Libertarianism and racism.
Porphyrogenitus attacks libertarianism for its tolerance of racism. (*) Taking the Hayekian view, he says that community interests should sometimes override liberty interests. The same reasoning could work for the liberal view.
One libertarian position he discusses holds that the law should neither promote racial discrimination nor prohibit it. That position ignores the history of our society. In America, racism has deep roots. Some day, like Martin Luther King said, our attitudes will change. At that time, the libertarian vision would become compatible with racial justice. Until then, laws prohibiting racial discrimination are necessary to achieve the goal of a fair society where equal opportunity is available to all. If competition were to eviscerate racism, as libertarians say, those states that did not have Jim Crow or segregation laws in the post-bellum period should have quickly seen racial justice. Of course, that was not the case. The roots were too deep. Laws against racial discrimination were the answer. They will remain the answer for some time to come.
December 10th, 2003 at 14:30
"If competition were to eviscerate racism, as libertarians say, those states that did not have Jim Crow or segregation laws in the post-bellum period should have quickly seen racial justice. Of course, that was not the case."
Of course it wasn’t, because the state itself both enforced statutes requiring discrimination and permitted private citizens to unofficially enforce rules requiring racial discrimination with deadly force.
Other cases of discrimination where state support was not present, such as against the Irish, did not last because economic competition was able to progressively discourage the practice without interference.
December 10th, 2003 at 17:12
In states that did not have Jim Crow laws, racism continued to exist. Such was the case in the North of the 1920s, for example. This eventually became a big issue in the civil rights movement. That movement called for affirmative action by the government, that is, action by the government to not only forbid racial discrimination, but to promote racial equality. "Affirmative Action" today is a set of requirements that conservatives criticize as "quotas," but originally the idea was greater in scope.