Hey guys I would like to bring up the Civil Rights Movement again, but in a different context. Martin Luther King Jr. made the passive resistance movement popular during the late 50s and 60s. I understand and support the Bus Boycotts and and demonstrations/protests. However, I am not sure about the famous “sit ins” that are praised. In one specific example I read, it stated that a couple of brave young black men sat down in a small southern diner and refused to leave after they were declined business. This triggered the sit in movement. I think that sit ins are a violation of property rights because the owner of a business should be able to chose who he wants to do business with. Therefore, if the owner doesnt want to do business with somebody and tells them to get out of his business and they dont, they are now trespassing on his private property. The way I see it, this is no different than if an unwanted house guest refused to leave after the owner of the house asked them too. I am obviously not for segregation and I also am not a racist, but I find it amazing that if I were to say this to somebody outside the mises forums, I would be called a racist. I find it absurd that a business owner would forfeit a chance to make a profit off of somebody just because they are black, but if they want to in their own business, they should have every right to.
The most frustrating part of this is that many people consider private businesses to have to follow the same laws as public property. I am all for equality and all that jazz in public works and public works only.
I would like to see what everybody thinks about this issue…
I like to divide property into four situations: private private( your house), public private( business such as resturants), private public( military bases), and public public( parks, streets).
Considering it is public private property, the sit ins were tresspassing on private property. I think the whole justification for un segragated businesses is a lead to totalitarianism. If a racist refuses to let a black man in his house that is fine. But when it is the racist’s cafe, it is a crime!
The free market would greatly reduce racism, by looking at skill, not skin. But a person should be free to open a “Whites only resturant”. Granted he would have few customers, but some people are extremely racist and don’t want to eat near blacks. This would serve those people. Plus it would reduce racial undercurrents of forced intergration.
I view one’s resturant like a private club. The owner or club has certain criteria for membership. Forced intergration and acceptance and affirmative action is absurd. To take to it’s logical extreme, the State would force the KKK to have a black man join their club if he wanted to
I think by “public private” property he means private property for which a non-owner’s use (within limits) is generally allowed without explicit consent by the owner e.g. as he mentions you may walk into many or most restaurants without actually speaking to the owner or even a manager in advance, whereas most people require others to ask permission for use of their house.
Civil rights laws deprive people of the safe harbors that make multicultural society possible, to the extent it is possible. They are part of the eternal dialectic of government: racial conflict —> civil rights laws —> resentment and more conflict —> more civil rights laws. This process continues into totalitarianism, where merely describing reality becomes a de facto crime. (Same with the Wars on Poverty/Illiteracy/Drugs/Terror, and on and on.)
Totalitarianism ends when its facade can no longer be sustained in the face of ever-encroaching reality. Thus, economic Marxism collapsed when economic reality asserted itself. The same fate awaits the cultural Marxism of the civil rights movement.