Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN The Other Side of Racism I first knew Anne Wortham as the King Features Syndicate librarian. She was competent and hard-work ing at her job, but occasionally she would take a minute to talk about our mutual concern for Leonard Read's freedom philosophy. She is a black, but race, as such, seemed to be the least of her preoccupations. She was confident in her own abili ties, and certain that she was going to make it in the graduate school world which she proposed to enter. Now, several years after her re turn to the academic scene, she has come forward with a book, The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness (Ohio State University Press, 353 pp., $12.50) that has important lib ertarian implications. She ap proaches her study by asking herself certain basic questions such as "Am I free of government coercion?" and "Am I free of interference from my neighbor?" But most importantly she wants to be free of "irrational ideas and unjust actions" against her own human nature.

The result of her questioning will please such blacks as Thomas Sow ell and Walter Williams, who are among the best of our free market and free society-economists. But she will hardly find favor with those blacks who are willing to substitute group-esteem for self-esteem in their quest to make waves in a numeri cally white society. It is not that Anne Wortham doesn't accept the anti-segregation aim of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a positive good. The right of a black to demand equality of service 635 636 THE FREEMAN October from State and municipally owned schools, conveyances and tax-sup ported public facilities seems to her to be incontestable. But, like Sena tor Barry Goldwater, she boggles at the idea that government should force private merchants to open their premises to any and all comers. The natural right of an individual to dis pose of his property as he sees fit must, she insists, be protected even if it involves letting morally delin quent characters behave irratio nally in their dealings with their fellow men.

As a libertarian Anne Wortham finds herself in the uncomfortable position of defending Lester Mad dox, the owner of the Pickrick Res taurant in Atlanta, Georgia, who armed himself with a pistol and pick handle and ordered blacks to get off his property. She dislikes Maddox, but, as she puts it, "a businessman who cannot serve whom he pleases is not a businessman but a slave." Her preferred way of dealing with the Maddoxes in our society would be to persuade people to boycott pri vate discriminators and to set up businesses to compete with them. A Wrong Turn The freedom movement in Anne Wortham's opinion took a wrong turn when it deserted the individual to focus on the demand for special treatment for ethnic groups. People who feel compelled to merge their identities in collectivities can never in her estimation achieve self-es teem. Martin Luther King did not go wrong in asking people to love one another, but it is in the nature of love that it cannot be imposed at group· behest. The post-King history of the freedom movement has been filled in all too many instances with attempts to correct the wrongs of racism with still more racism. "Af firmative action," which leads to quotas, is simply discrimination in reverse. Preferential hiring is still preferential hiring when it is based on color instead of on one's kinship to the boss or on one's age category, sex or religious affiliation.

In her analysis of the post-King movement Anne Wortham identi fies five different types who have led blacks away from the idea of achiev ing a self-esteem that is "beyond racism." There is the conventional integrationist who simply wants to conform. There is the power-seeking nationalist who believes in a group imposed separatism. There is the spiritual separatist with the "black is beautiful" mentality that denies the possibility that whites will ever understand true spiritual superior ity. There is the independent mili tant who says "if you can't lick them, destroy their world." And there is the ambivalent appeaser who says to himself, "if you can't join either group, don't let them know it." In describing her five types Anne 1981 THE OTHER SIDE OF RACISM 637 Wortham cuts loose with some beautifully direct writing that lifts her book and propels the whole ar gument forward. Sociological lingo is forgotten. We see clearly the wrongs that are being done in the name of Affirmative Action. Anne Wortham quotes an illustration of fered by Thomas Sowell of a young black woman with an IQ of 142 and grades to match who was told that she would have been eligible for fi nancial aid in law school if only her test scores had been lower.

The record of Affirmative Action has been horrible. Thousands ofblack students who score in the top half of standard tests are condemned to at tend the lowest level of southern Negro colleges where other blacks without academic qualifications make the top-level universities and are maneuvered through at a ter rific cost to educational integrity. The Wortham Declaration of Independence In her own "statement of chal lenge" Anne Wortham objects to all "Negro and white egalitarians who would enslave us with ethnic mys ticism and welfare statism." She does not want the result of any black ac tion to be "equal" to everyone else's. She does not want private doors opened for her by the force of gov ernment intervention. She does not want a guaranteed livelihood paid for by the expropriated resources of others. She is against "assistance" given as blackmail paid to silence a militant's gun to prevent a looter's rampage. She has no desire to at tend a university she is not qualified to enter, nor does she want "prefer ential treatment" in order to be spared the risks of competition. All she wants is to be free.

The Wortham Declaration of In dependence will provoke many an argument. Anne Wortham is quite aware of the power of "anticoncepts" such as "black mind," "blackness," ''black awareness," "black pride" and "black identity." They have become part of the conventional language, and are kept alive by politicians. But "anticoncepts" that rise from the "philosophical swamp of subjec tivism" have no real validity. Anne Wortham asks some simple ques tions, such as: "What should deter mine pride in a person-any per son-his biocultural ancestry or his achievements? What should deter mine his identity-his genetic en dowment or the character and per sonality he creates?" Questions of this type answer themselves. Quoting Brewton Berry, Anne Wortham says "we do not 'solve' race problems-we move in directions." Her book makes its own magnificent move-and in transcending "race" it strikes a real blow for individual human freedom. @ 638 THE FREEMAN October THE FAIRMONT PAPERS (Black Alternatives Conference) by Thomas Sowell and others (Institute for Contemporary Studies, 260 California St., San Francisco, Calif. 94111) 174 pages - $5.95 paperback Reviewed by Allan C. Brownfeld ONE of the most interesting devel opments on the nation's intellectual scene is the turning away of many black Americans from the welfare state philosophy which so many em braced in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Black academicians and others have come to see that government intervention in the economy, rather than pointing in the direction of a solution to the nation's racial prob lems has, instead, locked many black Americans into a cycle of poverty. The best way to help minorities to advance, they argue, is through an expanding economy and an end to government regulations which make it difficult for those at the bottom to enter the market. In December, 1980, the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a Cali fornia-based public policy institu tion, sponsored a "Black Alterna tives Conference" which brought together leading black conserva tives, a number of white academi cians, and representatives of a broad spectrum of black opinion. The pa pers presented at that conference, plus the ensuing discussions, make up the present volume. In many respects, this ·is an his toric document. It marks, at last, a break on the part of a significant number of prominent black Ameri cans with the liberal orthodoxy.

Thomas Sowell of the Hoover In stitute writes that, "One of the things we need to focus on are facts about results-not rhetoric about inten tions. We need to look not at the no ble preambles of legislation but at the incentives created in that legis lation. Very often, legislation in tended to help the disadvantaged in fact pays people to stay disadvan taged and penalizes them to the ex tent that they make an effort to rise from disadvantage ... The issue is not that the government gives too much help to the poor. The problem is that the government creates too much harm for the poor." Sowell notes that, "... the great est single loss is that the minimum wage laws promoted by labor unions protect their members by pricing black young people out of the mar ket." Professor Walter Williams, a Temple University economist, cites another example of a government policy which impedes black eco nomic progress-the licensing pro visions of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Jim Ward of Omaha, Nebraska, a black trucker bid the lowest price on a contract to ship 1981 OTHER BOOKS 639 household goods of air force person nel. He was not awarded that con tract, however, because he did not have an ICC license to·move goods across state lines. The contract was awarded to another man who bid $80,000 more. Dr. Williams ob serves: "Jim Ward did not need any 'equal opportunity' program; he did not need Small Business Adminis tration loans. What he needed was to have government get off his back."

Black attorney Maria Johnson, discussing the negative effect of rent control, described the case of Wash ington, D.C. In 1974, in the first four months of the year rent control was enacted, there were 5,247 building permits issued for multifamily dwellings. In 1975 in the same four month period one year after the en actment of rent-control, 375 build ing permits were issued-almost 5,000 fewer. Miss Johnson declares: "Rent control is the classic example of treating symptoms. The cities are dying inside. The disease is a short age ... of housing that is affordable to both low-income and moderate income tenants ... Rent control ... does not help poor people; it does not help black people ... under rent control you have a decrease in the housing supply." Professor Martin Kilson of Har vard, who is black, expressed what seemed to be the consensus of black participants in the meeting when he said: "... the left/liberal axis no longer has-if it ever did have-a monopoly on effective policy for black needs ... It is now clear that there is too high a cost associated with black policy isolation from conser vative initiatives in American polit ical life . . . New coalitions are re quired by blacks."

The best way to bring minorities into the mainstream of American life is to remove politically sanc tioned barriers that restrict market entry, thus permitting a genuinely free economy to flourish. ® THE AMERICANDEMOCRAT by James Fenimore Cooper with an introduction by H. L. Mencken (LibertyClassics, 7440 North Shadeland, Indianapolis, Indiana 46250) 252 pages - $9.00 cloth; $4.00 paperback Reviewed by Holmes Alexander Cooper's treatise, happily made available with an introduction by H. L. Mencken, amounts to being the 86th Federalist Paper. Thus we now have expert analyses of the Ameri can Constitution with 85 essays in the 18th century by Hamilton, Mad ison and Jay; Cooper's 46 brisk chapters in the early 19th century (1838) and Mencken's II-page com mentary in the 20th century (1931). Our cup runneth over. Cooper (1789-1851) looks at the American experiment with the ad640 THE FREEMAN vantage of hindsight and consular service in Europe (neither Hamilton nor Madison was ever abroad) and he sees that a number of the Founders were justified in their ap prehension that the democratic re public would soon become a repub lican-type democracy.

Mencken finds this metamorpho sis a near-disaster, with demagogu ery riding higher than monarchy ever did, and boobosity as the na tional culture; but Cooper is more measured in his polemics against the mythology of equality. This bo gus doctrine, of course, was nothing but a war-whoop of the Revolution. Cooper notes that the constitutional convention treated it as an absurd unmentionable. Nonetheless, politi cians climb by flattering the people, just as courtiers butter up the kingly establishment; the common man, the epitome of medi.ocrity, soon domi nated national affairs and has done so ever since. While Cooper, a Yale graduate, naval historian and top man of American letters deplored the lev eling effect of democracy's down grading of intellectual excellence, he thought that democracy is the best of the worst, since all forms of government yet devised are tyran nical to some extent and hostile to individual liberty.

But Cooper goes far past any rep etition of this established truism in exploring the short-of-perfection governance of man. He says that the United States is best styled as the Union. It comprises constituencies rather than people or population, and forms a confederation of com munities which ideally merge into the American commonwealth or commonweal, the "general welfare" clause in its present application an example of how democracy de bauches the constitutional intent. Liberty is no more of an absolute than equality, but Cooper finds that the country is well-protected against majority rule and mob law, since minority opinion can always get a hearing through the right of peti tion' jury trial and habeas corpus. He dwells, as does no other commen tator known to me, on religion as a factor of self-rule, seeing the Amer ican family ("honor thy father and mother") as our basic unit and the Tenth Commandment ("thou shalt not covet") as a wholesome inhibi tion against mankind's greedy na ture which government has a duty to control.

Altogether, Cooper comes forth as the voice of common sense. There is, he writes, "no good without alloy. It is idle therefore to expect a system that shall exhibit faultlessness or perfection." All that government can achieve "is to remove useless obsta cles and permit merit to be the arti san of its own fortune ... " None of the Founders said it better than that. ® the Freeman VOL. 31, NO. 11 • NOVEMBER 1981 Wage-Price Guidelines: Retreat and Defeat Robert Higgs 643 A review of the failure of one more recent effort to change and distort the price signals of the market. Incentives and Income Taxes Russell Shannon 653 A short course in "supplyside economics." c. S. Lewis on Compelling People to Do Good Clarence B. Carson 657 A twentieth-century Christian perspective on the welfare state. America at Her Best Signs of a return to freedom cross the land. Joseph S. Fulda 667 Conflict in Canada Hans F: Sennholz 671 A neighbor faces economic and political problems related to our own.