Why Are There So Few Black Libertarians?

by Gerard Emershaw

In the 2012 presidential election, 93% of black voters cast ballots for President Barack Obama. Part of this could be that after so many decades of being underrepresented politically, they had a chance to cast a vote for a black presidential candidate. While such a collectivist racist attitude is typically unacceptable, over two centuries of institutionalized racism on the part of the federal government makes it understandable. Given that both parties are nothing but two wings of the same corrupt welfare/warfare state party, perhaps if one is going to vote for one of the mainstream parties at all, it is as good a reason as any to cast a vote. However, why should blacks choose either the neo-progressive donkey or the neo-progressive elephant? Why are there so few black libertarians?

Libertarianism should be a natural fit for blacks. Black Americans were so long denied their freedom—and at times their very personhood—by the federal government that one would think that blacks would naturally support a political philosophy which so zealously guards personal freedom. A group of individuals whose ancestors had been enslaved and who have been systematically disenfranchised both economically and politically by both statist parties for so long should not rationally support either party.

The role models of the black community are not individuals who succeeded because of government handouts or political favors. These role models are entrepreneurs, athletes, and entertainers who have succeeded through their own genius, hard work, and excellence. Sean Combs, Jay Z, Tyler Perry, Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, etc. have all risen to the top on their own. Freedom has allowed such individuals to succeed, and more freedom would allow even more individuals like them to succeed. Black rap stars and others in the entertainment industry have become successful thanks to freedom of speech. Black athletes have become successful thanks to freedom of contract. Black entrepreneurs have become successful thanks to the free market. If it was freedom which allowed such success stories to unfold, why are the protagonists of such success stories not libertarian? Why do they oppose the philosophy which promoted their success while supporting the corrupt welfare/warfare state which attempted to hold them back and which will attempt to do the same with future generations?   

Even if the libertarian philosophy does not appeal to blacks, by default it is the only rational position for them to hold. Here are four reasons why blacks should not support statism in any way, shape, or form:

1. Slavery

The evil institution of slavery, which violated the American credo that all human beings are born equal in terms of natural rights, led to millions of individuals of African descent being deprived of their freedom and forced to labor against their will. Slavery was only possible because the government endorsed and defended the institution. The Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution will forever remain as racist scar tissue in an otherwise enlightened document. From the Fugitive Slave Act to the infamous Dred Scott decision, the federal government was continually the key player in the enslavement of Africans in the United States. So why should Blacks be supportive of a government which allowed Americans much like themselves to be enslaved for nearly a century?

2. Jim Crow

Even after the Civil War when the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were ratified, the federal government still did little or nothing to ensure that the natural rights of Blacks were defended. Reconstruction ultimately proved to be at best a noble failure and at worst a tyrannical exercise which set back the cause of racial equality. The federal government embraced and defended segregationist policies and turned a blind eye to Jim Crow laws in many southern states. The racial caste system that Jim Crow created disenfranchised many Blacks and allowed them to be victimized by continued institutionalized racism. It was not until nearly two centuries after the founding of the nation that the civil rights movement ultimately began to change things. For two hundred years the federal government either actively oppressed blacks in the United States or allowed state and local governments to violate their natural rights. Why should blacks trust this government now?

3. Welfare State Racism

The conventional wisdom is that blacks should favor the American welfare state. According to this line of thought, progressive social programs such as welfare, Medicaid, Headstart, etc. are most beneficial to blacks. Justification for this view typically begins with the recitation of disturbing statistics. In 2012, 28.1% of blacks were living in poverty, including 39.6% of blacks under the age of 18. The rate of black unemployment is twice as high as that of whites. Therefore, welfare programs are needed and are needed most by blacks. In the eyes of progressives, blacks should be grateful to the government. Many progressives hold racist views which they perversely consider to be enlightened and politically correct. They view blacks as dependent upon the government. They view blacks as unable to compete on a level playing field. Through their destructive Nanny State programs, progressives create a self-fulfilling policy when it comes to the economic and social well being of the black community.

The truth is that blacks should be grateful to the federal government. About as grateful as one would be to a thug who stabs him or her in the stomach and then offers a free Band-Aid. Why are blacks in such dire straits economically? Many reasons. Two centuries of institutionalized racism spearheaded by the federal government. Progressive economic policies such as the Federal Reserve, the income tax, deficit spending, stifling business regulations, etc. which erode the economy and destroy wealth, jobs, and other economic opportunities. The welfare state which infantilizes blacks and fosters dependency. The war on drugs—which will be discussed below. The federal government has created the disease, infected the black community with it, and has offered the “cure” in the form of the welfare system. The only thing is that the welfare system has done nothing to help blacks in the lower socioeconomic classes rise economically. It has been roughly 50 years since LBJ instituted the social programs of his Great Society. For the past 50 years, the ratio between black and white unemployment has remained roughly 2:1. For the past 50 years, the gap between black and white household incomes has remained the same. The wealth disparity between blacks and whites has been growing since the beginning of the Great Recession, and the already appalling black poverty rates are again increasing. So why should blacks favor and support the statist system which offers them nothing but financial methadone? The black community remains sick and dependent upon the welfare state, and it will never be healthy as long as the perverse racism of progressivism continues. Unfortunately, the black community does not seem to be learning its lesson about the Welfare State Emperor having no clothes. Black Americans are three times more likely than whites to support Obamacare.

4. War on Drugs

According to a recent report, 1 in 3 black males will go to prison during their lives. It is difficult for individuals to succeed economically when they are in prison or are stigmatized and disenfranchised ex-convicts. By 2011, there were more blacks in prison or “under watch” than were enslaved in 1850. One of the reasons for this is the economic carnage wreaked by the progressive welfare state. Another reason is the War on Drugs. The idea of the War on Drugs seems to be that drugs ruin lives; therefore, if we catch you using or selling drugs, we will ruin your lives by putting you in prison. Actually, the hidden racist reasoning might be that drugs ruin the lives of white children; therefore, if we catch blacks using or selling drugs, we will ruin their lives by putting them in prison.

Drug crimes are victimless crimes. Ergo, they should not be crimes at all. Even if drug offenses were genuine and deserving of punishment, blacks are incarcerated for them at shockingly unjust rates. According to the Sentencing Project, blacks “make up 12% of the nation’s drug users, but represent 34% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 45% of those in state prison for such offense as of 2005.” This has devastated the black community, destroying families and creating more out of wedlock births.

Leftwing statists attempt to re-enslave blacks by fostering and perpetuating economic dependency while rightwing statists attempt to re-enslave them by unjustly imprisoning them for bogus victimless drug crimes and forcing them to work at slave labor in prison. So how can blacks support statism? How can blacks vote for either the neo-progressive donkey or the neoconservative elephant? Only a libertarian philosophy of free markets and free expression can held heal the wounds of over two centuries of institutionalized racism perpetrated by the federal government in the hands of the mainstream political parties.

Freedom and Bigotry

by Gerard Emershaw

Human beings possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property. The right to liberty includes freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The right to property involves a bundle of rights including the right of possession (the property is owned by the title holder), the right of control (the owner controls the property's use), the right of exclusion (the holder can deny people access to the property), the right of enjoyment (the holder can use the property in any legal manner) and the right of disposition (the holder can buy or sell the property). These natural rights are protected by the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

It is obvious that human beings have a natural right to say bigoted things provided that this hateful and collectivist speech does not involve threats or defamation. But does a property owner have the natural right to exclude others from his or her property based solely upon the race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or the like of that other? Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states:

All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

The Act defines ‘public accommodation’ broadly to include hotels, motels, other places of lodging, restaurants, cafeterias, lunchrooms, lunch counters, soda fountains, other businesses selling food for consumption on premises, movie theaters, concert halls, sports arena, stadium, etc.

The Supreme Court has held that Congress has the power to enforce Title II through the Commerce Clause in cases such as Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) and Katzenbach v. McClung (1964).

Former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul and Senator Rand Paul have both been criticized for comments casting doubt on Title II. While progressives savor the possibility of pillorying anyone who has a good faith objection to any civil rights legislation, the question which arises is important. If a human being has a natural right to liberty and to property, does not he or she have the right to exclude others from his or her hotel, restaurant, movie theater, sports arena, etc. for any reason? Under the Constitution, government entities have no right to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. But nothing in the Constitution seems to prevent private actors from doing so.

Consider the following array of cases. An African American woman who was gang raped by white supremacists and whose parents were murdered by a Klu Klux Klan bombing decides not to allow whites to eat in her diner. An elderly woman whose family was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp decides not to allow Germans to stay in her hotel. A man whose wife was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 decides not to allow Muslims to watch films in his movie theater.

One could ask why these former victims should have to face those who remind them of their victimizers. Of course this attitude is collectivist and irrational, but PTSD, trauma, anxiety, etc. are not rational disorders. This does not stop them from plaguing the psyche of many who have been victimized.

While the grey-bearded patriarch Phil Robertson of A&E’s wildly successful TV program “Duck Dynasty” has been in the news for his suspension over allegedly homophobic statements, his potentially racially insensitive statement received far less attention in the media. Robertson said about growing up in Louisiana prior to the Civil Rights Movement:

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

Essentially, he is saying that African Americans were happy before the Civil Rights Movement, and therefore, Jim Crow may not have been that bad. Robertson clearly acknowledges a racial caste system. He was “white trash,” therefore, it was appropriate for him to be with the African Americans. Of course, it is clear what word would signify the African American analog of “white trash” during the Jim Crow Era.

Despite Phil Robertson’s anecdotal evidence concerning the limited experiences of his youth, there is no doubt that African Americans were mistreated during the Jim Crow Era. The federal government, state governments, and local governments all failed in defending the natural rights of African Americans. The question is whether the violation of natural rights caused by Title II is justified by over two centuries of mistreatment of people of African descent in the United States.

Oprah Winfrey recently caused an uproar when she said of older white racists: “Older people who marinated in that prejudice and racism … they just have to die.” If Winfrey was wishing death upon these elderly bigots, then that is wrong. However, it is not clear that that was what she was doing. The way that attitudes regarding race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. become more tolerant is by bigoted generations passing away and being replaced in positions of power by members of a younger and more tolerant generation. Just as with science, society changes through massive paradigm shifts caused by changing attitudes and changing demographics. There are few George Wallaces. Few people see the error of their ways and go from being vicious collectivist racists to tolerant individuals. Racist hate organizations such as the KKK are on the wane because the most die hard racists in the country are elderly or have died. Whether contemporary racists and religionists who hate based upon skin color, religion, or sexual orientation know it or not, they are a dying breed.

In many ways, the point of whether Title II is justified is moot. For the most part, it is no longer needed. The question is whether it was needed. There is no doubt that many virulent racists who ran businesses simply could not stand to follow the new Civil Rights legislation and sold or closed their businesses. Others probably just grinned and bore it. Over time, there were fewer racists of that ilk. Would intentional racism—as opposed to the unintentional institutionalized racism of the progressive welfare state—have dissipated as quickly without legislation such as Title II? Probably not. It would likely have been a much more gradual process. However, the free market would have helped. Some businesses would have continued to refuse to serve African American customers. However, there would nearly always be rivals who wished to take advantage of that untapped market and would happily cater to these customers. Over time, these businesses would have a larger customer base and thrive far more than their racist rivals. In short, discrimination by businesses providing public accommodations would have gone the way of the dodo eventually due to the pressure of the free market combined with the inevitability that younger generations have been becoming more tolerant as a whole.

Consider the case of homosexuals and the transgendered. In general, members of this class have not had the same broad federal legislation passed to protect their Civil Rights. Nevertheless, homophobia and bigotry aimed at the transgendered is slowly but surely disappearing. Regardless of what those like Phil Robertson scream while holding a Bible, such collectivist homophobes are a social evolutionary dead end. Of course, why Christians do not take what Christ—who one would argue is the CEO of Christianity—says to be more important than what some more obscure Old or New Testament text says is unclear. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

The conclusion here is that Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should have been ruled unconstitutional. It is violative of the natural rights to liberty and property. While this unconstitutional law did quicken the pace at which overt racism within the realm of public accommodations dissipated, it is wrong for the government to violate any natural right. Even if that natural right is the right to do something distasteful and bigoted. It may very well have taken decades longer for this positive turn of events to occur in the absence of Title II. Fortunately, it is all merely a theoretical argument now.