For years, the Left has claimed that institutional racism is the explanation for the disparities between blacks and whites on average. More arrests of blacks? Lower rates of educational attainment? Differing life expectancy? All due to institutional racism! And the only solution is for government to step in with a host of policies to bring about “equity” and “social justice.”
Try to suggest otherwise and you’ll be drowned out with vitriolic rhetoric.
Fortunately, some scholars persist in arguing that institutional racism is not a good explanation and that statist policies will make matters worse. In their new book Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, Rachel Ferguson and Marcus Witcher provide a badly needed refutation of the leftist position. In this Law & Liberty piece, Jason Jewell reviews the book.
The book’s main argument is that American principles of limited government and free enterprise are perfectly sound, but have not been equally applied to all citizens. While the Left looks for excuses to impose a coercive order, many blacks have understood that all they really need is freedom to succeed. Frederick Douglass, for example, rejected the notion that former slaves like himself needed any help from government. And in 2014, the Wall Street Journal‘s Jason Riley wrote a book entitled Please Stop Helping Us.
Jewell writes,
Beginning in Chapter 3, the authors analyze the historic black American experience through the lens of classical liberalism. Contemporary progressives often accuse their opponents of downplaying the past suffering of black Americans, but Ferguson and Witcher’s unflinching examination of the degradation and violence blacks endured both before and after the abolition of slavery makes them immune from such criticism. More importantly, they are able to show effectively the extent to which that suffering resulted from the failure to apply classically liberal principles to blacks.
Instead of pushing books like Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist, colleges should have students read Black Liberation Through the Marketplace. The authors make a compelling case that the path forward that will benefit blacks and everyone else is freedom, not coercive and divisive government “equity” programs. Let’s trumpet that message as loudly as possible.