From Chronicles Magazine: In 1861 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln launched a war of conquest against the South, and legend claims it was all for the abolition of slavery, officially declared by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Yet exactly 101 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the forcefully reinstated Union, signed the Civil Rights Act prohibiting “discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.” As Martin Luther King, Jr., had put it the preceding year, “Americans one hundred years after, must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free,” and that equality was still a word unable to hide “segregation and racial injustice.”
I would like to suggest there is more than meets the eye in a claim that, taken at face value, may look reasonable, if not simply humane. As everyone knows, ideas have consequences—some immediate, others slowly unraveling as the idea gradually takes root in the public mind. The latter is precisely what happened with the idea that initiated the civil-rights movement.
In democratic societies, citizens are supposed to enjoy equal opportunity to achieve their happiness, whatever this may mean for each one. Which is what Thomas Jefferson said, declaring it self-evident that men, having been created equal, are endowed with unalienable rights, notably the right to the free pursuit of each one’s happiness. Which, in turn, entitled Martin Luther King, Jr., to see the Declaration of Independence as a “promissory note” to all Americans, handing each and every one a check to cash (to use his somewhat inelegant, but telling, wording) and making it patent injustice that blacks be refused free access to various public spaces from buses to theaters and universities, or submitted to discriminating limitations on voting.
With black soldiers having shed their blood for America’s sake during World War II, President Truman had already, in 1948, prohibited discrimination in the Armed Forces. Then the issue became a cause célèbre for the liberal WASPs, gently prodded by Comintern propagandists, and eager to show that, despite their money, they also had a democratic conscience: In the 60’s they turned into new crusaders faithful to MLK’s memory and his policy of nonviolent civil disobedience. But, by and by, there were none among them to venture beyond the demand “to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children”: What was unjust was to deprive “the Negro living on the lonely island of poverty” of the right to live up to the American dream, or to access “the vast ocean of material prosperity” through the same channels white people used—notably, education. For the most liberal, the injustice resided in the fact that the black man was refused the means to enter and sustain competition with the white, so that there could never be a black John D. Rockefeller. Hence LBJ’s new Act, whose only originality was to set up agencies to enforce nondiscrimination at the gates of the racetracks.
But this was just the beginning. Almost 50 years after President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the evidence remains, not easy to dismiss, that despite all positive discrimination, resentment abides among the black population. As any election easily shows, black voters manifest a distinct tendency to vote en bloc, a bloc courted by Republicans and Democrats alike, as if it reflected a distinct body of citizens. Mr. Obama did not display any reluctance to be considered not only a messiah or savior, but a black one—though maybe not exclusively black, since there are now other minorities vying with blacks for public attention.
But I think it is also time to face reality. Very few are indeed willing to acknowledge that black resentment stems from the very fabric of our Western society, in general, and of American society, in particular. And by this I do not allude to the simplistic liberal opinion that a majority of white people are selfish racists and exploiters, which is simply stupid.
These societies, indeed, have two manifest gods: freedom and equality. Which is why they are democratic and free-market societies: A democracy is assumed to comprise utterly free and equal citizens, and a market a place for exchanges between individuals on a free and equal footing. In the political sphere no man is assumed to be a born leader, and every man deemed equally capable of dealing with public affairs; in the economic realm all are considered able to measure up to the American dream. And the common opinion prevails that there can be no freedom where there is no uniform equality, and no equality where there is no uniform freedom. These concepts are taken to be two sides of the same coin: This is common-sense democracy. But therein lies the rub, because democracy distorts these concepts in such a way as to make them collide.
If democracy means the sovereignty of the people, it means each citizen is a sovereign in his own right and is therefore endowed with a right to do as he pleases without taking leave of anyone but himself. Now, why should an individual endowed with such freedom be respectful of others? Of course, he may fear retaliation, or he may reckon it more rational in the long run not to behave toward others as he would not like them to behave toward him. But there is no inner restraint to his freedom, which makes it essentially an ability to serve his interest, without regard for others: The sovereignty of the people, or of individuals, means there can be no moral principle superior to the individual’s sovereign will. But then the sovereign freedom of each citizen makes him unresponsive to the call of equality. The more radical freedom there is, the less equality.