Rand's Essay on Racism Stands Test of Time

To start the holiday, I re-read Ayn Rand's classic 1963 essay, "Racism." It is the most thorough diagnosis of why some individuals become racists -- and the best prescription for what to do about racism -- that I have ever read.

There is no substitute for reading the whole thing, but the following passage struck me as quite prophetic, given today's political climate:

The "civil rights" bill, now under consideration in Congress, is another example of a gross infringement of individual rights. It is proper to forbid all discrimination in government-owned facilities and establishments: the government has no right to discriminate against any citizens. And by the very same principle, the government has no right to discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others. It has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments.

No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man. A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine -- but doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a communist's freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue -- and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.

Needless to say, if that "civil rights" bill is passed, it will be the worst breach of property rights in the sorry record of American history in respect to that subject.*

It is an ironic demonstration of the philosophical insanity and the consequently suicidal trend of our age, that the men who need the protection of individual rights most urgently -- the Negroes -- are now in the vanguard of the destruction of these rights.

A word of warning: do not become victims of the same racists by succumbing to racism; do not hold against all Negroes the disgraceful irrationality of some of their leaders. No group has any proper intellectual leadership today or any proper representation.

I'll confine myself to a local phenomenon I was recently disturbed to learn about: Mississippi, where I was born and raised, doesn't just commemorate Robert E. Lee's birthday. It does so on the same day as the federal Martin Lurther King holiday.

In 2026.

It strikes me as possible that this may well be the case in part from the kind of reaction Rand describes above in the last paragraph -- and which journalists might sloppily call a "backlash." The pervasiveness of the neo-Confederate "Lost Cause" myth in the culture is at least equally responsible. Both threaten the high degree of progress towards King's dream that has occurred there, largely during in my lifetime.

The fight for individual freedom never ends, and fortunately, we have a powerful ally in that fight.

-- CAV