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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Patrick Brown to celebrate launch of Black History Month with Ontario Black History Society; don’t forget the libertarians, Brown
Patrick Brown, Member of Parliament for Barrie pictured on the right, will celebrate the launch of Black History Month on behalf of the Harper government at a luncheon hosted by the Ontario Black History Society tomorrow.
Black History Month in February is heralded as an opportunity for the African-Canadian diaspora to remember the people and events that shaped their collective experience in Canada and history across the world. The month is also celebrated in the US and the UK.
According to Wikipedia, “The remembrance was originated in 1926 by US historian Carter G. Woodson as ‘Negro History Week.’ Woodson chose the second week of February because it marked the birthdays of two Americans who greatly influenced the lives and social condition of African Americans: former President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.”
My views on race are shaped largely by philosopher Ayn Rand who wrote:
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
But rather than be left out of the Black History Month celebrations, I though the Western Standard could offer it’s own tribute to black libertarians.
Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are both black libertarians and both former Western Standard columnists.
I found a list of African-American libertarians here, but it includes comedians Chris Rock and Jimmy J.J. Walker, dubious choices I would suggest.
From the same source, we’ve got some figures from American history including:
Benjamin Banneker, 1731-1806 (abolitionist; mathematician; astronomer)
Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895 (author; abolitionist; public speaker)
Marcus Garvey, 1887-1940 (civil rights activist)
Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960 (author)
Nat Turner, 1800-1831 (slave revolt leader)
Moses "Fleetwood" Walker, 1957-1924 (Negro League baseball player)
Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915 (author; activist; founder, Tuskegee Institute)
Richard Wright, 1908-1960 (author, Black Boy and Native Son)
Zora Neale Hurston is a standout for me. This remarkable woman was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, a black, individualist literary school that rejected "the sobbing school of Negrohood."
From an article on LewRockwell.com, we learn that Hurston was also a critic of the civil rights movement:
Naturally, she was infuriated when the Federal government decided to ‘solve’ the South’s problems again. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Orlando Sentinel condemning it. She was not only upset that about the constitutional implications of the case, but also that it would not even help black America. She asked, "How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them?"
I’m sure there are many more black libertarians, perhaps even African-Canadian libertarians, whom I’ve missed.
(In fact, after reading the biography of Malcolm X some time ago, I was struck by how anti-statist X was. He spoke of community, church, faith, self-control, and personal responsibility; nowhere in his biography did he talk about a state engineered solution to racial disharmony. Was X a libertarian? How about a conservative?)
If you want to celebrate Black History Month in anti-statist fashion, I would recommend reading the following non-political titles by Hurston:
Or buy the movie Boycott, the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott that sparked the civil rights movement and put Martin Luther King in the national spotlight. Kings politics were mostly statist, but his opposition to oppressive state segregation laws were consistent with libertarian principles – and his effective use of passive resistance offers activists with a model worth emulating.
Happy Black History Month!
Posted by Matthew Johnston
Posted by westernstandard on January 24, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
Black History month is nothing more than institutionalised racism. Talk about official divisiveness and racism. History is history, so please spare me Black history month, Chinese history month, Jewish history month, women's history month or whatever.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-01-24 6:52:16 PM
Matthew,
You may enjoy Walter Block's thoughts on Malcolm X:
"He encouraged black people to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps: dress neatly, live cleanly, eschew drugs, alcohol and promiscuity. The Black Muslim organization he headed had a greater success rate in dealing with drug addiction in the local community than any other. He was vociferously in favour of economic development for blacks, and many of the Shabazz stores he built and inspired are still in business, decades after his initial attempts in this direction.
Above all, Malcolm remonstrated against the welfare system. It was demeaning. It was infuriating. It bred dependency on the white man. It stifled creativity. It was a trap. Far better in the case of immediate dire need was charitable giving, limited to the local community. And for the long run, stores, factories and businesses were the answer, not the dole."
More here: http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/5361.aspx
Posted by: Kalim Kassam | 2009-01-25 5:34:59 AM
I can see it now Alain...Cloud Magazine...The United White College Fund...
And everyone will yell racist. Funny how the term "Racist" only seems to work when its directed
against white people. Yet there are government sponsored racist movements all around us everyday, that have nothing to do with white people.
As far as I'm concerned, racism is just another government sanctioned activity that uses non whites to further its aganda.
Posted by: JC | 2009-01-25 7:16:27 AM
Correct JC. When you have the lefties screaming racism at the mention of a White Power or White Supremacy group or party while swooning over a Black Power or Black Supremacy group or party, any intelligent person of any colour should be able to see who the real racists are. If we are sincere about promoting an inclusive society, then we must end all state sponsored divisiveness. The Left is famous for calling for inclusiveness and condemning divisiveness and yet doing the opposite.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-01-25 11:15:15 AM
When it comes to race relations, Ontario truly is a museum. White racism towards blacks resembles 1950s South Africa or the American South. When will they learn the lessons those places earned at such a high price.
We Shall Overcome, white Ontario, and make you white people pay for your crimes.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2009-01-25 11:29:34 AM
Hey, thanks for that Kalim. I should have known Block would be way ahead of me.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2009-01-25 11:52:02 AM
Both Ayn Rand and Matthew are creationists, rejecting the theory of evolutionary?
Rand's problem exists in ascribing reason to man without evolution. Either that or she attributes it to God, yet she claimed to be an atheist. Her definition of racism follows from her own logical fallacy.
Posted by: DJ | 2009-01-26 12:34:35 AM
That's a fair comment, DJ.
Rand's view is that people are self-made and that intelligence is a function of how you train your mind. Garbage in, garbage out.
I'm sure that while some people win the genetic lottery, this is largely the case.
You disagree?
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2009-01-26 12:45:26 AM
"You disagree?"
Yes, Matthew. How else does she explain the intellectual variance between man and his common ancestors? How else did reason arise? The options are two; teleology or randomness. Rand appears to reject the random forces of evolution. It must mean that she accepts first cause. However, she claims atheism. Her position is a logical fallacy.
Posted by: DJ | 2009-01-26 12:46:54 PM
Kalim,
That's a great reminder about Malcolm X. Here's another I picked up from reading his biography: he was a great supporter of black gun clubs, because he believed (rightfully) that blacks had to be prepared to defend themselves, because they weren't going to receive a lot of help from the government.
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2009-01-26 1:15:59 PM
"because they weren't going to receive a lot of help from the government."
In any reasonable comparison, it is of course whites who need to defend themselves against the low grade criminal war prosecuted against them by blacks. It is whites, of course, who receive no aid from there government in combating black on white crime.
Race, Crime, and Justice in America
Second, Expanded Edition, 2005
* Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.
* Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.
* Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
* Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.
Posted by: DJ | 2009-01-26 4:46:08 PM
"What about interracial murder? The Supplementary
Homicide Reports (SHR) include the race of
the victim and offender, and make it possible to calculate rates of interracial murder. In 2002, blacks were 16 times more likely to murder W&H than the reverse. SHR statistics from 1976 to 2002 tell us blacks murdered 26,727 W&H during those 26
years, and W&H murdered 10,207 blacks, making
the black-on-W&H murder rate 17 times that of the
W&H-on-black murder rate."
Posted by: DJ | 2009-01-26 4:52:17 PM
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