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Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 09:50:00 EST
From:         "Peter J. Schledorn" <UNCPJS@UNC.OIT.UNC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Discriminating minds want to know...
Comments: To: Forum for the Discussion of Politics <POLITICS@UCF1VM.CC.UCF.EDU>

Jamie has already dealt admirably with part of this post, now I get
my licks in :-):

>         Let's look at slavery: about half the states (delagations, that is)
> wanted to keep slavery.  The authors of the constitution, working for
> compromise, took out the anti-slavery portion of the constitution.
>
>         Did this reflect the interests of the people?  Only about half, at
> best.  What it was really representing was the compromise necessary to get a
> constitution approved by all the states.

Which was in fact my point.  Powerful interests managed to derail the
process, in part, to produce an outcome that was in opposition to the
principles that the whole process was supposed to have been based on.
It is hardly an inevitable outcome of government action.  And it caused
almost unending problems until slavery was finally abolished.

Now there are two ways to handle such a problem.  One, which I gather
you support, is to weaken government so much that it can't possibly act
to support a powerful, but bad, interest.  The problem is that it then
can't act to counter that interest, either.  And if powerful interests
can't subvert government into acting for them, they'll accomplish the
same goal in some other way--power craves security.  The outcome is that
the people are left without the possibility of using government as a
tool to protect themselves.

It is far preferable to have a government that is powerful enough to
counter pernicious interests, and also principled enough to remain
faithful to the ideals of freedom and equality that are at its base.
That's a tall order, of course, but nobody said democracy was easy.

>         Now, did Jim Crow reflect the interests of the people or merely the
> interpretation of the current law vis-a-vis slaves as property?

It is my recollection that Jim Crow laws were not contemporaneous with
slavery--that they were used to control the activities of _free_ blacks.
Also, that they were local efforts to thwart more basic laws, such as
the Fourteenth Amendment's principle of equal protection.  History Czar,
can we have a ruling here, please?

>         Is a progressive tax a compromise between rich and un-rich or a
> system imposed on the rich by the majority?

Actually, a significant number of the rich view a progressive tax as the
price they willingly pay in order to have the sort of society that they
want to live in.  They are farsighted enough to realize that even small
investments in social justice pay big dividends.

Our main problem is that, in recent years, we have been getting less and
less real value for the taxes we pay, thanks to the skewed priorities of
the last two administrations.

>         However, there are areas in which the government has proven
> ineffective: namely in trying to legislate what goes on behind closed doors
> between consenting adults.

Nobody has been trying to legislate that (at least nobody on the left).
However, they have been trying to throw open some doors that have been
improperly closed.

>         We're getting deeply into philosophy here but I think the government
> has a poor record of protecting the rights of the individual.

I couldn't disagree more.  That is government's most important role,
as the people who founded our government realized, even if they did a
mixed job of implementation (they committed the government to the job
of protecting rights, and sent us the Bill  :-).  In fact, if the
government does not guarantee rights, they are not guaranteed, and can
be held only through conflict and struggle.

>         You're missing the point.  Quotas were supposed to enable minorities
> proportional access.  According to an earlier post, black professionals still
> have a low (2.2%) participation rate in some professions.  After 25 years of
> civil rights laws, shouldn't it be closer to the population division of 12%?

To add to Jamie's points:

You're neglecting to mention that this 2.2 percent rate represented a
tenfold increase from a vanishingly low starting point, and that the
increase is attributable to the very laws you say didn't work.  It is
also an atypical figure, as the article you cite made clear.

Besides, when you talk about the professions population divisions become
meaningless--you have to consider the pool of trained workers.  When the
Department of Education evaluates discrimination complaints regarding
microbiologists, it takes a 1 percent black representation as evidence
of non-discrimination, because only about 1 percent of people with
doctorates in microbiology are black.

>         Say I had a business in a 90% black area.  Yet the quotas say I "must"
> employ at least 10% blacks....  If I was racist, that would enable me to *only
> hire 10% blacks, even though the area I live in has a much greater proportion
> of blacks living there.  The government mandated system enables racists to use
> quotas as a shield.

Like Jamie, I would like to see an example of such a law in practice.

>         Exactly.  Time to get a new solution, eh?

What is it?  You haven't given us even a hint of what the new solution
would be.  It seems like your "new" solution is simply to dismantle the
current (working) solution, and go back to what we had before.  Well,
it didn't work then and it won't work now.

There are only two basic positions that government can take regarding
discrimination: it can allow it or prohibit it (mandate is a subset of
"allow").  Since discrimination does cause harm, it becomes a question
of whether government has a good reason to allow citizens to harm each
other.  And, just as in cases of murder, assault and fraud, there is at
bottom no good reason for government to remain passive while this harm
takes place.

>         And if we are really going to honor the will of the people, then why
> have laws saying the people can't decide?

No.  And discrimination takes from its victims the power to decide.

Best,
Peter

> Brett'
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