Walter E Williams video on Rand's statement:

[haaaylee]

Didn't see this posted anywhere yet:


YouTube - Walter E Williams - Discrimination and Liberty (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqod16fhMPE)

[low preference guy]

thanks!

[dannno]

niice

[johnrocks]

Man, I love Walter Williams!

[0zzy]

Oh, he must be a racist if he believes in freedom of association.

Oh, he's black?

Ya well he must be a self-hating Uncle Tom. That's it! Any conservative mind who happens to be black are Uncle Toms. No minority in their right mind would be conservative, cause conservatives are all white and racist! YA!

/s

[ctiger2]

Fantastic!

[jmdrake]

Well I guess I'll be the lone dissenter, but I'm used to that role.

This video is long on bad (and in at least one instance incorrect) analogies and short on constitutional analysis.

The marriage analogy
First the bad analogies. Consider Williams point about "discrimination" in picking his wife. That's a one to one transaction. Consider a different one to one transaction. You are a doctor eating lunch at your favorite resturant and another patron has a medical emergency. In most states you have a legal and ethical duty to render assistance, and you are given indemnity against lawsuits as long as the care you give is reasonable. Now some libetarians (maybe most) would say "Involuntary servitude! Violation of liberty!" etc. My point isn't that this fits the "libertarian philosphy" but that most Americans, regardless of their view on race, would disagree with the "pure libertarian" position. Consider another scenario. You work on an ambulance and you come to an accident. The victim will soon bleed to death. You notice the victim is someone you personally hate. (He poisoned your dog, slept with your wife, pick your scenario). Again no legal right not to render aid. Someone might yell "Contracts" at this point. But that only covers your boss who can fire you for not fulfilling your contractual duty to him. (Or maybe he doesn't fire you because he hates this particular accident victim as much as you do.) But what about the opportunity cost to the victim? Say if there was another ambulance company that might have shown up if they hadn't heard over the radio that you were already close to the scene? Now someone might say "Oh that's different. That's medical care". But racial discrimination once was so pervasive that blacks couldn't go to certain hospitals. Now someone else might say "That's easy. Let the market handle it." Certainly there were black hospitals built. But not all communities had the black population base to justify building one. (Also state regulators didn't then and don't know allow you to build a hospital whenever you like. Hospitals are highly regulated to the point where you can't even add extra beds without state permission. And I know that's "anti libertarian" but it is reality.)

The NAACP analogy
Ok. Let's look at another anology. Williams is flat wrong in his implication about the NAACP. The initial board of directors for the NAACP had white members and there is currently at least one white NAACP chapter president. In the 1980s the supreme court held that you couldn't use statistics alone to prove racial discrimination. That was a decision hailed by conservatives. So why is conservative Williams trying to use a picture to "prove" a point about the NAACP and discrimination? Unless he has evidence that the NAACP doesn't allow blacks to be on the board of directors

Private organizations versus public accomadations
Besides, the NAACP, the Nation of Islam and the Aryan Brotherhood are all "members only" organizations which are not open to the public. So they aren't even covered by the Civil Rights Act. By the same token private members only country clubs can and do discriminate based on race. Bob Jones University didn't allow blacks in until 1986 and they still banned interracial dating until the year 2000. I don't know if libertarians ignore this because they want to fear monger people into thinking the government can force you to date some other race or let anybody into your home (under the CRA title II it can't even if you run a business out of your home), or if they just feel that it doesn't go along with the point they want to make. But this point actually helps Rand's position. That's because it shows the limits of the CRA and how public pressure can accomplish the same thing. After all the CRA didn't force Bob Jones to end its interracial dating policy. That was public pressure after the media leaned on republicans like John McCain and George W. Bush for going to speaking engagements at BJU.

The constitutional question
Here's where I got hopeful in the Williams video, but disappointed at how badly he dropped the ball. What Williams failed to mention (and people often do in this situations) is that when the government breaks the constitution, they don't just "make something up". Instead the rely on earlier (bad) precedent and/or they twist the language that's already there. The civil rights act was not the first time the federal government overstepped its bounds and reached into private business. That goes all the way back to 1942 and elements of FDR's "new deal" which set up price controls and wage controls and rationing and told farmers how much grain they could grow and what they could do with it. If people could step back for a minute, and quit arguing over the "right to discriminate" and instead look at all the other ways the federal government manipulates private business this argument could go a lot further. I don't know if Williams doesn't fully understand the constitutional question, or if he felt that he had to "dumb it down" for his audience. Either way, he could have done better.

Lastly, while I don't think Walter Williams was being racist, and I wouldn't have thought that if he was white, the fact that he is back is not dispositive. After all, Marcus Garvey tried to make an alliance with the KKK.

[rprprs]

Well I guess I'll be the lone dissenter...

Nope.

It was weak. The fact that Williams is, to a certain degree, renown, is credentialed, or is black, does not excuse him from that criticism.

[jct74]

Just came across this article on townhall.com defending Rand, written by Walt Williams:
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/06/02/the_right_to_discriminate

[low preference guy]

Just came across this article on townhall.com defending Rand, written by Walt Williams:
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/06/02/the_right_to_discriminate

Good for Williams. Good to see someone with balls, a rarity today.

I think there is only one person who can answer as well or better than Williams, and that is Thomas Sowell. He has written 3 columns since the Civil Rights incident but they didn't have anything about it. I wonder if he's polishing an article or is sick of talking about race (he wrote an entire book about Civil Rights and race).

[helmuth_hubener]

Well I guess I'll be the lone dissenter, but I'm used to that role.

This video is long on bad (and in at least one instance incorrect) analogies and short on constitutional analysis..... Man oh man, jmdrake, you are really getting into the legal minutiae of the thing. The point was perfectly good for anyone wanting to or open to agree with him. That is: there are situations in which racial discrimination occurs, which are not bad. Which nobody thinks are bad. Williams wanted a smart black woman to marry, thus discriminating against all stupid white men. If these anti-discriminationist freaks were really serious about their beliefs, if they really thought discrimination was wrong, they'd have to condemn actions like that.

It was a good point, adequately made. He made it even better in the article: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=37784

[loveshiscountry]

The NAACP analogy
Ok. Let's look at another anology. Williams is flat wrong in his implication about the NAACP. The initial board of directors for the NAACP had white members and there is currently at least one white NAACP chapter president. In the 1980s the supreme court held that you couldn't use statistics alone to prove racial discrimination. That was a decision hailed by conservatives. So why is conservative Williams trying to use a picture to "prove" a point about the NAACP and discrimination? Unless he has evidence that the NAACP doesn't allow blacks to be on the board of directors

You are saying no whites on a board of dozens is discrimination but having one white isn't discrimination? Unless I missed the point.

In the early 1950's after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, few teams had blacks. I believe the Red Sox were the last holdout. Some teams carried an even number of blacks because they wanted blacks to room only with other blacks.