1/ I love when people like Ben Shapiro argue anti-discrimination law shouldn't have been applied to private businesses and the way to deal w/private sector racism is through market pressure...yet NO conservatives in history EVER launched concerted boycotts of racist businesses...
2/ So putting aside the absurdity of thinking that would have sufficed in the 60s, and putting aside the immorality of prioritizing the rights of businesses over the people they harmed, even on their own terms, conservatives and libertarians are full of shit...
3/ They say segregation was evil of course and they would NEVER have patronized segregated businesses personally, but that's a lie. Conservative whites of that era patronized such places all the time and none condemned racist businesses owners in any concerted way, if at all...
4/ So it isn't just state compulsion they oppose(d) on philosophical grounds. They just never really gave a damn about racism. ALL movement conservatives opposed the civil rights movement...
5/ The National Review (the official organ of the movement right-wing) sided with segregationists, openly...they suggested "crazed Negroes" in Birmingham had bombed the 16th St. Baptist Church and said blacks weren't civilized enough for the vote...
6/ I wish conservatives would just own this history, either proudly (honest racists are preferable), or to begin to make amends. But instead, they lie and act like conservatives got civil rights laws passed just bc liberal northern GOPers joined liberal northern dems to do it..
7/ Meanwhile, literally everyone in the streets, in the sit ins, in the Freedom Rides, etc was coming from a philosophical position to the liberal and/or actual left side of the spectrum. As such, conservatives have squandered all moral authority to ever speak about race again...
8/ MLK WAS a democratic socialist, by his own admission. The March on Washington was not a march for tax cuts and deregulation y'all. It was a march for jobs and housing among other things: the entire thrust of the event & ALL civil rights work, left from top to bottom...
9/ MLK was calling for affirmative action by 1961, endorsing the concept of reparations by 1965 (and boldly so by 1968). But by all means y'all, keep trotting out his niece who loves Trump as if somehow she is carrying the banner of the movement...
10/ And keep taking that "content of character" line out of context to critique affirmative action, even though King endorsed it...and ignore the rest of that speech like the part where he noted America had bounced a check to black folks...(critical race theory!)...
11/ And don't bother reading his books bc then you might have to admit you hate him as much as your conservative forbears did. Leave civil rights & antiracism to those who've always pushed it forward...y'all can focus on what you really care about, like capital gains tax relief
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