Compromising the uncompromisable: discrimination

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1998 by Walter Block

I

Introduction

Should people be free to discriminate against others?(1) At first glance, the only proper answer to this question would appear to be a resounding (and horrified) "No!" However, on further reflection, things are not quite so simple.

A few preliminary remarks. The liberals, who are most associated with this lofty reply in the public mind, by no means give total assent to it. Their protestations notwithstanding, they actually favor discrimination on racial(2) grounds--as long as it favors the underdog vis-a-vis the "overdog." They might not choose to accept this description, but their advocacy of affirmative action, quotas, "goals," set-asides, preferences, norming, and all such other programs amount to discrimination--no more, no less. They of course do this for the "best" of reasons, or at least for reasons that seem good and sufficient to them; but the same might be said of anyone at all who acts (Mises, 1966). In summary, "progressives" favor discrimination on behalf of downtrodden groups as a matter of principle, and, presumably, act in this manner in their own lives(3).

What of the conservatives? Nowadays, they speak out in favor of something called "color blindness" (Bolick 1996; Eastland 1996). This amounts to a restoration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Martin Luther King's dream of a society in which decisions are made on the basis of people's characters, not the color of theirs skins.(4) This, too, sounds nice. What could be more fair or just? Treat all people based on their merits.

But this position is also philosophically flawed. First of all, merit is merely another characteristic on the basis of which people can discriminate against each other. Because merits of different types and varieties are statistically correlated with different groupings, including racial, preferences for people on this basis are not at all distinguishable, at least in effect, from choices made with respect to race or color. If true colorblindness is the goal, allowing discrimination on the basis of merit will hardly achieve it (Gottfredson 1987, 1988; Hernstein and Murray 1994; Levin 1997; Rushton 1988; Seligman 1992; Sowell 1975).(5)

Secondly, neither liberals nor conservatives are really serious about this goal, at least for the personal if not the business arena. If colorblindness is truly virtuous, and for some reason should be required by law, then why confine this compulsion to one or another aspect of our lives? Why not compel it throughout? If a person must hire employees on the basis or character or merit or on the basis of anything but skin color and must apply this criterion to firing, investing, selling, buying, and so on, then why should this basic element of morality not be applied to private life as well? Why not prohibit racial discrimination in the choice of friends, dating partners, or marriage partners? The conservatives (at least nowadays) talk a good colorblindness line, but their adherence to it is only skin deep. Even the conservatives jettison the whole perspective as applied to their whole lives).(6,7)

II

Libertarian Compromise

What, then, is the libertarian compromise? For this position, we must make a sharp and deep distinction between the public and the private sectors not only of the economy but of the society as well. The libertarian sees an unbridgeable philosophical chasm between the government, which is necessarily based on force and compulsion, and the private sphere, which consists of voluntary interaction.(8)

This being the case, the compromise must come in two sections, one devoted to each of these spheres. In the private sector, the rule is not race preference to the underdog of the progressives, nor is it the colorblindness of the conservatives. Instead, it is one of completely voluntary association, where each person is free to choose.(9) All people are or should be free to make up their own minds about how they will choose their spouses, friends and neighbors, customers, employees, employers, and other business associates. The clear implication is that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 must be repealed, as it is inconsistent with the total freedom to choose one's associates in all spheres of life.

Some people might recoil in horror from turning the clock on race relations back to the pre-1964 period. They would object that if a majority were free to discriminate against a minority, the latter would be greatly disadvantaged. That is, if, for example, whites, were to refuse to buy from, sell to, hire, work for, invest with, for example, blacks, the latter would be unemployed, homeless, and starving.

But this position is economically erroneous. All such scenarios fail to take into account the market's fail-safe mechanism that helps those subjected to discrimination. Consider employment. If white racists rebuffed black workers, the first effect would indeed be unemployment or lower wages for the latter group. But this situation is only temporary, a mere first stage in the mental experiment we are now considering.(10) For with lower wages or greater unemployment, some whites(11) would be sorely tempted to employ these blacks, because they can earn additional profits exploiting workers who are underpaid or idled.