Racism
by Ayn Rand
Note:
This essay was written in 1963 and employed the then-current usage
“Negro.” In
Rand’s later writing (she died in 1982), she dropped that term and
referred to
“blacks.”
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.
Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive
apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions,
values and character are determined before he is born, by physical
factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the
doctrine of innate ideas — or of inherited knowledge — which has been
thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of,
by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of
collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between
various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific
attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his
rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and
choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical
predestination.
The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up
their crimes in order to “protect the family name” (as if the moral
stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another) — the
bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire-builder, or the
small-town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a
state senator and her third cousin gave a concert at Carnegie Hall (as if the achievements of one
man could rub off on the mediocrity of another) — the parents who search genealogical trees in
order to evaluate their prospective sons-in-law — the celebrity who starts his autobiography
with a detailed account of his family history — all these are samples of racism, the atavistic
manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal
warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi
Germany, the atrocities of today’s so-called “newly emerging nations.”
The theory that holds “good blood” or “bad blood” as a
moral-intellectual criterion, can lead to nothing but torrents of blood
in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who
regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.
Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a
given race by the historical achievements of some of its members. The
frequent historical spectacle of a great innovator who, in his
lifetime, is jeered, denounced, obstructed, persecuted by his
countrymen, and then, a few years after his death, is enshrined in a
national monument and hailed as a proof of the greatness of the German
(or French or Italian or Cambodian) race — is as revolting a spectacle
of collectivist expropriation, perpetrated by racists, as any
expropriation of material wealth perpetrated by communists.
Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there
is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only
individual minds and individual achievements — and a culture is not the
anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.
Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of
potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of
certain races than among the members of others, it
would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be
irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless
of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a
moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial
origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the
claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as an
inferior because his race has “produced” some brutes — or the claim of
a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has
“produced” Goethe, Schiller and Brahms.
These are not two different claims, of course, but two applications of
the same basic premise. The question of whether one alleges the
superiority or the inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism
has only one psychological root: the racist’s sense of his own
inferiority.
Like
every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned.
It is a quest for automatic knowledge — for an automatic evaluation of
men’s characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising
rational or moral judgment — and, above all, a quest for an automatic
self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).
To ascribe one’s virtues to one’s racial origin, is to confess that one
has no knowledge of the
process by which virtues are acquired and, most often, that one has
failed to acquire them. The
overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of
personal identity, who can
claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the
illusion of a “tribal self-esteem” by alleging the inferiority of some
other tribe. Observe the
hysterical intensity of the Southern racists; observe also that racism
is much more prevalent
among the poor white trash than among their intellectual betters.
Historically, racism has always risen or fallen with the rise or fall
of collectivism. Collectivism holds that the individual has no
rights, that his life and
work belong to the group (to “society,” to the tribe, the state, the
nation) and that the
group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only
way to implement a
doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force — and statism has
always been the political
corollary of collectivism.
The absolute state is merely an institutionalized form of gang rule,
regardless of which particular gang seizes power. And — since there is
no rational
justification for such rule, since none has ever been or can ever be
offered — the mystique of
racism is a crucial element in every variant of the absolute state. The
relationship is reciprocal:
statism rises out of prehistorical tribal warfare, out of the notion
that the men of one
tribe are the natural prey for the men of another — and establishes its
own internal subcategories
of racism, a system of castes determined by a man’s birth, such as
inherited titles of
nobility or inherited serfdom.
The
racism of Nazi Germany — where men had to fill questionnaires about
their ancestry for generations back, in order to prove their Aryan
descent — has its
counterpart in Soviet Russia,
where men had to fill similar questionnaires to show that their
ancestors had owned no property
and thus to prove their proletarian descent. The Soviet ideology rests
on the notion that men can be conditioned to communism genetically —
that is, that a few
generations conditioned by dictatorship will transmit communist
ideology to their descendants, who
will be communists at birth. The persecution of racial minorities in
Soviet Russia, according
to the racial descent and whim of any given commissar, is a matter of
record; anti-Semitism
is particularly prevalent — only the official pogroms are now called “political purges.”
There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism
and its politico-economic
corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.
Individualism
regards man — every man — as an independent, sovereign
entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right
derived from his nature as a
rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of
association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of
the recognition of individual rights — and that a group, as such, has no rights other than
the individual rights of its members.
It is not a man’s ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry
that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive
ability. It is by his
own individual ability and ambition that capitalism judges a man and
rewards him accordingly.
No political system can establish universal rationality by law (or by
force). But capitalism is the only system that functions in a way which
rewards rationality and
penalizes all forms of irrationality, including racism.
A
fully free, capitalist system has not
yet existed anywhere. But what is enormously significant is the
correlation of racism and
political controls in the semifree economies of the nineteenth century.
Racial and/or religious
persecutions of minorities stood in inverse ratio to the degree of a
country’s freedom.
Racism was strongest in the more controlled economies, such as Russia
and Germany — and weakest
in England, the then freest country of Europe.
It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a
rational way of life. It is capitalism that broke through national and
racial barriers, by
means of free trade. It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and
slavery in all the civilized
countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the
slavery of the
agrarian-feudal South in the United States.
Such was the trend of mankind for the brief span of some hundred and
fifty years. The spectacular results and achievements of that trend
need no restatement
here.
The rise of collectivism reversed that trend.
When
men began to be indoctrinated once more with the notion that the
individual possesses no
rights, that supremacy, moral authority and unlimited power belong to
the group, and that a man
has no significance outside his group — the inevitable consequence was
that men began to
gravitate toward some group or another, in self-protection, in
bewilderment and in subconscious
terror. The simplest collective to join, the easiest one to identify —
particularly for people of limited intelligence — the least demanding
form of “belonging” and
of “togetherness” is: race.
It is thus that the theoreticians of collectivism, the “humanitarian”
advocates of a “benevolent” absolute state, have led to the rebirth and
the new,
virulent growth of racism in the twentieth century.
In
its great era of capitalism, the United States
was the freest country on earth — and the best refutation of racist
theories. Men of all races
came here, some from obscure, culturally undistinguished countries, and
accomplished feats
of productive ability which would have remained stillborn in their
control-ridden native
lands. Men of racial groups that had been slaughtering one another for
centuries, learned to live
together in harmony and peaceful cooperation. America had been called
“the melting pot,” with
good reason. But few people realized that America did not melt men into
the gray conformity
of a collective: she united them by means of protecting their right to
individuality.
The major victims of such race prejudice as did exist in America were
the Negroes. It was a problem originated and perpetuated by the
noncapitalist South, though
not confined to its boundaries. The persecution of Negroes in the South
was and is truly
disgraceful. But in the rest of the country, so long as men were free,
even that problem was
slowly giving way under the pressure of enlightenment and of the white
men’s own economic
interests.
Today,
that problem is growing worse — and so is every other form of
racism. America has become race-conscious in a manner reminiscent of
the worst days in the most
backward countres of nineteenth-century Europe. The cause is the same:
the growth of
collectivism and statism.
In spite of the clamor for racial equality, propagated by the
“liberals” in the past few decades, the Census Bureau reported recently
that “[the Negro’s]
economic status relative to whites has not improved for nearly 20
years.” It had been improving in
the freer years of our “mixed economy”; it deteriorated with the
progressive enlargement of
the “liberals’” Welfare State.
The growth of racism in a “mixed economy” keeps step with the growth of
government controls. A
“mixed economy” disintegrates a country into an institutionalized civil
war of pressure groups, each fighting for legislative favors and
special privileges at the
expense of one another.
The existence of such pressure groups and of their political lobbies is
openly and cynically
acknowledged today. The pretense at any political philosophy, any
principles, ideals or long-range goals is fast disappearing from our
scene — and it is all but
admitted that this country is now floating without direction, at the
mercy of a blind, short-range
power game played by various statist gangs, each intent on getting hold
of a legislative gun
for any special advantage of the immediate moment.
In the absence of any coherent political philosophy, every economic
group has been acting as its own destroyer, selling out its future for
some momentary privilege.
The policy of the businessmen has, for some time, been the most
suicidal one in this
respect. But it has been surpassed by the current policy of the Negro
leaders.
So long as the Negro leaders were fighting against government-enforced
discrimination — right,
justice and morality were on their side. But that is not what they are
fighting any longer. The
confusions and contradictions surrounding the issue of racism have now
reached an incredible
climax.
It is time to clarify the principles involved.
The policy of the Southern states toward Negroes was and is a shameful
contradiction of this country’s basic principles. Racial
discrimination, imposed and enforced
by law, is so blatantly
inexcusable an infringement of individual rights that the racist
statutes of the South should have been declared unconstitutional long
ago.
The Southern racists’ claim of “states’ rights” is a contradiction in
terms: there can be no such thing as the “right” of some men to violate
the rights of others.
The constitutional concept of “states’ rights” pertains to the division
of power between
local and national authorities, and serves to protect the states from
the Federal
government; it does not grant to a state government an unlimited,
arbitrary power over its citizens or
the privilege of abrogating the citizens’ individual rights.
It is true that the Federal government has used the racial issue to
enlarge its own power and to set a precedent of encroachment upon the
legitimate rights of the
states, in an unnecessary and unconstitutional manner. But this merely
means that both
governments are wrong; it does not excuse the policy of the Southern
racists.
One of the worst contradictions, in this context, is the stand of many
so-called “conservatives” (not confined exclusively to the South) who
claim to be
defenders of freedom, of capitalism, of property rights, of the
Constitution, yet who
advocate racism at the same time. They do not seem to possess enough
concern with principles to
realize that they are cutting the ground from under their own feet. Men
who deny individual
rights cannot claim, defend or uphold any rights whatsoever. It is such
alleged champions of
capitalism who are helping to discredit and destroy it.
The “liberals” are guilty of the same contradiction, but in a different
form. They advocate the sacrifice of all individual rights to unlimited
majority rule — yet
posture as defenders of the rights of minorities. But the smallest
minority on earth is the
individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be
defenders of minorities.
This accumulation of contradictions, of shortsighted pragmatism, of
cynical contempt for principles, of outrageous irrationality, has now
reached its climax in
the new demands of the Negro leaders.
Instead of fighting against racial discrimination, they are demanding
that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. Instead of
fighting against
racism, they are demanding the establishment of racial quotas. Instead
of fighting for
“color-blindness” in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming
that “color-blindness”
is evil and that “color” should be made a primary consideration.
Instead of fighting for
equal rights, they are demanding special race privileges.
They are demanding that racial quotas be established in regard to
employment and that jobs be
distributed on a racial basis, in proportion to the percentage of a
given race among the local population. For instance, since Negroes
constitute 25 percent of the
population of New York City, they demand 25 percent of the jobs in a
given establishment.
Racial quotas have been one of the worst evils of racist regimes. There
were racial quotas in
the universities of Czarist Russia, in the population of Russia’s major
cities, etc. One of the accusations against the racists in this country
is that some schools
practice a secret system of racial quotas. It was regarded as a victory
for justice when
employment questionnaires ceased to inquire about an applicant’s race
or religion.
Today, it is not an oppressor, but an oppressed minority group that is
demanding the establishment of racial quotas. (!)
This particular demand was too much even for the “liberals.” Many of
them denounced it — properly — with shocked indignation.
Wrote
The N. Y. Times (July 23, 1963): “The demonstrators are following
a truly vicious principle in playing the ‘numbers game.’ A demand that
25 percent (or
any other percentage) of jobs be given to Negroes (or any other group)
is wrong for one basic
reason: it calls for a ‘quota system,’ which is in itself
discriminatory. . . . This newspaper
has long fought a religious quota in respect to judgeships; we equally
oppose a racial
quota in respect to jobs from the most elevated to the most menial.”
As if the blatant racism of such a demand were not enough, some Negro
leaders went still farther. Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of
the National Urban
League, made the following statement (N. Y. Times, August 1):
The white leadership must be honest enough to grant that throughout our
history there has existed a special privileged class of citizens who
received preferred
treatment. That class was white. Now we’re saying this: If two men, one
Negro and one white, are
equally qualified for a job, hire the Negro.
Consider the implications of that statement. It does not merely demand
special privileges on racial grounds — it demands that white men be
penalized for the sins of
their ancestors. It demands that a white laborer be refused a job
because his grandfather
may have practiced racial discrimination. But perhaps his grandfather
had not practiced it. Or
perhaps his grandfather had not even lived in this country. Since these
questions are not to be
considered, it means that that white laborer is to be charged with
collective racial guilt,
the guilt consisting merely of the color of his skin.
But that is the principle of the worst Southern racist who charges all
Negroes with collective racial guilt for any crime committed by an
individual Negro, and who
treats them all as inferiors on the ground that their ancestors were
savages.
The only comment one can make about demands of that kind, is: “By what
right? — By what code? — By what standard?”
That absurdly evil policy is destroying the moral base of the Negroes’
fight. Their case rested on the principle of individual rights. If they
demand the violation of
the rights of others, they negate and forfeit their own. Then the same
answer applies to them
as to the Southern racists: there can be no such thing as the “right”
of some men to
violate the rights of others.
Yet the entire policy of the Negro leaders is now moving in that
direction. For instance, the demand for racial quotas in schools, with
the proposal that hundreds of
children, white and Negro, be forced to attend school in distant
neighborhoods — for the
purpose of “racial balance.” Again, this is pure racism. As opponents
of this demand have
pointed out, to assign children to certain schools by reason of their
race, is equally evil
whether one does it for purposes of segregation or integration. And the
mere idea of using
children as pawns in a political game should outrage all parents, of
any race, creed or color.
The “civil rights” bill, now under consideration in Congress, is
another example of a gross infringement of individual rights. It is
proper to forbid all
discrimination in government-owned facilities and establishments: the
government has no right to
discriminate against any citizens. And by the very same principle, the
government has no right
to discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others. It has no
right to violate the right
of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned
establishments.
No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of
another man. A man’s rights are not violated by a private individual’s
refusal to deal with him.
Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine — but
doctrines cannot be
forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a
communist’s freedom of speech,
even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist’s
right to the use and
disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a
moral issue — and can be fought
only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.
Needless to say, if that “civil rights” bill is passed, it will be the
worst breach of property rights in the sorry record of American history
in respect to that
subject.*
It is an ironic demonstration of the philosophical insanity and the
consequently suicidal trend of our age, that the men who need the
protection of individual rights
most urgently — the Negroes — are now in the vanguard of the
destruction of these rights.
A word of warning: do not become victims of the same racists by
succumbing to racism; do not hold against all Negroes the disgraceful
irrationality of some of their
leaders. No group has
any proper intellectual leadership today or any proper representation.
In conclusion, I shall quote from an astonishing editorial in The N. Y.
Times of August 4 — astonishing because ideas of this nature are not
typical of our age:
But the question must be not whether a group recognizable in color,
features or culture has its rights as a group. No, the question is
whether any American individual,
regardless of color, features or culture, is deprived of his rights as
an American. If the
individual has all the rights and privileges due him under the laws and
the Constitution, we
need not worry about groups and masses — those do not, in fact, exist,
except as figures of
speech.
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