It's a standard conservative argument that the free market will fix civil rights issues. But let me ask you a question - if the free market is so good at fixing civil rights issues, why did the plight of blacks in America not improve much at all from 1865 to 1964? The free market did nothing for 99 years. Entire lives were lived under Jim Crow laws. Blacks were routinely lynched for just looking the wrong way. Where was the free market? How long should oppressed people wait for the free market to "fix" civil rights issues? Should they wait a century? A thousand years? Ten thousand years? How long?
When you frame the question that way it is pretty absurd, isn't it? In fact, it is completely absurd. There is zero record of the free market ever fixing any oppression. That is not what the market is designed to do. The market is designed to deliver profits. Not even maximize profits, which is a false statement too, just deliver profits. And if the market was delivering profits while blacks were oppressed, there was no incentive for the market to drive change.
So we, the people, had government intervene with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The amount of change since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been huge. It's not done but a huge amount of positive change has occurred when almost zero change happened for 99 years before.
The argument that we should let the free market "fix" it is really an argument to allow the oppressor to continue to oppress a particular group. That's the same reason that the market hasn't fixed the problem with women earning 77% of what men earn for the exact same jobs with the exact same level of experience. That's why the market cannot fix the rights of LGBT people either and why LGBT people support a comprehensive federal law, without religious exemptions, just like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, like ENDA is supposed to be.
Thus we have the direct proof, from the history of black people, that the market never fixes civil rights issues. Never. Since we know, from examining history, that the market never fixes civil rights issues, we therefore can not rely on the market to do so. Thus, the standard conservative argument here is false and anyone making that argument is either ignorant of the history of civil rights or deliberately obfuscating the history of civil rights to continue to maintain an oppressive condition against some group or groups.
I'm pretty sure most people were never exposed to this explanation, right? So not knowing is understandable. Now you know. But what about men like Mitt Romney? John Boehner? Eric Cantor (before he lost)? Paul Ryan? Rick Perry? Do you really think men as powerful and as informed as them do not know that the market never ever fixes civil rights issues? Do we really think these men are that stupid? I don't think these men are stupid. I give them a lot more credit than that. I think these men are pretty smart which means they are making this argument deliberately and to allow women and LGBT people to continue to be oppressed in various ways as well as trying to dismantle the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the guise of "free market action". Think about that.
What does that mean? It means that the entire Republican party is either ignoring history (1865-1964 versus 1964 to now) or the party knows history yet makes this argument so that bigotry can keep on happening and to keep party members who hear the argument misinformed. Since I do not believe that the men I mentioned are stupid or ignorant of history, only one logical conclusion remains. Those men, and the Republican party leadership are deliberately obfuscating the history of civil rights so that they can be the party of bigots.
Think on that for a while too.
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