Will Wilkinson responded to my post about race and drugs. I’m only seeing it now. Maybe I was unclear, but I think he’s responding to a strawman. He says that classical liberalism is not colorblind and then goes on a nice tear about America’s historical and continuing racism. He writes:

This sounds to me like Jonah thinks the classical liberal is supposed to play stupid. Jonah is fully aware that this is a country that for most of its history has been dominated by “identity group politics,” if you want to call it that. Blacks have been legal slaves. Jim Crow established legal racial segregation. We’ve not overcome the legacy of this. We live with urban policies that were initiated as thinly veiled attempts to reinforce residential segregation. We live with education policies that create a de facto segregated and highly unequal system of education. And, as Jacob emphasizes, drug policy has never been color-blind. To point out that it burdens blacks disproportionately is simply to point out that American public policy has never stopped being racist, has never stopped reinforcing a shameful structure of racial stratification squarely at odds with the classical liberal ideal of equal freedom under the law. Classical liberalism is not the stupid idea that there is no history. Nor is it the stupid idea that individuals who are members of groups that have been, and continue to be, victims of discriminatory state action are as fully free as individuals who are not. Classical liberalism is the demand that the state treat mature individuals as equally autonomous and sovereign moral agents, which is why it is necessary to point out the disturbingly discriminatory nature of American drug policy.

While I have no objection to the historical part, and I have only some disagreements with the continuing part, my real objection is that he’s redefining colorblind to mean “not liking racism when you see it.” I don’t like racism when I see it either. But in public policy debates, colorblind usually means something slightly different. Yes, it means not being racist, but it also means not being racialist either.

In other words, colorblind government policies are those that do not pick winners and losers based on race. What struck me as unlibertarianism about Will’s argument was that it assumed that a government policy is racist because it is has a disparate impact on blacks. I always thought that disparate impact arguments are at least suspect, though not necessarily illegitimate, to colorblind libertarians and conservatives alike. Whether the drug war’s disparate impact is primarily, or solely, attributable to racism is an argument that clearly won’t go away in part because, as Will notes, history is real and life is complicated. But it seems to me that in a classically liberal society there might well be many disparate impacts measurable by race, ethnicity, gender etc. The point is that a classically liberal or colorblind society wouldn’t consider race to be a particularly meaningful measurement upon which to base public policies, so long as those policies are indeed classically liberal. And that gets us back to the beginning. Will and many reasonable people think that drug prohibition is unjust and the racial disparities associated flow from that fact.

Anyway, we can do this all day long. I stand by what I said in my original post:

It seems to me, the only way the “racist drug war” argument really works on libertarian grounds is if you take for granted that it is a bad policy in principle and that its proponents know it is a bad policy but support it anyway for evil reasons. Then the disproportionate racial consequences can be scored as the desired ends of intentional means. But I don’t think that’s a great argument, at least not from libertarians, not least because it is untrue.

But I would amend that by reposting this email from Steve Horwitz which I think makes many fair points in defense of the libertarian position:

One quick thought:
There’s a difference between saying “the war on drugs does disproportionate harm to African-Americans” and “the war on drugs is racist.” I think the second is a statement of intent, and I don’t think the vast majority of those who support current drug policy intend to harm blacks. The first, however, is an empirical claim, and one I think is accurate.
As a libertarian, I have no problem using the first statement as one reason why the war on drugs is bad. It’s not my first or most important reason, but it is one. And I think it’s a valid point to raise if for no other reason than the following: I DO think that libertarians (and conservatives) should be doing more to show how our preferred policies will do well by the worst off among us. That’s neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for deciding which policies are to be preferred, but rather a “really good reason” to adopt particular policies. If one thinks the war on drugs is bad for lots of reasons, emphasizing the reasons that might appeal to particular audiences is just good rhetoric and good politics and violates no element of libertarianism that I’m aware of.
After all, I’d make the identical argument about minimum wage laws and their effects on blacks (although, there, the intent of those who wrote the laws in the 30s and 40s was indeed racist and xenophobic, even if most supporters today are not).

Update: Aw shucks, this just came in, from a reader:

“Maybe I was unclear…”
Seriously, no one qualifies, backtracks, reevaluates, amends and clarifies more than you. It’s almost as if your initial points are never actually what you mean. In other words, you write in a befuddled mess a lot of the time. If anyone should NOT be blogging, it’s you. I can only imagine the job the editors of your book had to do.