Radley on Race

A thoughtful libertarian perspective on modern race relations in the U.S. here.

Excerpt:

This isn't ancient history. My dad grew up through all of this.

It seems to me that it's a bit premature, then, for us to insist — as one conservative pundit suggested to me last month over dinner — that black Americans "just get over the whole racism thing." That pundit was referring to the controversy over Sen. Barack Obama, and the intemperate and ugly statements made by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I have no interest in defending the substance of what Wright has said over the last week, or of the passages that have been pulled from his sermons and played over the Internet and cable television. There are a few things he has said that I would defend. There are many, many things he has said that I find objectionable, abhorrent, and twelve kinds of crazy.

But it's worth keeping in mind that for 200 years, hundreds of thousands of black people were imprisoned in this country as slaves. For another 100 years, in most of the country, they were second-class citizens, subject to rapes, lynchings and beatings; denied the right to vote; forced into segregated buses, schools, parks, and public facilities; and denied due process in the criminal justice system.

Bizarre as some of Rev. Wright's conspiracy theories may sound, there actually have been some pretty bizarre conspiracies against black Americans over the years.

I can't begrudge black Americans if for three hours on Sunday they want to indulge in a bit of righteous indignation within the walls of their places of worship. Even if that indignation sometimes expresses itself in hateful or nutty ways, or in ways I'll never quite understand.

America has come a long way with respect to race, but it would be foolish to say that the remnants of racism aren't still with us, or that — as I've heard some commenters suggest — that the only discrimination that matters any more is the kind of elitist reverse discrimination we sometimes see in affirmative action programs (for the record, I'm opposed to state-sanctioned affirmative action).

Marvin, His Bar, and His Gun

When I turned Mike and Mike in the Morning on as I was getting ready for work today, I heard veteran ESPN reporter and resident Phillyophile Sal Paolantonio go on and on about the shooting outside the garage and down the street from a bar that Colts WR Marvin Harrison owns.

What bugged me about the story is two-fold:

1) Paolantonio, whose reporting I normally respect, harped on the type of gun Harrison handed-in for the investigation: a custom made Belgian pistol designed to 'kill cops.' This is an assertion Paolantonio made because it reportedly is so powerful its ammo can go through many layers of Kevlar at 50m. Granted, the gun may be particularly powerful, but for some reason I don't think there are a bunch of police-hating Belgian gun designers plotting to perfect "cop-killer" weapons.


2) Paolantonio then began to speculate as to why Harrison, a multi-millionaire and probable future Hall of Famer (provided he's not taken down in this or another scandal of some kind) , would bother to run a bar, a garage and car wash in his very violent neighborhood back in Philadelphia. It was unfathomable to this man, who lives and breathes life in Philly, that a native son would own businesses where he was raised. Apparently Sal believes that NFL players should stick to filming United Way ads and volunteering in their adopted communities instead of providing people needed jobs and desired services where they grew up.

I don't know enough about the story to say whether Marvin is guilty of a crime or not. Looking over some reports, it looks like the weapon--while legal and registered--was not in the place it was supposed to have been (Harrison's home). And if there was any impropriety, God knows the NFL will act swiftly and, in all probability, harshly against the star receiver. But those issues are for the courts and the NFL to decide.

In the meantime, Sal and co. should stick to reporting more of Donovan McNabb's whiny dramathon and the success of the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup Playoffs than criticizing an unaccused man for owning a legal firearm and running legitimate businesses in his hometown.

Mildred Loving, R.I.P.

I really don't want this blog to become an obituary column, but I can't very well let the passing of Mildred Loving go by unmentioned.

Mildred Jeter, a black woman, married Richard Loving, a white man. Their ground-breaking case, Loving v. Virginia, challenged and overturned anti-miscegenation laws in at least 17 states, including my home state of Indiana -- which one of my friends recently referred to as "the South's middle finger."

Indeed.

As a product of a bi-racial marriage, I owe my existence to this decision. I grew up in the 1980s when my school system was still attempting to desegregate; while my parents tried to shield me from it, I had to endure cruel jokes and treatment from other kids and their parents because I was a "half-breed"; and to this day, when I date a white woman, I still have to ask how her parents are going to take my race. (You may be surprised how often it is actually a problem.) Yet, all that pales in comparison to what happened to Mildred and Richard (from a statement released by Mildred last year on the 40th anniversary of the decision):

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

My mother hinted at problems my parents encountered when they were together in public back in the 70s, but I don't know what they went through. I'm sure it was pretty nasty...I know for a fact that her father's side of the family still doesn't know I'm black. I've never even met them. I assumed they were all dead until just a few years before my mother died. Even then, she wouldn't introduce me to them. (I've been told they wouldn't approve.)

Well, thanks to Mildred Jeter Loving, people like me have become more accepted in society and people like my parents can live together without fearing the police barging into their homes and arresting them for being who they are and loving each other.

Mildred Loving, R.I.P.

HELP the Police!

No, you read the header correctly. It's completely worth it, though.



Hat Tip: Jim Harper

Another Victim of the Drug War

I'm tempted to start a body count on how many lives the "War on Drugs" takes excepting --if only because they are less sympathetic -- the 1000s who have died on the streets as a result of gang warfare which is fueled by illicit drug sales. There have easily--EASILY--been more fatal casualties in the "Drug War" than the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This is just the latest I've heard about...and perhaps one of the more tragic:

A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.

Yes. If you smoke weed, for medical purposes no less, you will be denied a life-saving organ transplant. Yet, and as a Yankees fan it pains me to say this, as a life-long alcoholic baseball legend you can get a liver transplant...in spite of the fact that your habitual and grossly irresponsible drinking to excess over a span of decades killed your liver.

As incidents like these pile up, the already dubious "moral" cause for the "War on Drugs" erodes rapidly.

Hat tip to Radley for following this story.

R.I.P. Timothy Garon

D.C. Madam Dies in Apparent Suicide

George Carlin once asked: "Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. So why isn't 'selling fucking' legal?"

Well, I can't answer that question. And it seems Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," ended her own life while awaiting sentencing for "selling fucking."

According to the Washington Post, Palfrey, 52, was facing around 4 to 6 years for her conviction on federal racketeering charges.

The details of her "crime":

Palfrey ran her business, Pamela Martin & Associates, by telephone from her California home, and authorities said she grossed about $2 million from 1993 to 2006, splitting the money about evenly with her escorts. They said she employed at least 132 women over the years, dispatching them nightly to clients in homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area.

Yes, that awful, dreadful woman gave "socially polished, college-educated women" gainful employment providing a service to men (and maybe other women, I suppose). Oh, I'm sure there are some wives and scorned ex-lovers who are going to relish this news -- but it seems to be a tragic waste of taxpayers' money (i.e., the investigation and prosecution) and one woman's life just because some men stepped out with call-girls.

I don't have a moral problem with prostitution, but I personally find it disgusting. Furthermore, I would feel personally degraded if a woman were pretending to enjoy--shall we say "my company"?-- for $250.

But to each, their own.

So, one woman is dead. Her family mourns. Lives have been tarnished; reputations destroyed.

Can someone please explain to me what the hell was accomplished by all this?