The New Jim Crow

[MachineGhost]

I have been doing a little thinking on this day of commemorating Martin Luther King.

I don't believe Ron Paul is a true libertarian.  Rather, he is a state's rights conservative.  As he believes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was unconstitutional -- it expanded the power of the Federal government to interfere with private business and private property by stretching the meaning of the interstate commerce clause, a sad legacy that lasts to this day in other areas -- there would have been nothing but moral persuasion available to get all the white Southern Democrat politicians to drop the public Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, nevermind all the private Jim Crow practiced by private businesses and organizations.

So, perhaps we've all grown up now and a return to states right's would not bring back such despicable discrimination?  I'm not that optimistic.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow

I see no ideal solution other than libertarian public policy, still a relatively brand new field in the grand scheme of history.  I'm not a believer in statism, but the reality is we currently live in a world where government exists and acts tyrannical.

Thoughts?

MG

[stone]

From your link, "In the capital city of Washington, D.C. three out of four young African American males are expected to serve time in prison.[11] While studies show Americans of different races using illegal drugs quantitatively on a similar scale,[12] in some states black men have been admitted to prisons on drug charges at the rate twenty to fifty times that of white men.[13] The high proportion of African American men with criminal record of some sort (as many as 80% in major cities) are marginalized and a part of the growing permanent undercaste."

IMO the problem stems from targeting people selling drugs rather than people buying drugs. If you want to ban drugs effectively then targeting users by having "reverse sting" operations where police pose as drug sellers in order to capture buyers is the only way IMO. Poor black people probably are more likely to be selling drugs whilst people using drugs come from all walks of life. The typical drug dealer probably expects to get caught every now and again and won't alter his behavior in response to the ban. Many drug users are not like that. They would be mortified to go to prison. They might very well avoid using drugs in order to avoid going to prison.

[moda0306]

Two of our six total U.S. senators in history who happened to be black were elected during Reconstruction in the South, when the Southern segregationists & pro-slavery whites hadn't yet been given back management of the voting process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Af ... s_Senators

It took almost 100 years after reconstruction ended for that to happen again.  It simply appears that every effort to cure the ripping apart of families and forced-labor of men and women has been a century late and thousands of dollars short.

I don't necessarily think it makes Ron Paul a non-libertarian, but regardless what you think about the nature of dictating to businesses who they interact with, it's simply appalling that people were so relegated to second-class citizenry in the South.  I don't like digging up "old hurts," but part of me feels like doing a time-value-of-money calculation on the value of 40 acres and a mule in 1865 and bringing it forward to today... just as a mental exercise more than anything.

In a normal world I'd find it completely inapproriate to dictate to a business who they associate with... but the South from 1865-1970 was hardly a "normal world."

[Tortoise]

Something to consider when discussing the history of slavery is that it has not always been caused by the government failing to keep the naughty free market in check. Prior to the Civil War, slavery in the U.S. was heavily propped up by the government (see below). It is yet another example of how human beings with their all-too-human weaknesses often wield the coercive power of government in ways that perpetuate injustice if it benefits them personally.

Most obviously, measures such as the fugitive slave laws (which dated back to at least 1793) took tax dollars paid by all in order to return the "property" of the privileged few plantation owners; here, as in so many other areas, politically powerful producers managed to foist the costs of their business operations (running slave plantations) onto the hapless public.

Drafting men into slave patrols was another device by which the Southern state governments shifted the costs of slavery onto the general public (and hence eased the burden on the slaveowners). As described by economist Mark Thornton, "The patrol statutes required all white males to participate in slave patrol duty. . . . Failure to participate in the patrols or carry out organizing responsibilities would result in a series of escalating fines."

[...]

Ironically, government interference interrupted the market forces that would otherwise have gradually (and peacefully) spelled the demise of slavery. According to Thornton, "Between the 1790 and 1800 census, the free black population of America increased by over 82 percent and in the South Atlantic states by over 97 percent. . . . The total free population increased from 8.5 percent to almost 16 percent of the total black population between 1790 and 1810." However, as states instituted slave patrols and enacted restrictions on manumission (it actually made economic sense for masters to allow their slaves to buy their freedom, so pro-slave legislatures acted to discourage it) and the free movement of blacks, "the growth of the free black population decreased, fell below the rate of growth of the slave population, and was reduced to a trickle in the decade prior to the Civil War."

[...]

But didn't it take the benevolence of the federal government to free the slaves? Yes, but only because other government ordinances had artificially maintained slavery in the antebellum South. (Another minor point: notice that it didn't take a bloody civil war anywhere outside the United States to free slaves; the institution faded away peacefully as capitalism swept the world.)

Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism by Robert P. Murphy, pp. 42-44.

[moda0306]

Tortoise,

I don't think many people consider slavery a market failure... It was obviously enforced and enforced by government. 

[stone]

I think it is notable that British people at least have been captured and sold as slaves mainly when we didn't have much of a central government. Before the Romans invaded, Briton was known to them as place where people would capture each other in order to trade the captors to the Romans as slaves in return for wine. Later lots of British slaves were captured by British and Dutch pirates to sell to the Islamic world. Once we had a central government, it ended up being West Africans (who didn't have one) who were captured for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. That makes me think that a central government can actually protect against slavery. I sort of think of the central government a bit like some people think of guns. Clearly it can be used for wrong doing but it can also protect against wrong doing.