The costs on Racism

Well,  yeah.

Interestingly enough, some conservatives and libertarians make the argument that we don’t need laws against racism because corporations that practice it will stupidly be passing up on talented people that their competitors will be able to use against them. I think that’s a little shallow, because we already know there were plenty of cases of massively talented black people who just never got a shot anywhere that they deserved; "the market" does not automatically fix all problems. That said, I would agree that Boston’s stubbornness probably didn’t help them.

Hmm. What phrasing would you use for highly qualified professionals who were denied even consideration due to their race, and a corporate culture that found it unacceptable to see them in certain positions?

There was a time when you couldn’t even get a job as a mailman unless your skin was light enough.

Perfectly legal discrimination still occurs in hiring, such as when Disney hires persons with certain physical characteristics, persons with genetically bad teeth find it hard to rise within corporate hierarchies, obese women can’t find employment as strippers, etc.

But thats besides the point.

Anyone "massively talented" will not, I think, allow such barriers to prevent them achieving great things with their lives.

Instead, you are arguing for the merely qualified. Of which there are plenty, black and white, who are woefully underemployed.

>>Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Rather the Default Order, despite the drama-queen hanky-waving and bed-peeing of the libs protesting the contrary.

  The Cleveland Indians have sucked so bad for so long because of their racist Indian mascot.

And that’s just as provable or disprovable as the Red Sox theory.

Okay,

Punning, I was being facetious. This week we have been reading about obesity, Separation of Church and State, obesity, domestic violence, Obama Nazi gaffe, etc and obesity…

Now we get to: The costs on Racism

A poster suggests that perhaps, the Bosox lost all those many years because of racism in that black skinned baseballers (no pejorative intended) were not advailable for assorted duties on the Bosox, ergo they, the Bosox, didn’t win World Series or the league pennant most years.

So if’n one is to read your post, there must obviously be a few conclusions…the subject matter is racism or politics or something:

(see quote):

"…you go into an election with the voters you’ve got, right? Now it’s pretty clear that a lot of folks in the left blogosphere would like to do their own purge of the voting rolls–get rid of those dirty, smelly hillbillies, etc., maybe with a literacy test [I've actually seen that proposed on some blogs--ah, progressivism!], but to borrow the metaphor, that dog ain’t gonna hunt. In a democracy, it’s the voters who reward and punish, for better or for worse. … It’s a moral problem for the voters, not for Obama. But it’s an electoral problem for Obama."

Then, your link author sez:

"I basically agree with all of this. I especially think the part where he said "Ta-Nehisi is right" is incredibly insightful. But there is one thing I would differ with: I think racism isn’t just a moral problem for this country, it’s actually a practical one too. The reason I cite the the Civil War example is because the practical consequences were so grave." (please add blah, blah if necessary)

And then said link author proffered up the white Boston Red Sox to be the exemplary sample of racism and allegory and why such stuff creates losers.

McK just happened to bite the tainted cheese and offered up some equally asinine contra- idiocy with qualifying linkages. Would you like some more of the Rev. Michael Pfleger/Trinity Church youtubes ?

So what the hell is your position on Costs on Racism ?

Scott,

Obviously you didn’t read the link either and now fail subject matter theme class

(see post: The rest is worth reading too):

“It’s a moral problem for the voters, not for Obama. But it’s an electoral problem for Obama. He’s the one who has to do the wooing.”

See, it is about racism/politics and of course about the white racist Boston Red Sox.

Get it ?

I’ve been reading and recommending Thomas Sowell’s columns and books for decades. He was also kind enough to give my family some advice on some personal matters. He’s a genuinely decent human being, not to mention a towering intellect.

However, there is a difference between laws forbidding discrimination and laws which give preference to black people. It’s possible he’s written saying he’s opposed to both, but if so I’m not aware of it. If he has, I’d have to say I disagree in the case of laws against discrimination vs. laws favoring it.

That would make sense if the market had ever showed that it would so punish an organization, but we have decades of experience before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prove that to be factually false.

The arguments against that act may have been in many cases offered in good faith (as it almost certainly was in Barry Goldwater’s case) but they were, I think, self-evidently wrong in retrospect.

Corporations are not individuals with "rights" anyway, they’re government created paper entities that the government has both a right and a Constitutional duty to regulate. Making corporations show good faith efforts to not discriminate on race is a very good thing. And it’s not hard to show such good faith efforts. What’s troubling is when the law goes further and enforces quotas as a blanket rule, which I am and always have been opposed to (just like most people, as it happens).

Indeed, laws banning invidious corporate racial discrimination often can serve as a cover for businesses that *don’t want* to discriminate, but they feel they must because their customers and/or business partners will give them grief if they see the wrong kind of face. If they can basically say “hey, we have to follow the law” then their competitors and customers have to shut the hell up. Which is exactly why these laws are a very good thing and I’m very, very grateful that Congress exercised its Constitutionally mandated authority to outlaw despicable racial discrimination.

We have the entire century from the end of the Civil War
(1865) until the passage of that act (1964). Of course, that act alone isn’t the only thing; numerous acts before it and after it changed things, and, while it’s seldom talked about, most anti-discrimination legislation took place at the state level and not the federal level.

Nevertheless, I remember when my stepdad bought a house, how it had a protective covenant in it saying he would never sell the house to a black person, and would hold anyone else who bought the house to the same condition before selling it to them. By then such covenants were illegal and thus unenforceable, but of course there was still a mentality among many neighbors that they’d hold to it anyway. There was a time, in cities like Detroit and Chicago, where a black man couldn’t get any job in certain professions, no matter his qualifications. A friend of mine who’s black and in his 50s even remembers a time when you couldn’t get a job with the U.S. Postal Service unless you were either white or a fair skinned (i.e. light) black. If you were too black, you were only suitable for things like janitor or maybe toll booth attendant.

As Jason notes in this comment, his beloved Cleveland Indians were one of the first (or the first) team to break the color line, and their reward was decades of heartbreak for their fans. "The market" did not reward them with success, and Boston I’d say had as many bad years after they gave up their ban on black players as they did before.

The simple fact of the matter is that regulation of commerce is a primary function of government; you can make a strong argument that it is the main function of government, and rightly so. Employment is a form of commerce, the most basic form of commerce there is in this country. The Civil Rights Act did not harass the family business or the small partnerships, it only affected corporations. Which is fine by me, as the bloody corporations wouldn’t exist without the government in the first place.

There was a solid mentality for generations in this country that even if you were "liberal-minded" about black people you couldn’t afford to hire one because your customers and your competitors would use it against you. There was, I submit, only one way to stop that terrible cultural mentality: by force of law. Which I’m 100% fine with, it’s what we hold elections for.