were silent on the issue of slavery, and during that time, six black slaves sued for their freedom and won.
The Constitution had slavery written in, even though most of the Founders either owned slaves they were NOT allowed to free, or didn't own slaves at all. The fact that the law counted each black slaves as 2/3 of a person. This gave their white slave owners a vested interest in keeping slaves, and providing a political incentive for the continued owning and multiplying of slaves. This was an unspeakable injustice, especially since the incentive built in, made the original end-date of slavery in the Constitution a joke.
Now the argument shifting to prevent private owners from exercising private preferences or prejudices is backed by 247 years of government meddling in private decisions.
The decision-making constraints on government are different than on private individuals and businesses. Rightly, any person should have a right to choose his or her friends, business associates and employees.
The simple rule is that governments, since they hold the objective use of force to maintain law and order for all the people over an area of land called a country, cannot be allowed or encouraged to discriminate between groups of people by race, religion, sex, creed, etc. In the United States the rule of the Founders has been "innocent until proven guilty." Government institutionalizing racial preferences, no matter who is being preferred are an anathema to justice.
It would be refreshing if people would be consider that now is the time to privatize preferences, and make the clear distinction between government financed livelihoods (where discrimination is banned) and privately financed livelihoods, where individual preferences (aka discrimination) is treated as an aspect of cultural evolution and individual rights. Sometimes, we need to assume that people do not need new laws, especially laws which remove private choice and infantilize a population under the benevolent dictatorship of a Nanny State.
That “2/3 of a person” is an old slander. It was 2/3 of a _citizen_, for purposes of representation in the federal government. Slaves, of whatever race, were not citizens. They could not vote. It was actually unjust to count them at all.
If the slaveholding states had gotten their way, and slaves had been counted as full citizens for purposes of representation, those states would have had even more power in the federal government. We would have had even more trouble abolishing that peculiar institution.
Yes, of course. It was the count of blacks as 2/3 of a citizen for counting the number of representatives the Congress would have. Georgia didn't even have slaves before the revolution. Georgia was a British penal colony, and they made the prisoners do labor. When the Revolution was declared, Britain couldn't send felons to Georgia. That's when they started to send felons to Australia. The history of slavery is complex, nuanced and not well-known. Everyone seems to have an emotional hang-up about the subject.
Therein lies a problem with your theory---the white dominant group's history and evolving abuse of minorities, especially blacks. We've been there and done that.
For example, white private hospitals refused to provide emergency care for two of my relatives who happened to be black during Jim Crow which resulted in their needless deaths. Whites own and control most of the hospitals, to say the least, most other essential businesses.
More white individual liberty isn't more liberty for blacks. Your empiricism is corrupted and flawed, which is an existential threat to me and my loved ones. Thomas Sowell relates there are no final solutions, just *tradeoffs* Your choice: Civil unrest or stability. It's not all about Caucasians.
Before the transatlantic slave trade, Europe was a shithole plagued by rampant diseases wiping out half its population, lack of natural resources, extensive poverty and crime, debauchery, poor primitive cracker culture transferred to the new world, etc. Free Indian land, the genocide of Native Americans, abundant free African labor, and Jim Crow (neo-slavery) mal contributed massive generational wealth and power to whites.
Racism is a power relationship, and whites got the headstart with the help of an intentionally written broad and ambiguous constitution originally meant for wealthy white landowners. Compensatory whiteness was later given to poor whites who had been grossly manipulated by the white upper class since Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, for which both white indentured servants and blacks united to fight against Indian attacks and the oppressive rich white landowners.
After the failed rebellion, the wealthy white landowners implemented the crude black codes (divide and conquer tactics), separating whites and blacks. What has changed since then? Lol!
Jim Crow was enforced by law in those states. Even if the law didn’t specifically cover certain situations, the racists would have used it to intimidate people. We see similar cases where activists exaggerate the legal hazards of certain medical procedures in obstetrics. The laws are bad enough, but lying about them is no better.
You seem to have a zero sum outlook. That is unfortunate. That outlook is shared by bigots of every variety. They, and you, don’t seem to understand we can have more than enough for everyone.
I understand your anger, and there are certainly a lot of whites who were rabid bigots. LBJ was an outstanding example. MLK spoke about character and the end to racism. LBJ was a South Texas bigot who wanted to stop integration by pretending to end discrimination. He bragged that the Civil Rights laws would get “those N’gers for the next 300 years.” He laughed as he said, “Heh, heh heh!”
There is no doubt that many race relations where the law is involved have gotten much worse, even though people on a personal level have a lot more interracial friends and relationships.
That memory of LBJ and the fact that the laws have made things worse since the 1960s are why I'm saying that it's time to question the idea of outlawing discrimination because outlawing preferences is as pointless as requiring color barriers.
As to the slave trade, slavery existed in human relations as far back as there were humans. Most societies enslaved people they conquered. The US Constitution enshrined slavery into law in a country that was supposed to promise equality under the law for all.
If all people have equal rights and the right to choose their associations, there can be no justification for nondiscrimination laws except when the government finances the activities. The legitimate activities are the military, police, legislature, courts and executive branch.
I sympathize with the idea of privatizing preferences. You can find support in the works of libertarian law professor Richard A. Epstein, e.g. his 1995 book "Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination Laws". The problem is that the distinction between "government financed livelihoods" and "privately financed livelihoods" is not at all clear. Lots of enterprises fall somewhere in between those two poles, due to a combination of licensing rules, zoning codes, monopolies granted to public utilities, government subsidies, and various other factors. Unfortunately I think it's too complicated and too late to roll most of that back even if a majority of the population were in favor of doing so. If anything, powerful political pressure from the left, which includes what are now considered "mainstream" Democrats, is in the opposite direction -- towards expanding the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act from applying just to "public accommodations" to covering nearly every supposedly "private" business.
Everything gets too complicated if we resist breaking it down into component pieces. Most if these wrong government actions started with an innocuous piece if enabling legislation that if repealed, takes down the entire structure. We just assume it's too late or too difficult because we'd rather not think about the mess to do anything to fix it. It's called the vicious circle, and it enables people to feel they are victims and helpless.
I do support libertarian and free market policies and organizations, including the libertarian law firm "Institute for Justice", which litigates in favor of small businesses and school choice, and against eminent domain and other government encroachment on private property and activity, but I'm pessimistic about how much they can realistically accomplish. Institute for Justice always seems to be fighting such a lonely uphill battle.
I agree. There are many good people fighting lonely battles that seem to be hopeless causes. A lot of people are tired of living under the yoke of the Leviathan. No one sees a way out. Most people think there is no way out. They still do what they can.
This view assumes people who are categorized as white (as I am) do not want to understand their relationships with people who are categorized by our culture as black, brown, yellow and so forth - based on darker and/or different skin color. In 2020-21 and 2022, my employer supported a completely voluntary program of reading books and through them sharing our experiences. It was a learning process. A non-threatening way to talk about race and the effects of racism on our culture.
In 1950’s Texas, Jim Crow laws very efficiently, and legally at the time, separated people in public life based on skin color. And treated them vastly differently - in public life.
Organized and well facilitated diversity and understanding programs can potentially promote racial healing. We inherited the mess we are in, but it is up to us to repair the damage done.
Jim Crow laws are long gone. It's the laws made in the sixties that we inherited. No one dares question those laws. LBJ knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish, and his legacy lives on. The joke is on us.
Thanks, Ann, for your observation, and interest. My bus trip from New York to Florida in 1962 was horrifying and unforgettable.
I can't tell you what LBJ wanted to accomplish, but I can tell you what has been accomplished since the death of Abraham Lincoln. The chain of unfortunate events is long and bloody, too long to post here. Look on Precise Thinking in a few days.
Glenn Loury doesn't know me, and I don't want to be rude.
Check out past white affirmative action programs by the government---free Indian land, relocation of Indians, abundant free African labor, immigration laws, and Jim Crow. FDR's white affirmative programs in building the white middle class. All resulting in the massive maldistribution of wealth and power to whites (exclusive control of a rigged monopoly game).
The point is that government should not legislate preferences. We don't need a resident bully in every playground. All the past bad affirmative actions were laws. If the government is going to be the government of all people, it needs to stop telling al people what choices they are free to make in their private lives. It needs to stop writing laws preferring and group over another.
That is certainly one way to read history. Probably would get an A in an African American Lit. class, but would it get through Thanksgiving dinner without a fist fight?
I'm currently living an A+ life---financially independent. Becky is here at my second home on the beach. She's rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter. She's wondering if y'all can cha-cha, salsa, meringue, and Chicago step. How awkwardly mundane and boring are you? I didn't have DEI. I was able to succeed in navigating through white supremacist roadblocks. My favorite was Nicoli Machiavelli 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeah I know Tupac’s pseudonym, bet you think he’s still alive too. You’re right about your beach house life not being boring, but is it intelligent? Dancing doesn’t count.
Insofar as Tupac, I was on the Institutional Classification Committee classifying Suge Knight when he first came into the prison system. White-collar criminals like Trump and his cohorts tend to be prey for predators, especially for the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
Very intelligent. Household includes a Ph.D. and master's degree along with seven decades of life experiences. In addition to intense reading, we're world travelers. This late fall, we will be in Turkey, Oman, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, the Suez Canal, Jordan, etc. You?
"The DEI folks seem to think they can say whatever they want, under the rubric of 'white people are bad' or some such." This is, in my view, an absolute fact. It is also somewhat unavoidable in the current context. I tend to agree with Ms. Swain in large part, on this narrow issue. I agree with Mr. Loury, in the fact that it is not unconstitutional. It, DEI training, could be worthless--which is another discussion--but it should not be used as an excuse to attack others.
Bigotry? How many blacks did you break bread with this past year? We have people of different races and ethnic groups regularly in and out of our homes and in our lives. My late grandfather was half Scot-Irish. I've visited over 150 countries around the world, including Ireland and African countries (my ancestory). My daughter-in-law, an educator, is white with 2 biracial children. I'm currently preparing for an upcoming trip to Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, and Abu Dhabi. I enjoy different cultures and their histories.
Zero-sum outlook? You're probably more comfortable with the likes of Clarence Thomas, a black conservative meritorious manumission negro grifter? New revelations just came out about his relationship with the ultra-right Koch brothers. Meritorious manumission has always been a significant obstacle for true group black progress.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of wealth and resources. Europeans got the headstart with black chattel slavery, a racist constitution, 2 billion acres of free Indian land, and Jim Crow. The Black group's wealth of less than 2% hasn't changed since the American Civil War when there were 400 thousand semi-freed blacks and 4 million black slaves. Lots of time and opportunities were lost in accumulating wealth in this unforgiving capitalistic system historically rigged by the white dominant group. Resources are very limited, and whites mostly own the boot and loot. Scraps? Lol!!! Black slaves lived off of massa's scraps (i.e., hog guts). Some still eat hog guts (Chitterings). Do you eat hog intestines? Lol!!!!
You're projecting.
In his book, "Powermomics," Dr. Claud Anderson states, racism is a wealth and power-base competitive relationship between Blacks and non-Blacks. The sole purpose of racism is to support and ensure that the White majority and it's ethnic subgroups continue to dominate and use Blacks as a means to produce wealth and power. Centuries of Black enslavement and Jim Crow semi-slavery resulted in the majority of society becoming 99-foot giants and Blacks one-foot midgets. This massive inequality in wealth and resources made Blacks non-competitive and totally dependent upon Whites for the necessities of life. True racism exists only when one group holds a disproportionate share of the wealth and power over another group and then uses those resources to marginalize, exploit, and subordinate the weaker group. In America, it is Whites who use wealth and power to marginalize, exploit, and subordinate Blacks. Whites can deny Blacks employment, educational opportunities, business resources, and a place to live or the right to vote. Therefore, according to this definition, Black people can not be racist. No group of Blacks has the power or exclusive control of resources to the degree that they can educationally, politically, economically ĺand socially exploit and marginalize the White race. Blacks can only react to racism and try to alter the conditions that racism creates. Despite the realities, there are numerous conservative Blacks who act as apologists for White racism and confuse the issue. A conservative Black radio talk show host in Los Angeles, for example, charges that Blacks are racist as Whites. His desire for white approval, as well as his ignorance of history, impedes him from understanding that White racism and Black prejudice are not the same thing. Blacks have a reason for their feelings about Whites based on how they have been treated by Whites. The White race, on the other hand, has never been marginalized by the Black race. Racism reinforces the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery. Blacks have been unable to escape from those legacies because the majority of society acknowledges the operation of racism in the distant past but minimizes its present significance."
DEI = Title VII + Title VI (and, in the universities those plus Title IX). Amplified in the 80s and 90s when "discrimination" was greatly expanded to include "stereotypes" and "hostile environment harassment" thru the EEOC and the courts; all of the above cemented into place through corporate liability expansions during the same time - and then consecrated in the "Ellerth-Faragher test" (1998, U.S. Supreme Court), which made clear the need for "preventive and corrective measures." All clearly "constitutional." Also, more simply, massive. There is more (a lot more) to "woke" than affirmative action and the "disparate impact" debate. It is true that the Right is now pushing back against anti-white, anti-male uses of the machinery of anti-discrimination law, but in doing so they only make it stronger, in my opinion. And now for the shameless self-promotion: spelled out in chapter 3 of my book, "American Multiculturalism and the Anti-Discrimination Regime" (out Sept. 15 from St. Augustine's Press).
https://maxkanin.substack.com/p/understanding-justice-neil-gorsuchs May violate Title VII regardless.
Hi Glenn,
I started listening to your interview with Carol Swain this morning and got halfway through. Looking forward to finishing the interview and learning about her new book.
I appreciate you asking Ms. Swain some of the common questions circulating regarding her support for Donald Trump. I make the following points that I think are relevant to your questions:
• The only election contest brought by Donald Trump was in Georgia. Georgia law required a hearing to be set within at least 10 days. The lower court simply did not set a hearing, and the Georgia appellant and Supreme Court failed to enforce the law. That reinforces Ms. Swain’s statement that there is not fair judicial relief available.
• Regarding what were the Georgia election irregularities, I believe Ms. Swain correctly responded there were many. Some of the more common ones are detailed in the Georgia case filing. I will try to attach that filing to my post for the benefit of your community.
• Finally, in response to your comment about Donald Trump conceding after not receiving remedy through the court system, in addition to the difficulty of courts appropriately responding to the relief sought by others (and Donald Trump in Georgia) that Ms. Swain referenced, it is important to note that the Constitution saw election challenges mostly having a political resolution; that is, that is why the Constitution allows for election irregularities to be brought to Congress. This is precisely what Donald Trump did as well as many other incumbents and challengers over the history of our founding.
Ms. Swain reference all these points, in general, which your listeners would benefit I believe from a much more detailed discussion. I recommend you interview Robert Barnes, a constitutional and civil rights lawyer who has done many election challenges and was heavily involved in the Georgia court filing. He can be found on Locals at vivabvarnes.local.com. Glenn, Robert and Viva had you on his show. He's the best I've heard at articulating the details of these election challenges and does so even handily. I think your board would enjoy him.
The Georgia court filing can be found at the following link: https://vivabarneslaw.locals.com/post/4439850/barnes-law-school-highlighted-georgia-election-contest
Why have an election at all. Just go straight to Congress and let them decide. Anyone can say the popular vote count of 150M secret ballots is fraudulent. If nothing else Congress has only 50 votes to count and they are all a matter of public record don't you think.
I think there is a benefit to having a national discussion around values and principles impacting national public policy. Admittedly, we have gotten away from that, but I continue to hope we are finding our way to encourage that level of discourse.
Oh, man. The internet "legal advice" I have received is that most corporate DEI programs inasmuch as they emphasize the "I" will clear the SFFA v. Harvard test.
Unconstitutional sounds crazy, but I think you could pick out “equity” particularly and say that where 14th amendment claims about “equal treatment” come into conflict with “equity”, equity loses.
There’s another argument that you could construct where DEI is essentially like “separate but equal”, a concept that may work in some purely theoretical context but in practice almost always constitutes prohibited discrimination.
Slavery is one thing that the Constitution got wrong from the beginning, and we're still living with this burden. The "Articles of Confederation" was the original organizing document after the American Revolution. There was so much wrong with the Articles that it had to be scrapped. The US Constitution took its place. The reason I bring this up is that the Articles of Confederation were silent on the issue of slavery, and during that time, six black slaves sued for their freedom and won.
The Constitution had slavery written in, even though most of the Founders either owned slaves they were NOT allowed to free, or didn't own slaves at all. The fact that the law counted each black slaves as 2/3 of a person. This gave their white slave owners a vested interest in keeping slaves, and providing a political incentive for the continued owning and multiplying of slaves. This was an unspeakable injustice, especially since the incentive built in, made the original end-date of slavery in the Constitution a joke.
Now the argument shifting to prevent private owners from exercising private preferences or prejudices is backed by 247 years of government meddling in private decisions.
The decision-making constraints on government are different than on private individuals and businesses. Rightly, any person should have a right to choose his or her friends, business associates and employees.
The simple rule is that governments, since they hold the objective use of force to maintain law and order for all the people over an area of land called a country, cannot be allowed or encouraged to discriminate between groups of people by race, religion, sex, creed, etc. In the United States the rule of the Founders has been "innocent until proven guilty." Government institutionalizing racial preferences, no matter who is being preferred are an anathema to justice.
It would be refreshing if people would be consider that now is the time to privatize preferences, and make the clear distinction between government financed livelihoods (where discrimination is banned) and privately financed livelihoods, where individual preferences (aka discrimination) is treated as an aspect of cultural evolution and individual rights. Sometimes, we need to assume that people do not need new laws, especially laws which remove private choice and infantilize a population under the benevolent dictatorship of a Nanny State.
That “2/3 of a person” is an old slander. It was 2/3 of a _citizen_, for purposes of representation in the federal government. Slaves, of whatever race, were not citizens. They could not vote. It was actually unjust to count them at all.
If the slaveholding states had gotten their way, and slaves had been counted as full citizens for purposes of representation, those states would have had even more power in the federal government. We would have had even more trouble abolishing that peculiar institution.
Yes, of course. It was the count of blacks as 2/3 of a citizen for counting the number of representatives the Congress would have. Georgia didn't even have slaves before the revolution. Georgia was a British penal colony, and they made the prisoners do labor. When the Revolution was declared, Britain couldn't send felons to Georgia. That's when they started to send felons to Australia. The history of slavery is complex, nuanced and not well-known. Everyone seems to have an emotional hang-up about the subject.
Therein lies a problem with your theory---the white dominant group's history and evolving abuse of minorities, especially blacks. We've been there and done that.
For example, white private hospitals refused to provide emergency care for two of my relatives who happened to be black during Jim Crow which resulted in their needless deaths. Whites own and control most of the hospitals, to say the least, most other essential businesses.
More white individual liberty isn't more liberty for blacks. Your empiricism is corrupted and flawed, which is an existential threat to me and my loved ones. Thomas Sowell relates there are no final solutions, just *tradeoffs* Your choice: Civil unrest or stability. It's not all about Caucasians.
Before the transatlantic slave trade, Europe was a shithole plagued by rampant diseases wiping out half its population, lack of natural resources, extensive poverty and crime, debauchery, poor primitive cracker culture transferred to the new world, etc. Free Indian land, the genocide of Native Americans, abundant free African labor, and Jim Crow (neo-slavery) mal contributed massive generational wealth and power to whites.
Racism is a power relationship, and whites got the headstart with the help of an intentionally written broad and ambiguous constitution originally meant for wealthy white landowners. Compensatory whiteness was later given to poor whites who had been grossly manipulated by the white upper class since Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, for which both white indentured servants and blacks united to fight against Indian attacks and the oppressive rich white landowners.
After the failed rebellion, the wealthy white landowners implemented the crude black codes (divide and conquer tactics), separating whites and blacks. What has changed since then? Lol!
Jim Crow was enforced by law in those states. Even if the law didn’t specifically cover certain situations, the racists would have used it to intimidate people. We see similar cases where activists exaggerate the legal hazards of certain medical procedures in obstetrics. The laws are bad enough, but lying about them is no better.
You seem to have a zero sum outlook. That is unfortunate. That outlook is shared by bigots of every variety. They, and you, don’t seem to understand we can have more than enough for everyone.
We won’t get it by fighting over scraps.
I understand your anger, and there are certainly a lot of whites who were rabid bigots. LBJ was an outstanding example. MLK spoke about character and the end to racism. LBJ was a South Texas bigot who wanted to stop integration by pretending to end discrimination. He bragged that the Civil Rights laws would get “those N’gers for the next 300 years.” He laughed as he said, “Heh, heh heh!”
There is no doubt that many race relations where the law is involved have gotten much worse, even though people on a personal level have a lot more interracial friends and relationships.
That memory of LBJ and the fact that the laws have made things worse since the 1960s are why I'm saying that it's time to question the idea of outlawing discrimination because outlawing preferences is as pointless as requiring color barriers.
As to the slave trade, slavery existed in human relations as far back as there were humans. Most societies enslaved people they conquered. The US Constitution enshrined slavery into law in a country that was supposed to promise equality under the law for all.
If all people have equal rights and the right to choose their associations, there can be no justification for nondiscrimination laws except when the government finances the activities. The legitimate activities are the military, police, legislature, courts and executive branch.
I sympathize with the idea of privatizing preferences. You can find support in the works of libertarian law professor Richard A. Epstein, e.g. his 1995 book "Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination Laws". The problem is that the distinction between "government financed livelihoods" and "privately financed livelihoods" is not at all clear. Lots of enterprises fall somewhere in between those two poles, due to a combination of licensing rules, zoning codes, monopolies granted to public utilities, government subsidies, and various other factors. Unfortunately I think it's too complicated and too late to roll most of that back even if a majority of the population were in favor of doing so. If anything, powerful political pressure from the left, which includes what are now considered "mainstream" Democrats, is in the opposite direction -- towards expanding the anti-discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act from applying just to "public accommodations" to covering nearly every supposedly "private" business.
Everything gets too complicated if we resist breaking it down into component pieces. Most if these wrong government actions started with an innocuous piece if enabling legislation that if repealed, takes down the entire structure. We just assume it's too late or too difficult because we'd rather not think about the mess to do anything to fix it. It's called the vicious circle, and it enables people to feel they are victims and helpless.
I do support libertarian and free market policies and organizations, including the libertarian law firm "Institute for Justice", which litigates in favor of small businesses and school choice, and against eminent domain and other government encroachment on private property and activity, but I'm pessimistic about how much they can realistically accomplish. Institute for Justice always seems to be fighting such a lonely uphill battle.
I agree. There are many good people fighting lonely battles that seem to be hopeless causes. A lot of people are tired of living under the yoke of the Leviathan. No one sees a way out. Most people think there is no way out. They still do what they can.
This view assumes people who are categorized as white (as I am) do not want to understand their relationships with people who are categorized by our culture as black, brown, yellow and so forth - based on darker and/or different skin color. In 2020-21 and 2022, my employer supported a completely voluntary program of reading books and through them sharing our experiences. It was a learning process. A non-threatening way to talk about race and the effects of racism on our culture.
In 1950’s Texas, Jim Crow laws very efficiently, and legally at the time, separated people in public life based on skin color. And treated them vastly differently - in public life.
Organized and well facilitated diversity and understanding programs can potentially promote racial healing. We inherited the mess we are in, but it is up to us to repair the damage done.
Jim Crow laws are long gone. It's the laws made in the sixties that we inherited. No one dares question those laws. LBJ knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish, and his legacy lives on. The joke is on us.
Thank you Ilene. I think we should be constantly questioning our laws.
As someone who grew up with Jim Crow laws, their impact is impossible for me to forget. It was a dreadful time.
I am not sure what exactly LBJ wanted to accomplish but he surely knew how to get his way.
Thanks, Ann, for your observation, and interest. My bus trip from New York to Florida in 1962 was horrifying and unforgettable.
I can't tell you what LBJ wanted to accomplish, but I can tell you what has been accomplished since the death of Abraham Lincoln. The chain of unfortunate events is long and bloody, too long to post here. Look on Precise Thinking in a few days.
Glenn Loury doesn't know me, and I don't want to be rude.
Unconstitutional is a strong word...a bit like fascist, or communist appropriators for that matter.
Check out past white affirmative action programs by the government---free Indian land, relocation of Indians, abundant free African labor, immigration laws, and Jim Crow. FDR's white affirmative programs in building the white middle class. All resulting in the massive maldistribution of wealth and power to whites (exclusive control of a rigged monopoly game).
The point is that government should not legislate preferences. We don't need a resident bully in every playground. All the past bad affirmative actions were laws. If the government is going to be the government of all people, it needs to stop telling al people what choices they are free to make in their private lives. It needs to stop writing laws preferring and group over another.
That is certainly one way to read history. Probably would get an A in an African American Lit. class, but would it get through Thanksgiving dinner without a fist fight?
My run-of-the-mill relatives dropped me long ago, no surprise there.
I'm currently living an A+ life---financially independent. Becky is here at my second home on the beach. She's rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter. She's wondering if y'all can cha-cha, salsa, meringue, and Chicago step. How awkwardly mundane and boring are you? I didn't have DEI. I was able to succeed in navigating through white supremacist roadblocks. My favorite was Nicoli Machiavelli 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeah I know Tupac’s pseudonym, bet you think he’s still alive too. You’re right about your beach house life not being boring, but is it intelligent? Dancing doesn’t count.
Insofar as Tupac, I was on the Institutional Classification Committee classifying Suge Knight when he first came into the prison system. White-collar criminals like Trump and his cohorts tend to be prey for predators, especially for the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
Very intelligent. Household includes a Ph.D. and master's degree along with seven decades of life experiences. In addition to intense reading, we're world travelers. This late fall, we will be in Turkey, Oman, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, the Suez Canal, Jordan, etc. You?
Sounds like you have a lot of privilege. You should check it.
"The DEI folks seem to think they can say whatever they want, under the rubric of 'white people are bad' or some such." This is, in my view, an absolute fact. It is also somewhat unavoidable in the current context. I tend to agree with Ms. Swain in large part, on this narrow issue. I agree with Mr. Loury, in the fact that it is not unconstitutional. It, DEI training, could be worthless--which is another discussion--but it should not be used as an excuse to attack others.