Bill O’Reilly Does Not Understand What Racism Is

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

In a recent column, Bill O’Reilly calls Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri “fresh kindling for America’s racial arsonists.” The likelihood that a grand jury is not going to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown is seen by O’Reilly as some kind of evidence that racism does not exist in the United States. While O’Reilly correctly criticizes the cynical and inappropriate use of “the race card” in declaring anyone who opposes President Obama a racist, he incorrectly accuses anyone who dares to point out that there is racism in the United States as “race hustlers.” For a Traditionalist like O’Reilly, there are only two possibilities. Either the United States is “racist to the core, a place where ‘white privilege’ is this nation's past, present, and future” or there is no racism in the United States. Recognizing that there is racism in the United States does not amount to telling “young black Americans that they just can't make it, the deck is stacked against them” as O’Reilly claims.

There is a good deal of racism against blacks in the United States, and the most egregious are examples of institutionalized racism created and/or fostered by the government. The truth is that the stereotypical racism of white supremacists wearing sheets and burning crosses is a minor threat compared with the racism that government perpetuates. The following are just a few examples of the real racism that O’Reilly and most other collectivists on the right and left typically ignore.

1. The Federal Reserve

In the last several years, the American public has been realizing the corporatist and unconstitutional nature of the Federal Reserve. But how exactly could a privately controlled central bank be racist? By “printing” money—through the purchase of securities—the Federal Reserve causes inflation. But not immediately. The recipients of the “new” money—usually crony capitalists—benefit by being able to spend these funds before the inevitable inflation. Later, when the expanded supply of dollars causes prices to rise, those who are politically unconnected suffer the effects of higher prices. It is the poor who suffer the effects of this “inflation tax” the most as this is the most regressive of taxes. Many blacks had already been economically disenfranchised by the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, Progressive economic policies, the counterproductive “War on Poverty,” etc., and the Federal Reserve just exacerbates that. In the century that the Federal Reserve has existed, its inflationary policies have taken away as much as 95% of the value of the dollar. When money buys less and less, the poor suffer. Over 27% of Black Americans live in poverty, so the Federal Reserve has adversely affected that community more than any other in the nation.

2. Progressive Business Regulations

The black unemployment rate is twice that of whites. So, any government policies which destroy jobs or impede job growth are inherently racist since these policies will affect blacks disproportionately. Progressive business regulations and burdensome business taxes are corporatist policies which aid large corporations at the expense of small businesses, workers, the unemployed, and the poor. Every dollar that a business is forced to pay to comply with business regulations is one less dollar that that business can use to pay new workers. Businesses that are forced to pay the cost of government regulations have done nothing wrong. They are essentially paying the price of negligence for which they are not liable. Businesses which commit acts which amount to negligence, recklessness, or torts that harm individuals should pay the price in court. Business regulations simply give large corporations—whose lobbyists often write the regulations on behalf of the government—the ability to bankrupt their smaller competitors. A study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that:

[B]usinesses spent more than $2 trillion in 2012 to comply with federal regulations. More importantly, compliance costs for businesses in the United States averaged $9,991 per employee that year, with manufacturers incurring a per-employee cost of nearly double that amount, at $19,546. Small manufacturers with less than 50 employees spent a whopping $34,671 per employee, illustrating the massive burden placed on many of these firms.

In addition, occupational licensing requirements put further obstacles in front of blacks who wish to be entrepreneurial and start their own businesses. None of these regulations actually protect Americans from anything but greater prosperity.

3. The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs is an institutionalized form of racism which has devastated the black community perhaps more than any other government policy. Although blacks and Hispanics use and sell drugs at roughly the same rate as whites, 61% of the people incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses are black or Hispanic. Human beings possess a natural right to liberty, and this includes the right to use and to sell drugs. The War on Drugs is nothing but a corporatist war against the people—particularly against people of African or Latin heritage. The beneficiaries are alcohol companies, tobacco companies, Big Pharma, drug cartels, private prison corporations, and law enforcement. The biggest losers are the blacks which are thrown into prison for nonviolent drug offenses and forced to work for the Prison-Industrial Complex like 21st century slaves. Locking up black men and women for nonviolent drug offenses and property offenses that are committed in an effort to get money to buy narcotics (which have been artificially inflated in price due to prohibition) destroys families, taking away parents from their children. This puts many black families even deeper into poverty. Unnecessary drug convictions then become like badges of slavery, preventing black ex-cons from being able to get jobs.

4. Social Security

Because blacks have a shorter life expectancy than whites, they tend to receive less in Social Security benefits. Upon death, a worker may not distribute accrued benefits through his or her estate to heirs. Therefore, black workers tend to benefit less than their white counterparts. If the United States had a government pension system by which workers could keep the proceeds which they pay in and distribute it to their heirs upon death, black families would be able to build wealth over generations instead of having those funds essentially confiscated for the “crime” of dying.

5. Minimum Wage

Minimum wage laws are perverse in that they harm the poor—of which blacks make up a disproportionate number—despite having been designed to help. In addition to violating the natural right to contract of both employer and employee, minimum wage laws produce two unintended negative consequences that greatly affect poor blacks. First, requiring employers to pay an artificially high wage means that businesses will hire fewer workers. Secondly, low-skilled workers will not be hired at all at minimum wage and will never learn basic job skills. The frustrating thing is that minimum wage would not even be an issue were it not for job-killing government regulations on businesses. A laissez-faire free market would most likely produce an abundance of jobs. As the number of jobs increases, supply and demand will inevitably increase wages.

(For a much more detailed discussion of Racism and Bill O’Reilly’s Traditionalism, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)