CIVIL RIGHTS - RHETORIC OR REALITY?

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.

It is now estimated that 70% of the American population is entitled to preferential treatment under 'affirmative action.'

There are many reasons, besides genes and discrimination, why groups differ in their economic performances and rewards. Groups differ by large amounts demographically, culturally, and geographically - and all these differences have profound effects on incomes and occupations.

What is 'environment'? If it consists only of immediate surrounding circumstances, then the casual and moral responsibilities of a given society are quite different from what they would be if environment includes behaviour patterns that go back for centuries, that originated in other countries thousands of miles away, and that follow each group wherever it settles around the world. It would be strange indeed if merely crossing the political boundaries of the United States were to magically homogenize groups that are so different everywhere else.
It is not a foregone conclusion but an empirical question whether the Irish, the Chinese, the Germans etc in various lands are more like the other peoples of those lands or more like the people in their respective countries or origin and their kinsmen elsewhere around the globe.

Perhaps the greatest dilemma in the attempts to raise ethnic minority income is that those methods which have historically proved successful — self-reliance, work skills, education, business experience — are all slow developing, while those methods which are more direct and immediate — job quotas, charity, subsidies, preferential treatment — tend to undermine self-reliance and pride of achievement in the long run. If the history of American ethnic groups shows anything, it is how large a role has been played by attitudes — and particularly attitudes of self-reliance.
        - Thomas Sowell, "Race and Economics"

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