WEBVTT NOTE Civil Rights and Statism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 You think most people are in here? Should we get going? 2 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:19.000 Alright, ladies and gentlemen, if you would please, thank you so much. 3 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Microphone working okay? Everyone hears me? Okay, good, good. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000 I don't know if you've heard the rumors, but I'm a little bit under the weather. 5 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:31.480 under the weather, I don't know quite what's wrong with me and I've been having trouble 6 00:00:31.480 --> 00:00:42.240 getting a good night's sleep so I'm going to do the best I can. Also, somebody left 7 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:50.440 his notes up here, maybe Paul Gottfried but you can get those later. Okay, talking about 8 00:00:50.440 --> 00:00:55.600 this sort of controversial topic, ladies and gentlemen, issues pertaining to civil rights 9 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:00.600 I just kind of adapted that and made my own little medley out of it. 10 00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:02.600 Okay. 11 00:02:02.600 --> 00:02:06.600 Alright. 12 00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:09.600 Okay. 13 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:11.600 Okay. 14 00:02:11.600 --> 00:02:13.600 Let's see, what else we got here? 15 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:15.600 And they get more evil as they go down. 16 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:17.600 They're not all, well, I don't know. 17 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:20.600 Starting here they get pretty, they get more evil as they go down. 18 00:02:25.600 --> 00:02:41.600 This is a very long title. Oh gosh, this is ridiculous. Oh my gosh, it's a killer. 19 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:51.600 I'm abbreviating here. And finally, and there are other cases, obviously I could mention the Bakke case as an example, 20 00:02:51.600 --> 00:02:55.320 But each one of them makes a point that I want to make, so I mention these. 21 00:02:55.320 --> 00:02:57.920 All right, here we go. 22 00:02:57.920 --> 00:03:03.920 Also 1971. 23 00:03:03.920 --> 00:03:05.840 Okay. 24 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:10.200 Incidentally, I'm underlining these because you know court cases should be in italics. 25 00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:15.880 One of my pet peeves is that you should never, I don't care what your second grade, fourth grade teacher talks, 26 00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:20.280 you never underline a court case or a book title. 27 00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:24.600 you italicize them when you underline that simply means that if you're sketching 28 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:28.440 something out for your secretary that your secretary will know the underlined 29 00:03:28.440 --> 00:03:32.040 portion is to be in italics but you never leave it like that you never see 30 00:03:32.040 --> 00:03:36.000 Time magazine underlining anything or any any reasonable book the only time you 31 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:40.400 see anything underlined in a book is when it's some underground press or 32 00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:43.000 something and they don't know any better but anyway that's just a pet peeve of 33 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.960 mine all right let's start right here this is the key this is that this is a 34 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:58.960 This is a case that forms the precedent that is in the background when we get to this case, very, very quickly, because many of you probably know this, having learned it in high school. 35 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:13.960 This case of Plessy v. Ferguson has to do with an 1890 Louisiana statute having to do with segregated railroad cars, that you had to have separate cars for blacks and whites. 36 00:04:13.960 --> 00:04:26.960 And a lot has been written on this. For our purposes, the reason that it's significant is that the court establishes the so-called separate but equal principle. 37 00:04:26.960 --> 00:04:37.960 That is to say, there was some question, does this violate, does the Louisiana statute violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws? 38 00:04:37.960 --> 00:04:53.960 And the court decided that it did not, because as long as the facilities, the separate facilities were equal in quality, then there was no, strictly speaking, unfair treatment taking place. 39 00:04:53.960 --> 00:05:05.960 So it was legitimate, the so-called Jim Crow laws involving common carriers, private accommodations, government offices and so on, could have segregated facilities. 40 00:05:05.960 --> 00:05:35.960 Facilities, and this would not be a violation of the 14th Amendment. So this is established in this case. That is just the background, my friend. Now we have this case. So we're going to say, boy, we are fast forwarding awfully quickly. Yes, we are. Now, there are a few relatively minor cases between these two that slightly begin to chip away at the precedent in Plessy. But for the most part, it stands until you get to 1954. Now, again, 41 00:05:35.960 --> 00:05:39.960 I'm sure you probably all know about this one, but there's a lot that can be said about this. 42 00:05:39.960 --> 00:05:44.960 For one thing, I would recommend, sort of recommend this book. 43 00:05:44.960 --> 00:05:49.960 And David Gordon sort of recommends this book also, so it must be good. 44 00:05:49.960 --> 00:05:57.960 It probably has, you know, seven inaccuracies in it that he's found, but let's see. 45 00:05:57.960 --> 00:06:04.960 It's by Paul Craig Roberts and some other guy. 46 00:06:04.960 --> 00:06:23.960 This book, The New Color Line, is useful because, among other things, it has several pages on documenting how, around the time of the Brown case, a move toward voluntary desegregation was apparent in many areas of the South and many areas of life. 47 00:06:23.960 --> 00:06:33.960 And that's worth noting, that a lot of scholars have noted that if you favor desegregation, this case was not necessary in order to bring that outcome about. 48 00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:44.960 Well, here's the case. It's actually a consolidation of several cases involving black children who, rather than being able to go to the school right down the street, 49 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:50.960 that being a white school, they have to go far away to go to the all-black school. And is this legitimate or not? 50 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:57.960 Now, the court is faced with this dilemma that, well, in my opinion, the court is faced with no dilemma whatsoever. 51 00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:08.400 But we'll get to that later, but if you're a leftist on the court, you're faced with this dilemma that you're desperate to overturn school segregation. 52 00:07:08.400 --> 00:07:20.560 Now, I assume, I don't know, some of our foreign guests may not know that there were segregated schools by race throughout the South and elsewhere de facto. 53 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:25.640 And if you're a leftist on the court, you want to abolish it. 54 00:07:25.640 --> 00:07:29.200 I'm not necessarily saying that you have to favor a segregated school system, 55 00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:33.200 but I am saying you have to pretty much mind your own business in these cases. 56 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:38.760 But you have this case breathing down your neck 57 00:07:38.760 --> 00:07:41.880 because it says that there's nothing unconstitutional 58 00:07:41.880 --> 00:07:45.400 about separate facilities for the races. 59 00:07:45.400 --> 00:07:50.440 And likewise, there's another difficulty. 60 00:07:50.440 --> 00:07:58.480 Because you might say, well, don't segregated schools in some way violate the 14th Amendment equal protection of the laws. 61 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.960 That was an argument that was going to be attempted at first. 62 00:08:01.960 --> 00:08:10.120 The problem with that is that the very same Congress that adopted the 14th Amendment also approved segregated schools in the District of Columbia. 63 00:08:10.120 --> 00:08:14.880 So they obviously didn't intend it to have that effect or to have that meaning. 64 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:18.000 So you have to come up with another way of arguing. 65 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:24.000 The other way of arguing they came up with has to do with so-called modern authority. 66 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:30.000 And modern authority, according to psychological and sociological studies, has this to say to us, 67 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:37.000 that a segregated school system is inherently unequal. It must be unequal. 68 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:42.000 Regardless of the funding that's given to either school, it is inherently unequal 69 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:46.000 because it has this scarring effect on the children. 70 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:53.500 It stamps them with a feeling of inferiority that is very difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of later in life. 71 00:08:53.500 --> 00:08:59.500 And it's going to have a negative effect on their ability to learn and to advance educationally. 72 00:08:59.500 --> 00:09:02.700 So these are the types of arguments that are going to be raised. 73 00:09:02.700 --> 00:09:10.000 So therefore, since schools that are segregated are inherently unequal, 74 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:14.600 they do not satisfy the separate but equal requirement. 75 00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:15.920 They're inherently unequal. 76 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:20.320 So this way the court can get away with not directly overturning Plessy, 77 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:24.960 because it would look, they did want to at least preserve the impression 78 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:28.200 that they were keeping in line with precedent and tradition. 79 00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:30.680 But they were able to say, well, the people in 1896, 80 00:09:30.680 --> 00:09:34.600 you know, they couldn't have been expected to know about modern authority 81 00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:37.560 and what it has to say about children and self-esteem 82 00:09:37.560 --> 00:09:43.520 and the damage that is done to children's self-esteem by segregated schools. 83 00:09:43.520 --> 00:09:48.080 One of the pieces of evidence that was cited for this, again, as some of you may know about, 84 00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:53.600 has to do with the famous doll studies done by black sociologist Kenneth Clark. 85 00:09:54.800 --> 00:10:00.720 He had the children, he had black children, answer the question, looking at a white doll 86 00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:07.520 and a black doll, say which doll the child preferred. And an alarming percentage of black 87 00:10:07.520 --> 00:10:13.360 students preferred the white doll. And this was evidence that their self-esteem has been shattered. 88 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:16.360 by years of segregated schooling. 89 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:18.640 The difficulty with this evidence is that 90 00:10:18.640 --> 00:10:21.840 black students in non-segregated schools in the North 91 00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:26.600 chose the white doll in much higher proportions. 92 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:29.480 And that didn't come out until later, of course. 93 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:34.520 Or they have also repeated the experiment in all black societies. 94 00:10:34.520 --> 00:10:38.320 And the proportion was still much higher than in the segregated South. 95 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:42.120 So what this proves is absolutely beyond me. 96 00:10:42.120 --> 00:11:12.120 and interestingly in later years an NAACP lawyer when asked about what did you think of the Kenneth Clark doll studies replied I may have used the word crap so they recognized the difficulty with this as well okay well nevertheless this is these are the grounds on which the case was decided that segregated schools being inherently unequal were unconstitutional and the 97 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:18.120 The desegregation process had to begin, as they said, the following year, with all deliberate speed. 98 00:11:32.120 --> 00:11:36.120 With all deliberate speed. Nobody knows what that means. 99 00:11:36.120 --> 00:11:41.800 It's very, very unusual and surprising for a government document to be ambiguous and 100 00:11:41.800 --> 00:11:44.240 unclear, but there it is. 101 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:50.280 So interestingly, by the way, the black author Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote The Color Purple 102 00:11:50.280 --> 00:11:54.800 and many, many other things, was completely against the Brown decision. 103 00:11:54.800 --> 00:11:56.660 And she lived in Florida at the time. 104 00:11:56.660 --> 00:12:02.400 She wrote a famous letter to the Orlando Sentinel, which I read as an undergrad. 105 00:12:02.400 --> 00:12:06.400 Professor Thurnstrom had reproduced it for us. 106 00:12:06.400 --> 00:12:11.400 And, you know, because basically what Hurston didn't like about the case 107 00:12:11.400 --> 00:12:13.400 is that she said that, well, what is this case saying to me? 108 00:12:13.400 --> 00:12:17.400 It's saying that, you know, I'm going to have an inferior school 109 00:12:17.400 --> 00:12:18.400 unless I'm sitting next to a white guy. 110 00:12:18.400 --> 00:12:21.400 Well, you know, speak for yourself. I don't feel that way. 111 00:12:21.400 --> 00:12:25.400 And that's one of the things. I searched a lot of websites. 112 00:12:25.400 --> 00:12:28.400 There are a lot of websites on the Internet devoted to Hurston 113 00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:29.400 and her writings and everything. 114 00:12:29.400 --> 00:12:31.400 And every once in a while you get one of them that acknowledges 115 00:12:31.400 --> 00:12:56.400 What about all the largely Asian schools in California, throughout the 20th century, that had been all Asian? 116 00:12:56.400 --> 00:13:00.400 They had done extremely well academically, better than whites. 117 00:13:00.400 --> 00:13:04.400 And there was no one around to tell them that their self-esteem was being damaged. 118 00:13:04.400 --> 00:13:11.400 So it's founded on something that's factually incorrect, psychobabble instead of law. 119 00:13:11.400 --> 00:13:18.400 But nevertheless, that is the key precedent that is now going to inform subsequent cases. 120 00:13:18.400 --> 00:13:24.400 Because note this, there is, of course, as I'm sure you realize, the difference between desegregation and integration. 121 00:13:24.400 --> 00:13:30.400 Desegregation means you open the doors and anybody who wants to come in is permitted to. 122 00:13:30.400 --> 00:13:34.400 Integration means you bash open the doors and force your way in. 123 00:13:34.400 --> 00:13:38.400 Now, strictly speaking, this is a desegregation decision. 124 00:13:38.400 --> 00:13:45.400 But on the other hand, the logic of the case implies that it can't simply stop there. 125 00:13:45.400 --> 00:14:11.400 Because if a segregated school system is inherently unequal, and is inherently going to damage the self-esteem of black children and their educational attainment, then we can't permit it to go on, regardless of the origin of it, even if it's completely voluntary, it has to be abolished by force, if it is going to be inherently unequal. 126 00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:20.400 So here's what we get. Here's another case. This is Green vs. County School Board of New Kent County. 127 00:14:20.400 --> 00:14:34.400 This has to do with, in Virginia, there had been a system in which, in compliance, they thought, with Brown, 128 00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:42.400 A school district had simply opened up admission on a voluntary basis of schools. 129 00:14:42.400 --> 00:14:49.400 So what ended up happening is that on this voluntary basis, all the white students stayed in the white schools, 130 00:14:49.400 --> 00:14:53.400 and about seven-eighths of the black students stayed in the black schools. 131 00:14:53.400 --> 00:14:59.400 Now, strictly speaking, according to some of the logic in here, that should be okay, as long as people have the opportunity. 132 00:14:59.400 --> 00:15:02.400 And if they don't choose to exercise it, that's their choice. 133 00:15:02.400 --> 00:15:03.400 That's their choice. 134 00:15:03.400 --> 00:15:07.200 Nobody says at an opera house, you know what, darn it, there just aren't enough Hispanics 135 00:15:07.200 --> 00:15:08.200 at the opera house. 136 00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:11.800 We'd better go down to Spanish Harlem and load up a bus and throw them in there. 137 00:15:11.800 --> 00:15:16.040 Or darn it, the Yankees are playing and they're only 6% blacks in the stadium. 138 00:15:16.040 --> 00:15:18.240 You know, I can't get over this. 139 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:22.040 Nobody in his right mind would say that, except for some reason with schools. 140 00:15:22.040 --> 00:15:25.160 With schools, you must integrate. 141 00:15:25.160 --> 00:15:26.160 You must integrate. 142 00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:32.000 So, what the court found here is that regardless of the fact that the Virginia Plan was voluntary 143 00:15:32.000 --> 00:16:02.000 and that if blacks wanted to go to the white schools, they could do so, that was not enough because the desired outcome is a unitary, from a racial point of view, school system and yes, you can set up the system by which students are admitted any way you like as long as the result is integration, so anything you want to do as long as the result is integration, so that is a somewhat different principle because in effect, 144 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:13.000 In fact, there's a way in which you can say Brown is saying that race is not a legitimate category when dealing with education and you should simply admit people. 145 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:20.000 Whereas Green is saying that no, you ought to be obsessively concerned about race. You must have an integrated outcome. 146 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:30.000 But as I say, this in a sense does, you know, you can't be, you can't hold this neocon view that Green is a completely radical departure from Brown. 147 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:46.000 The logic of green is implied here, because if the problem with the education is precisely segregation and that it's inherently unequal, then it has to be ended by whatever means necessary. 148 00:16:46.000 --> 00:17:16.000 Okay, the next, let's see, let me make sure I cover everything else, okay, next case is this, this one here, the swan, this is actually, actual title is something on the swan versus board of education of Charlotte Mecklen, Charlotte Mecklenburg board of education, but, you know, I was not going to be able to get that on the whole, on the, on the thing, and, and sometimes it's referred to as Char Meck, I remember being in college, and all the trendy, you know, black studies types, 149 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:41.600 This is North Carolina. This is the first case where you actually get the Supreme Court upholding a busing statute as a way of redressing past discrimination. 150 00:17:41.600 --> 00:17:46.400 You will bus people to various schools in order to bring about racial balance. 151 00:17:46.400 --> 00:17:51.160 That's obviously a significant precedent. 152 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:54.720 Now, I would note, as long as we're on the topic, 153 00:17:54.720 --> 00:18:00.800 I have a bit of, I think, relevant information about this. 154 00:18:00.800 --> 00:18:02.000 Oh, okay, yeah. 155 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:05.640 In 1983, you might wonder, in the midst of all this, 156 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:09.840 how was black achievement doing in these years? 157 00:18:09.840 --> 00:18:15.080 Well, what good results do we see from a case like the Charméc case, 158 00:18:15.080 --> 00:18:20.080 upholding busing as a way of rectifying racial imbalance and past discrimination? 159 00:18:20.080 --> 00:18:25.520 Well, what do we see? Well, 1983, basically the key study is done in 1983. 160 00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:31.720 The Department of Education did a lengthy study and found that there was no busing program 161 00:18:31.720 --> 00:18:35.640 that seemed to have had any good effect whatsoever on black achievement. 162 00:18:35.640 --> 00:18:39.640 and specifically in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. 163 00:18:39.640 --> 00:18:43.640 You might wonder, well, here's the great standard bearer of the whole struggle. 164 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:45.640 How did black students do there? 165 00:18:45.640 --> 00:18:51.640 Well, at the time of this case, black students were about one and one-half school grades 166 00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:54.640 behind their white counterparts in achievement. 167 00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:59.640 Well, then they did a study around the end of the 70s or early 80s 168 00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:02.640 when these students had been going to integrated schools their whole lives. 169 00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:06.640 And the difference between whites and blacks? One and one-half grades. 170 00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:09.640 Okay. Wonderful. 171 00:19:09.640 --> 00:19:13.640 So we've destroyed communities, created all kinds of ill will and violence, 172 00:19:13.640 --> 00:19:16.640 and we have zero to show for it. 173 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:19.640 Not to mention all the money that went into this and everything else, 174 00:19:19.640 --> 00:19:22.640 and the undermining of the Constitution and everything else. 175 00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:27.640 Well, then, same year, the Griggs case. 176 00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:30.640 What case? The Griggs case. Fun. 177 00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:36.640 This is a fun one, this Griggs case. So much destruction has come from this case. It's beyond belief. 178 00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:40.640 Griggs versus Duke Power Company. Had to do with this question. 179 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:46.640 And I'm going to come back to this a little bit with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 180 00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:52.640 But the key thing that's significant about this, again for our purposes, is as follows. 181 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:59.640 During the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which as I say I'll get to a little bit later, 182 00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:07.240 It had been made clear that discrimination in employment could only be a deliberate intentional act. 183 00:20:07.240 --> 00:20:10.240 You couldn't accidentally discriminate against somebody. 184 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:13.440 It was made clear to people that you won't be hauled into court 185 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:18.440 because you don't have the right proportion of races in your job. 186 00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:23.440 As long as you're not willfully acting to discriminate, you're off the hook. 187 00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:25.840 Okay, well, that was really not very honest. 188 00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:35.840 And as it turns out, in the Griggs case, Duke Power Company, it was found out even though they obviously were of goodwill and did not intend to discriminate, they're still guilty. 189 00:20:35.840 --> 00:20:45.840 And this is done directly in contradiction to the understanding of the 1960 People's Rights Act, because what was said was as follows. 190 00:20:45.840 --> 00:20:51.840 It had to do with how does the Duke Power Company promote people? What's the promotion process? 191 00:20:51.840 --> 00:20:59.440 Process. And in order to get a promotion, the Duke Power Company required employees 192 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:07.480 to either have a high school diploma or to pass an intelligence test. Well, it turned 193 00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:14.200 out that this had a disproportionately bad effect on blacks because they were much less 194 00:21:14.200 --> 00:21:19.120 likely to have high school diplomas or to pass the intelligence test. So this meant 195 00:21:19.120 --> 00:21:23.720 that in effect Duke Power Company was guilty of discrimination and the doctrine that comes 196 00:21:23.720 --> 00:21:30.120 out of this is called disparate impact. If you're going to impose a requirement on people 197 00:21:30.120 --> 00:21:35.360 that has a disparate impact on the races, it's going to hit blacks more than whites, 198 00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:40.920 then unless you can prove the job relatedness of that qualification, it ain't allowed. You 199 00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:46.800 can't do it. It's discrimination. So, the thing is half the time you can't prove a job 200 00:21:46.800 --> 00:21:51.800 I mean, sometimes you want a high school diploma, not because you want to make sure the guy can do algebra, 201 00:21:51.800 --> 00:21:58.800 but because somebody who's finished high school shows that this is a person who reaches goals, who... 202 00:21:58.800 --> 00:22:01.800 Well, actually, I don't know what a modern high school diploma proves. 203 00:22:01.800 --> 00:22:04.800 This is all theoretical. 204 00:22:04.800 --> 00:22:09.800 But there are reasons for these things, but you can't always prove... 205 00:22:09.800 --> 00:22:19.800 So, in many cases, employers have simply given up trying to use these particular ways of sorting out people for jobs. 206 00:22:19.800 --> 00:22:33.800 Likewise, in many, many cases, now, employers are simply not bothering to ask about high school diplomas, arrest records, dishonorable military discharges and GPAs, 207 00:22:33.800 --> 00:22:39.800 All of these are going to have a negative effect on black applicants, so they will not ask about these things. 208 00:22:39.800 --> 00:22:44.800 There have actually been cases in which farmers have been sued for discrimination 209 00:22:44.800 --> 00:22:50.800 because they've asked prospective farm hands if they're able to use a hoe. 210 00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:53.800 See, blacks are more likely to have back problems than whites. 211 00:22:53.800 --> 00:22:57.800 So if I'm asking you if you know how to use a hoe, that might be code for 212 00:22:57.800 --> 00:23:01.800 I want to have an excuse not to hire a black guy, and you might have a back problem. 213 00:23:01.800 --> 00:23:14.800 And in many areas, on basically this ground, on the grounds of disparate impact, many, many school systems have simply given up bothering having gifted and talented programs, because there won't be enough blacks. 214 00:23:14.800 --> 00:23:21.800 And of course the only explanation for why there aren't enough blacks must be just evil on the part of the people setting up the program. 215 00:23:21.800 --> 00:23:29.800 I love this idea that the leftists who run the public schools, nevertheless, in their heart of hearts, are trying every scheme imaginable to keep the blacks down. 216 00:23:29.800 --> 00:23:36.800 So many wouldn't love to have a gifted program with all blacks in it, but it's always assumed to be bad will. 217 00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:44.800 So many schools have just given up grouping students by ability, just giving it up, having heterogeneous grouping. 218 00:23:44.800 --> 00:23:56.800 Unbelievable. Homeschooling continues to grow, by the way. That must be some unrelated coincidence. 219 00:23:56.800 --> 00:23:58.800 Note to self, good applause line. 220 00:24:01.800 --> 00:24:03.800 Okay, this is what's going on here. 221 00:24:03.800 --> 00:24:05.800 And finally, you know, actually maybe there is one more I could mention, 222 00:24:05.800 --> 00:24:10.800 and that is the case of Steelworkers of America versus Weber, 1979, 223 00:24:10.800 --> 00:24:20.800 because that really goes to show the utter corruption of, in case none of this did, of this whole process. 224 00:24:20.800 --> 00:24:25.800 Because what happened in this case, this Weber case of 1979, 225 00:24:25.800 --> 00:24:33.660 And you've got a guy who is being passed over for a promotion in favor of less qualified 226 00:24:33.660 --> 00:24:39.720 minority applicants. And he files a grievance with his union and the union refuses to take 227 00:24:39.720 --> 00:24:46.440 up the case. I wonder why. So they refuse to take it up. So he goes and looks up the 228 00:24:46.440 --> 00:24:51.800 actual language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and he says, just as I thought, it says no 229 00:24:51.800 --> 00:24:54.500 No one can discriminate on the basis of race. 230 00:24:54.500 --> 00:24:56.000 So he challenged this. 231 00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:59.480 He said, you are discriminating against me because I'm white. 232 00:24:59.480 --> 00:25:06.700 And the court decided in the Weber case that you don't find the real meaning of the 1964 233 00:25:06.700 --> 00:25:07.700 Act in its language. 234 00:25:07.700 --> 00:25:08.700 No. 235 00:25:08.700 --> 00:25:09.700 No, no, no. 236 00:25:09.700 --> 00:25:11.360 You're being silly and overly literal. 237 00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:15.240 No, instead you find it in the spirit of the legislation. 238 00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:16.560 And what was the spirit of the legislation? 239 00:25:16.560 --> 00:25:18.000 To help blacks. 240 00:25:18.000 --> 00:25:20.880 So basically if you want to do that, you can do anything now. 241 00:25:20.880 --> 00:25:30.880 and you have no recourse. So have a nice day. Unbelievable. So you know, us silly people might actually want to read the legislation, but no, no, no, it doesn't matter. 242 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:36.880 Okay, well these are some things. Now I'm going to probably put some other things on the board, so we'll erase these. 243 00:25:36.880 --> 00:25:46.880 Oh, that was just a recommended reading because it has to do with the question of whether... 244 00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:56.880 This is actually a very, very minor point in the book, but there are a few pages about segregation and whether Brown was necessary to end it and so on. 245 00:25:56.880 --> 00:26:04.880 Okay. A million other things to do. Let's see. 1964 Civil Rights Act. This is an extremely important piece of legislation, my friend. 246 00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:34.880 and this is in fact before I even go into it I have to recommend of all the books I've recommended so far this is the one this is the one that I'm going to visit your homes in a few weeks to make sure you've purchased you have to buy this you have to buy to cost like nine dollars oh big freaking deal nine dollars right and yet this book in about a hundred forty pages contains the refutation of every ridiculous discrimination and civil rights 247 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:41.880 The Theory of Money and Credit 248 00:27:04.880 --> 00:27:14.880 This is a great book. Holy cow, is this a great book. Smashes everything in here. 249 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:24.880 1985, I think. Still very relevant. Civil Rights, Rhetoric or Reality, and if you go and purchase it on Amazon, 250 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:30.880 you will find this is one of the only cases in which I couldn't restrain myself from posting my own review of it, 251 00:27:30.880 --> 00:27:59.880 This book makes a million key points. For one thing, Sol is something of an expert on American ethnic groups, and that's very helpful. 252 00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:05.880 But a few of the key points that he makes here, he sets up what he refers to as the civil rights vision. 253 00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:14.880 He says, according to the civil rights vision, all statistical disparities have one cause only, racism, discrimination. That's it. 254 00:28:14.880 --> 00:28:20.880 And he goes and makes a million points to show this is not necessarily so. 255 00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:24.880 And he says, for instance, take, and he'll pick a couple of ethnic groups at random, 256 00:28:24.880 --> 00:28:30.440 And he'll say, now, on average, group A is actually 25 years older than group B. 257 00:28:30.440 --> 00:28:35.680 So just considering age alone, we would not expect, even in the absence of all discrimination, 258 00:28:35.680 --> 00:28:38.120 we wouldn't expect them to have equal incomes. 259 00:28:38.120 --> 00:28:42.360 Because obviously, a group of people 25 years older, they've got more job experience, 260 00:28:42.360 --> 00:28:46.360 they're more mature, they're more settled, they have greater savings and so on. 261 00:28:46.360 --> 00:28:48.040 You wouldn't expect that. 262 00:28:48.040 --> 00:28:52.080 And then he goes on to say there are demographic differences in geographic location, 263 00:28:52.080 --> 00:28:54.080 in Marriage Patterns 264 00:28:54.080 --> 00:28:59.080 and he goes on and on and on making many, many points that are extremely useful 265 00:28:59.080 --> 00:29:02.080 and he says when you drop these factors out of the picture 266 00:29:02.080 --> 00:29:04.080 the disparities seem to disappear 267 00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:07.080 but of course that's not what the civil rights establishment wants you to hear 268 00:29:07.080 --> 00:29:09.080 they just repeat these simplistic slogans 269 00:29:09.080 --> 00:29:15.080 beyond that he says that the idea of discrimination must lead to poverty 270 00:29:15.080 --> 00:29:20.080 well, okay, he says well let's look around the world, is that always the case? 271 00:29:20.080 --> 00:29:29.080 He gives many examples. For instance, he says in Malaysia, discrimination against the Chinese minority in Malaysia is written into the Malaysian Constitution. 272 00:29:29.080 --> 00:29:37.080 And the Chinese minority is still dominating the economy. They still own many, many more various kinds of businesses. They're wealthier. 273 00:29:37.080 --> 00:29:45.080 He's not saying anything proves anything, but the fact that discrimination and poverty go together is simply not established. 274 00:29:45.080 --> 00:29:54.080 Likewise, the Japanese in America were discriminated against so badly that 120,000 of them were relocated during World War II. 275 00:29:54.080 --> 00:30:00.080 And yet by 1959, Japanese-American households had equaled white households in income. 276 00:30:00.080 --> 00:30:03.080 And ten years later, they were earning one-third more. 277 00:30:03.080 --> 00:30:07.080 So again, you cannot explain this this way. 278 00:30:07.080 --> 00:30:17.080 And finally, the old canard that, okay, if you want to improve your condition as a minority in the United States, you have to use the political process. 279 00:30:17.080 --> 00:30:22.080 You have to grab hold of the reins of power in the state, and that will improve the lot of your group. 280 00:30:22.080 --> 00:30:27.080 And Sowell says that has not historically been what has happened in the United States. 281 00:30:27.080 --> 00:30:33.080 Groups that have focused on politics exclusively have generally lagged behind other groups, and he uses the Irish as an example. 282 00:31:03.080 --> 00:31:09.280 on Common Carriers and accommodations like hotels, things like this. 283 00:31:09.280 --> 00:31:13.980 But the key, the key, and this is, you know, the federal government will oversee this. 284 00:31:13.980 --> 00:31:18.980 The key provision of it though that everybody has focused so much time and attention on 285 00:31:18.980 --> 00:31:24.080 is Title VII, which has to do with employment discrimination. 286 00:31:24.080 --> 00:31:28.380 Employment, discrimination in employment will be made illegal by this legislation. 287 00:31:28.380 --> 00:31:31.780 And everybody says, ain't that wonderful. 288 00:31:31.780 --> 00:31:39.780 Well, let's see what the outcome is. First of all, now this is something that you may have heard before, but I have to do this. 289 00:31:39.780 --> 00:31:48.780 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly says that there will be no such thing as racial quotas under this legislation. 290 00:31:48.780 --> 00:31:54.780 And don't worry if you're afraid that I'm going to go on a neocon rant here. I'm not, but this has to be mentioned. 291 00:31:54.780 --> 00:32:04.780 It would never have passed without the following statement in there. 292 00:32:04.780 --> 00:32:07.780 This is a long sentence, but bear with me. 293 00:32:07.780 --> 00:32:12.780 Usually American legislation doesn't have much elegant phrasing, beautiful turn of phrase or anything. 294 00:32:12.780 --> 00:32:19.780 Nothing contained in this title, Title VII, shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, 295 00:32:19.780 --> 00:32:24.620 labor organization or joint labor management committee subject to this title to grant preferential 296 00:32:24.620 --> 00:32:28.880 treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex 297 00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:33.400 or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist 298 00:32:33.400 --> 00:32:37.820 with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex 299 00:32:37.820 --> 00:32:41.940 or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any 300 00:32:41.940 --> 00:32:46.700 employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization 301 00:32:46.700 --> 00:32:51.420 or admitted to or employed in any apprenticeship or other training program in comparison with 302 00:32:51.420 --> 00:32:55.580 the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex or national 303 00:32:55.580 --> 00:33:01.340 origin in any community, state, section or other area. 304 00:33:01.340 --> 00:33:06.300 We also probably are familiar with Senator Hubert Humphrey's remark that if anyone can 305 00:33:06.300 --> 00:33:10.940 quote find in Title VII any language which provides that an employer will have to hire 306 00:33:10.940 --> 00:33:15.340 on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion or national origin, 307 00:33:15.340 --> 00:33:19.340 I will start eating the pages one after another because it is not there. 308 00:33:19.340 --> 00:33:23.340 Oh, we never got a chance to see that, my friends. 309 00:33:23.340 --> 00:33:27.340 And he goes on to say, contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, 310 00:33:27.340 --> 00:33:33.340 there is nothing in it that will give any power to the Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or promotion of employees 311 00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:37.340 in order to meet a racial quota or to achieve a certain racial balance. 312 00:33:37.340 --> 00:33:41.340 And you can just keep citing this honor on everybody who supported the legislation, 313 00:33:41.340 --> 00:33:46.460 So, you know, went out of his way to say, this will not happen. 314 00:33:46.460 --> 00:33:53.500 Even the New York Times said, misrepresentations by opponents of the civil rights legislation 315 00:33:53.500 --> 00:33:56.600 are at their wildest in discussion of this title. 316 00:33:56.600 --> 00:33:59.980 The bill would not require anyone to establish racial quotas. 317 00:33:59.980 --> 00:34:03.980 To the contrary, such quotas would be forbidden as a racial test. 318 00:34:03.980 --> 00:34:08.580 The bill does not require employers or unions to drop any standard for hiring or promotion 319 00:34:08.580 --> 00:34:12.300 or membership, except the discriminatory standard of race or religion. 320 00:34:12.300 --> 00:34:18.820 Well, you could go on, and that book, The New Color Line, cites just about every statement imaginable assuring people about this. 321 00:34:18.820 --> 00:34:22.100 OK, well, obviously, we know that's not what happened. 322 00:34:22.100 --> 00:34:25.220 But there is something to be noted about this. 323 00:34:25.220 --> 00:34:29.340 And this is the great thing, in my opinion, about the Mises Institute. 324 00:34:29.340 --> 00:34:37.820 Because one of the 500 million great things about it is that the Mises Institute doesn't just sit around and say, 325 00:34:37.820 --> 00:34:44.220 Oh gosh, what a mystery that we ended up getting quotas as a result of this legislation that told us we wouldn't. 326 00:34:44.220 --> 00:34:47.420 And oh my gosh, let's return to the spirit of the... 327 00:34:47.420 --> 00:34:49.020 Okay. 328 00:34:49.020 --> 00:34:53.320 Because first of all, how are you going to prove discriminatory intent on the part of some guy? 329 00:34:53.320 --> 00:34:56.220 Most people who are going to discriminate are not going to sit around saying, 330 00:34:56.220 --> 00:34:58.620 I'm only going to hire Eskimos. 331 00:34:58.620 --> 00:35:02.620 You know, no one's going to sit around and say that or leave memos, you know, 332 00:35:02.620 --> 00:35:09.820 Memo from the boss to you guys, please, please make sure you hire only lesbians or something, right? 333 00:35:09.820 --> 00:35:12.920 It's not going to say that. So instead, what are you going to do? 334 00:35:12.920 --> 00:35:15.920 Well, you have to just look at the proportion of people they've hired. 335 00:35:15.920 --> 00:35:18.620 There's no other way. There's no other way. 336 00:35:18.620 --> 00:35:27.020 So unless the government is going to read minds, there's no other way to determine whether somebody intends to discriminate. 337 00:35:27.020 --> 00:35:32.020 So it follows. The quotas have to follow from the 64 Act. 338 00:35:32.020 --> 00:35:33.820 They have to follow. 339 00:35:33.820 --> 00:35:37.020 Well, I would note that the state, 340 00:35:37.020 --> 00:35:38.780 as you may have picked up on, 341 00:35:38.780 --> 00:35:42.940 tends to portray itself as the great font of justice 342 00:35:42.940 --> 00:35:47.700 and wisdom and prosperity for everybody. 343 00:35:47.700 --> 00:35:50.780 So you see the 1964 Civil Rights Act 344 00:35:50.780 --> 00:35:52.980 portrayed as a wonderful advance 345 00:35:52.980 --> 00:35:57.020 without which blacks would all be eating dirt somewhere 346 00:35:57.020 --> 00:36:00.380 and whatever, slavery would probably come back. 347 00:36:00.380 --> 00:36:01.900 You get all these things 348 00:36:01.900 --> 00:36:06.700 And yet, if you actually look at the outcome of it, it's really not all that impressive. 349 00:36:06.700 --> 00:36:09.500 Now, mind you, I'm not saying if it were impressive, let's have it. 350 00:36:09.500 --> 00:36:12.200 I'm completely against this. It should be repealed. It's evil. 351 00:36:12.200 --> 00:36:17.000 It leads to untold wealth destruction with the constant litigation. 352 00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:21.500 It's impossible to prove your way out of it. Unbelievable. 353 00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:24.300 Incidentally, by the way, by the way, one more thing I want to mention has to do with... 354 00:36:24.300 --> 00:36:27.400 This is a great thing that Lew Rockwell has written on. 355 00:36:27.400 --> 00:36:30.300 Banks have been accused of racial discrimination in lending 356 00:36:30.300 --> 00:36:44.300 This must be discrimination. The banks just don't want to make money. They don't want to lend to the blacks because they don't want to make money. We don't know why, but that's how racist they are. 357 00:36:44.300 --> 00:36:54.300 Now it turns out, well, gee, let's see. Do blacks have credit ratings that are as good as whites? Well, no. Could that have something to do with it? 358 00:36:54.300 --> 00:37:24.300 and also the great fact that that Lew Rockwell has pointed out is that well look at the default rates the rates you know according of people defaulting on their loans now if blacks are being held to a higher discriminatory standard they should have a lower default rate than whites but in fact the default rates are equal so in fact they are being given loans according to rational standards but again it's it's a statistical disparity so therefore we have to assume bad will that's all over this this legislation well anyway 359 00:37:24.300 --> 00:37:54.300 Let me let me know a little bit of what Thomas Sowell has to say about the 1964 act, because he suggests that some of this, look at how much blacks prospered after the act, he says he implies there's sort of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy going on there, he says in the period from 1954 to 1964 for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical and similar high level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of occupations the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s when there 360 00:37:54.300 --> 00:37:58.300 There was little or no civil rights policy than during the 1950s when the Civil Rights 361 00:37:58.300 --> 00:38:00.480 Revolution was in its heyday. 362 00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:04.320 The rise in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years 363 00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:10.080 from 1964 to 1966, after the Civil Rights Act, was in fact less than in the one year 364 00:38:10.080 --> 00:38:14.480 from 1961 to 1962, before the Civil Rights Act. 365 00:38:14.480 --> 00:38:18.120 If one takes into account the growing black population by looking at percentages instead 366 00:38:18.120 --> 00:38:22.960 of absolute numbers, it becomes even clearer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented 367 00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:26.960 had no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years. 368 00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:29.960 The percentage of employed blacks who were professional and technical workers 369 00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:33.960 rose less in the five years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 370 00:38:33.960 --> 00:38:35.960 than in the five years preceding it. 371 00:38:35.960 --> 00:38:38.960 The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and administrators 372 00:38:38.960 --> 00:38:42.960 was the same in 1967 as in 1964 and in 1960. 373 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.960 Nor did the institution of goals and timetables at the end of 1971 374 00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:51.960 mark any acceleration in the long trend of rising black representation in these occupations. 375 00:38:51.960 --> 00:38:59.960 And then he goes on and talks about the case of Asians and Hispanics and says that there are similar numbers there. 376 00:38:59.960 --> 00:39:06.960 So, okay, there's that. I think I'm going to say a little something about Martin Luther King. 377 00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:10.960 Now, he's a figure you've probably heard of and we hear a lot about him. 378 00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:17.960 And I'm going to recommend another book to you, and this is a book that really I wouldn't rap fish with this book, 379 00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:31.960 The author is a complete leftist, but sometimes that's good because the leftist doesn't realize why his book is useful. 380 00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:37.960 He's saying, oh, look, he's great with all these great ideas and we get to read it and say, no, he's a kook with all these kooky ideas. 381 00:39:37.960 --> 00:40:07.960 This just came out last year. Now, if you can put aside the author's comments, and the subtitle is The True Martin Luther King Jr., if you can get past the author's comments, for instance, that King's, shall we say, sexual improprieties were really just the result of a man trying to 382 00:40:07.960 --> 00:40:13.160 and release the built-up tension created by white racism. 383 00:40:13.160 --> 00:40:17.060 If you can get past that, you'll find this useful. 384 00:40:17.060 --> 00:40:22.680 Because the whole purpose of Dyson's book is to say that the neoconservatives are wrong 385 00:40:22.680 --> 00:40:24.320 about King. 386 00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:26.600 And on that point, he's right. 387 00:40:26.600 --> 00:40:32.940 And the last person, the last people you should go to look for an accurate description of 388 00:40:32.940 --> 00:40:38.700 King, would be neoconservative, Newt Gingrich, all these types who are going to claim king 389 00:40:38.700 --> 00:40:44.160 for themselves because really all he wanted was a colorblind society where nobody gets 390 00:40:44.160 --> 00:40:49.380 any special privilege and we all live peacefully together. And isn't that because didn't he 391 00:40:49.380 --> 00:40:56.340 say that in his I Have a Dream speech? Didn't he say that expressly? Okay, he did say that. 392 00:40:56.340 --> 00:41:01.020 He did say that in one thirty-four word sentence ripped out of context from the rest of his 393 00:41:01.020 --> 00:41:08.020 This guy shows that King did favor compensatory measures for blacks and was, in fact, a so-called democratic socialist. 394 00:41:08.020 --> 00:41:21.020 This guy shows that King did favor compensatory measures for blacks and was, in fact, a so-called democratic socialist. 395 00:41:21.020 --> 00:41:31.020 that King did favor compensatory measures for blacks and was, in fact, a so-called democratic socialist. 396 00:41:31.020 --> 00:41:38.020 For instance, King expressly condemned the following statement. 397 00:41:38.020 --> 00:41:43.020 If the Negro is to rise out of poverty, if the Negro is to rise out of slum conditions, 398 00:41:43.020 --> 00:41:47.020 if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. 399 00:41:47.020 --> 00:41:59.020 The roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice. 400 00:41:59.020 --> 00:42:11.020 The nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the negro in the compelling present, but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past. 401 00:42:11.020 --> 00:42:27.020 Moreover, he said, no amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. 402 00:42:27.020 --> 00:42:34.020 Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill, yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. 403 00:42:34.020 --> 00:42:40.020 The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. 404 00:42:40.020 --> 00:42:43.020 This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. 405 00:42:43.020 --> 00:42:46.020 The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government 406 00:42:46.020 --> 00:42:50.020 of special compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement 407 00:42:50.020 --> 00:42:53.020 in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. 408 00:42:53.020 --> 00:42:56.020 Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation 409 00:42:56.020 --> 00:43:00.020 based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. 410 00:43:00.020 --> 00:43:05.020 I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, 411 00:43:05.020 --> 00:43:09.020 America launched a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the disadvantaged, 412 00:43:09.020 --> 00:43:39.020 and he also states as if to answer directly the neoconservative view that that all King was fighting for he was simply fighting for the abstract right of of equal opportunity and not for any specific any specific compensatory measure he said this the Negro today is not struggling for some abstract vague rights but for concrete and 413 00:43:39.020 --> 00:43:42.020 and prompt improvement in his way of life. 414 00:43:42.020 --> 00:43:43.520 Likewise, King said, 415 00:43:43.520 --> 00:43:48.520 For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the society. 416 00:43:48.520 --> 00:43:51.020 A little change here, a little change there. 417 00:43:51.020 --> 00:43:53.020 Now I feel quite differently. 418 00:43:53.020 --> 00:43:57.020 And incidentally, I won't even get into the grammatical difficulties here. 419 00:43:57.020 --> 00:44:01.020 I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, 420 00:44:01.020 --> 00:44:03.020 a revolution of values. 421 00:44:03.020 --> 00:44:06.020 I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans 422 00:44:06.020 --> 00:44:09.820 Dislocations are racists, either consciously or unconsciously. 423 00:44:09.820 --> 00:44:15.020 And then here we go with his economic acumen. 424 00:44:15.020 --> 00:44:18.500 Dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination 425 00:44:18.500 --> 00:44:23.540 thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against 426 00:44:23.540 --> 00:44:24.920 their will. 427 00:44:24.920 --> 00:44:29.340 The movement civil rights must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole 428 00:44:29.340 --> 00:44:31.540 of American society. 429 00:44:31.540 --> 00:44:37.180 was raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth and 430 00:44:37.180 --> 00:44:44.380 was questioning the capitalist economy. Incidentally, just like Maxine Waters, he said after the 431 00:44:44.380 --> 00:44:50.680 Watts riots, he said, a riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. The looting in 432 00:44:50.680 --> 00:44:55.380 Watts was a form of social protest very common through the ages as a dramatic and destructive 433 00:44:55.380 --> 00:45:08.380 February 1968, he called for a redistribution of economic power, and even in 1966, in a speech to his staff, he said this, 434 00:45:08.380 --> 00:45:11.380 We are now making demands that will cost the nation something. 435 00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:16.380 You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. 436 00:45:16.380 --> 00:45:21.380 You can't talk about ending slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. 437 00:45:21.380 --> 00:45:25.380 You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you're messing with folk then. 438 00:45:25.380 --> 00:45:28.380 You are messing with the captains of industry. 439 00:45:28.380 --> 00:45:31.380 Now this means that we are treading in difficult waters, 440 00:45:31.380 --> 00:45:34.380 because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. 441 00:45:34.380 --> 00:45:37.380 There must be a better distribution of wealth, 442 00:45:37.380 --> 00:45:40.380 and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. 443 00:45:40.380 --> 00:45:44.380 According to one of his aides, King's usual practice 444 00:45:44.380 --> 00:45:49.380 was to demand that they turn off the tape recorder when he would speak about democratic socialism. 445 00:45:49.380 --> 00:45:54.380 Socialism, and he would say, I can't say this publicly, and if you say I said it, I'm not going to admit to it. 446 00:45:54.380 --> 00:46:00.380 And he went on to say, according to his aid, that he didn't believe that capitalism, as it was constructed, could meet the needs of poor people, 447 00:46:00.380 --> 00:46:05.380 and that we might need to look at what was a kind of socialism, but a democratic form of socialism. 448 00:46:05.380 --> 00:46:12.380 And finally, I don't know if this is my favorite or not, finally there's this. 449 00:46:12.380 --> 00:46:16.380 Let's see. There are 40 million poor people here. 450 00:46:16.380 --> 00:46:20.380 And one day we must ask the question, why are there 40 million poor people in America? 451 00:46:20.380 --> 00:46:23.380 And, of course, I would wonder, you know, how many poor people have actually, in history, 452 00:46:23.380 --> 00:46:29.380 have owned telephones, televisions, automobiles, flush toilets, but anyway. 453 00:46:29.380 --> 00:46:34.380 And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system. 454 00:46:34.380 --> 00:46:40.380 Questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 455 00:46:40.380 --> 00:46:42.380 You begin to ask the question, who owns the oil? 456 00:46:42.380 --> 00:46:45.380 You begin to ask the question, who owns the iron ore? 457 00:46:45.380 --> 00:46:48.380 You begin to ask the question, why is it that people have to pay water bills 458 00:46:48.380 --> 00:46:54.380 in a world that is two-thirds water? 459 00:46:54.380 --> 00:46:57.380 These are questions that must be asked. 460 00:46:57.380 --> 00:47:04.380 Now, you know, there's no real point in, I think, unpacking all the difficulties here, 461 00:47:04.380 --> 00:47:09.380 but you are aware that less than a third of 1% of all the water in the world 462 00:47:09.380 --> 00:47:39.380 World is Drinkable. So that might explain the... And if you look at, especially in early America, where the cities are located, they're near a source of water. It is a scarce... Although interestingly, in New York City, where I lived for a while, where the water is actually better than in most cities, they use the same high grade of water in the toilet bowls. I found this is a really weird thing, but most cities probably don't do that, so I would check that before you dunk your glass down here. Anyway, that was just a... 463 00:47:39.380 --> 00:47:42.380 A little bit of a digression. 464 00:47:42.380 --> 00:47:44.380 Well, finally, I've got a little bit of time left. 465 00:47:44.380 --> 00:47:48.380 I want to say a little something about women in all this. 466 00:47:48.380 --> 00:47:52.380 And there's a whole chapter in Sowell's book called The Special Case of Women. 467 00:47:52.380 --> 00:47:55.380 Now, before saying this, I want to just review with you, 468 00:47:55.380 --> 00:48:00.380 very often the left is not really altogether honest or straightforward. 469 00:48:00.380 --> 00:48:05.380 Yeah, no, I'm afraid it is so, my friends. 470 00:48:05.380 --> 00:48:11.380 And it seems that one case after another of a false or misleading statistic you can find. 471 00:48:11.380 --> 00:48:19.380 Gloria Steinem, who argued once and many times, and then everybody uncritically picked this up, 472 00:48:19.380 --> 00:48:24.380 that 150,000 American women die every year from anorexia. 473 00:48:24.380 --> 00:48:31.380 And what she was trying to say was, you see, in this oppressive western society where we have an emphasis on beauty, 474 00:48:31.380 --> 00:48:35.380 Women are going to, you know, they're practically killing themselves in order to appear beautiful. 475 00:48:35.380 --> 00:48:39.380 Well, it turns out that it's about a hundred women per year, 476 00:48:39.380 --> 00:48:43.380 who, not a hundred thousand, a hundred, who are dying from anorexia. 477 00:48:43.380 --> 00:48:46.380 Now that's a tragedy, but it's really not a hundred fifty thousand. 478 00:48:46.380 --> 00:48:48.380 That's really not at the same number. 479 00:48:48.380 --> 00:48:54.380 Or that forty percent, that on the day of the Super Bowl, domestic abuse increases by forty percent. 480 00:48:54.380 --> 00:48:57.380 Now that was just made up. There's absolutely nothing to support that. 481 00:48:57.380 --> 00:48:59.380 And I was saying to somebody earlier, somebody was saying, 482 00:48:59.380 --> 00:49:02.380 In fact, you would think it would go down on the Super Bowl, right? 483 00:49:02.380 --> 00:49:05.380 Look, just get away, I'm watching the Super Bowl, right? 484 00:49:05.380 --> 00:49:11.380 Or how about the statistic in the 80s, we kept hearing, 485 00:49:11.380 --> 00:49:14.380 there are three million homeless in the United States. 486 00:49:14.380 --> 00:49:18.380 They got that figure from serious and lengthy study. 487 00:49:18.380 --> 00:49:21.380 Homeless advocate Mitch Schneider just threw it out there. 488 00:49:21.380 --> 00:49:24.380 They asked him, how many? Ah, three million. 489 00:49:24.380 --> 00:49:26.380 And then later I started hearing four million, 490 00:49:26.380 --> 00:49:33.380 And I think the reason for that was they thought, well, we've been saying 3 million for so long, there must be another million out there on the streets desperate. 491 00:49:33.380 --> 00:49:40.380 And, you know, again, 3 million figure is an exaggeration of at least 10 times, but that's to raise awareness. 492 00:49:40.380 --> 00:49:42.380 You know, we'll lie to people in order to raise awareness. 493 00:49:42.380 --> 00:49:45.380 And it just goes on and on, all the environmental scares, again and again and again. 494 00:49:45.380 --> 00:49:51.380 Well, one of the cases of misleading statistics has to do with women in the labor force. 495 00:49:51.380 --> 00:49:58.380 I hear things like women only earn 72 cents for every dollar a man earns. Isn't this terrible? 496 00:49:58.380 --> 00:50:01.380 It means that there must be something awful going on. 497 00:50:01.380 --> 00:50:09.380 Now, there is something called the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which means you can't pay people a different amount for doing the same work. 498 00:50:09.380 --> 00:50:15.380 But the implication of... so that's already there. Whether it's good or bad, it's there. 499 00:50:15.380 --> 00:50:22.380 The implication of that 72% statistic is that they're doing the same work, the women and the men, 500 00:50:22.380 --> 00:50:25.380 and the women are mysteriously getting only 72 cents on the dollar. 501 00:50:25.380 --> 00:50:29.880 Now, you would think that eventually one businessman would say to himself, 502 00:50:29.880 --> 00:50:36.380 I'm just going to fire all my male employees and just hire women and just pay them 72 cents on the dollar. 503 00:50:36.380 --> 00:50:39.880 I mean, so you know this can't be right. There's no way this can be right. 504 00:50:39.880 --> 00:50:43.380 And Sowell demolishes this in his book. 505 00:50:43.380 --> 00:50:51.380 But for one thing, and there are a million reasons, for one thing, you know, women are much more likely to give birth than men are, consistently. 506 00:50:51.380 --> 00:51:07.380 And that plays a role, my friend, because if you're going to leave the labor force, and women quit about eight times more often than men, largely for this purpose, 507 00:51:07.380 --> 00:51:13.380 If you're going to leave the labor force and take care of your children, that has a lot of consequences for the types of jobs you'll take. 508 00:51:13.380 --> 00:51:22.380 For instance, it's very difficult. It's more difficult for a woman than for a man, for that reason, to go into high-paying jobs like lawyer or doctor, 509 00:51:22.380 --> 00:51:29.380 because it's very difficult to leave those professions and then just jump right back in in 10 years. 510 00:51:29.380 --> 00:51:35.380 There have been a lot of advances and a lot of new information, so they're going to look for jobs with slow obsolescence rates. 511 00:51:35.380 --> 00:51:40.280 So that's one factor. Married women are going to look for jobs with specific requirements. 512 00:51:40.280 --> 00:51:49.180 Flexible hours, near my home, and so on. There are a million reasons. In fact, if you look at just single unmarried women and single unmarried men, 513 00:51:49.180 --> 00:51:56.580 there basically is no, practically there is no differential. And women also tend to work part-time a lot more often than men. 514 00:51:56.580 --> 00:52:02.980 So you can just look and break this down and you realize that this is another fallacy. 515 00:52:02.980 --> 00:52:09.380 Now, what they're doing... I was just telling Jeff Tucker about this and don't write an article about this because I've already written one and... 516 00:52:09.380 --> 00:52:14.780 Oh, you write it for something else, but I've already written one that I want to give to the free market, so don't even write an article on this, please. 517 00:52:14.780 --> 00:52:21.880 But I'm going to let you in on this. I used to think that comparable worth was a thing of the past. 518 00:52:21.880 --> 00:52:27.880 Remember this trendy feminist economic thing? Comparable worth was this idea that, well, okay, 519 00:52:27.880 --> 00:52:32.380 we'll accept that women are going to tend to be in lower paying jobs anyway. 520 00:52:32.380 --> 00:52:37.940 for various reasons. They're going to tend to be librarians more often than they're going to be chemists. 521 00:52:37.940 --> 00:52:44.180 Fair enough. But isn't that proof of discrimination that chemists earn more than librarians? 522 00:52:44.180 --> 00:52:49.100 Chemists are mostly men, and librarians tend to be women. That's discrimination too, 523 00:52:49.100 --> 00:52:53.820 because they're doing a job that's basically of equal worth and value to society. 524 00:52:53.820 --> 00:52:56.780 How do they know it's of equal worth and value to society? 525 00:52:56.780 --> 00:53:01.060 Because the U.S. Civil Rights Commission determined, according to its little questionnaire, 526 00:53:01.060 --> 00:53:05.260 that each of those jobs earned 493 points on its scale. 527 00:53:05.260 --> 00:53:09.060 So they're both equal. We've determined it scientifically. 528 00:53:09.060 --> 00:53:13.860 So librarians should get, you know, salaries increased. 529 00:53:13.860 --> 00:53:19.360 And you might think this is the stupidest, most destructive, inane thing you've ever heard. 530 00:53:19.360 --> 00:53:25.060 And I thought, well, they were so embarrassed by this that this just fell away and nobody brought it up again. 531 00:53:25.060 --> 00:53:26.460 It's back. 532 00:53:26.460 --> 00:53:40.460 A week ago, one week ago today, the state of Maine became the first state in the United States to issue regulations pertaining to salaries for men and women on the basis of comparable worth. 533 00:53:40.460 --> 00:53:54.460 And within about 180 days, every Maine businessman will be subject to lawsuits in which people can sue for unlimited damages 534 00:53:54.460 --> 00:53:59.960 If they believe that they are doing an equal job to that of somebody else and yet not getting as much... 535 00:53:59.960 --> 00:54:02.460 Now, we all think we're doing more than somebody else, right? 536 00:54:02.460 --> 00:54:05.960 I mean, I think I publish a lot more than anybody in my department, whatever. 537 00:54:05.960 --> 00:54:10.760 I'd like to go and say, hey, why don't I get paid what that full professor gets paid? 538 00:54:10.760 --> 00:54:12.860 Eh, well, maybe not a bad idea. 539 00:54:12.860 --> 00:54:15.960 As long as everybody's destroying society, why not jump right in? 540 00:54:15.960 --> 00:54:19.760 Imagine this! This is going to lead to endless litigation. 541 00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:23.760 It's going to mean that instead of having a free society, which is sort of what we're working toward, 542 00:54:23.760 --> 00:54:31.560 We're going to have a society in which everybody rushes to the bureaucrats to argue about why his occupation is worth more than it's earning. 543 00:54:31.560 --> 00:54:37.160 It's beyond belief. And I don't know how this managed to sneak back in, because we had routed it in the 80s, 544 00:54:37.160 --> 00:54:43.560 and then it managed to sneak back in somehow, and in many other states, at least two dozen other states, and I think more, 545 00:54:43.560 --> 00:54:50.060 similar bills are pending. It's beyond belief, my friends, and it's all based on a misleading statistic. 546 00:54:50.060 --> 00:54:53.740 But even if these people, you know, basically it's not really based on that, 547 00:54:53.740 --> 00:54:57.620 because even if they knew, which some of them must know, that the statistic is misleading, 548 00:54:57.620 --> 00:55:02.300 they hate the capitalist economy and they want to wreck it and they want to get stuff for themselves. 549 00:55:02.300 --> 00:55:07.900 The most, this is the last point I'll make, the most ironic feature of comparable worth is this, 550 00:55:07.900 --> 00:55:13.860 and it just goes to show how utterly irrational so-called feminist economics is, 551 00:55:13.860 --> 00:55:19.340 is that feminist claim on the one hand, we want to get women out of traditionally female occupations 552 00:55:19.340 --> 00:55:23.420 and have them compete with men in traditionally male occupations. 553 00:55:23.420 --> 00:55:27.620 Well, comparable worth will have exactly the opposite effect because you're going to raise 554 00:55:27.620 --> 00:55:32.180 salaries for librarians and secretaries, so women are going to want to do that, or at 555 00:55:32.180 --> 00:55:36.180 least they're going to tend to stay in those occupations where the salaries have gone up. 556 00:55:36.180 --> 00:55:39.900 They're not going to tend to look around for, hey, I'd rather be a construction worker. 557 00:55:39.900 --> 00:55:42.260 They're going to stay in that secretarial job. 558 00:55:42.260 --> 00:55:46.340 But again, it goes to show that there is no reason here, and if you're looking for it, 559 00:55:46.340 --> 00:55:47.700 you'll be looking a long time. 560 00:55:47.700 --> 00:55:50.700 Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.