Ayn Rand on Racism

"Racism is the lowest most crudely primitive form of collectivism" - Ayn Rand

Sounds good, doesn't it?

I beg to differ... Ayn Rand had some views which are totally laudable and it is a crying shame that these views are not up in lights in today's world. But this, to me, is not one of those views.

The lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism is that collectivism which involves the initiation of the use of force.

Racism per se doesn't necessitate the initiation of the use of force. It's true that it often is accompanied by such initiation. But one can be racist without violating a person's privacy of person or property.

All laws which punish racism, per se, are illegitimate laws. Their very existence is itself a violation of the right to hold an opinion of others on superficial grounds alone.

Furthermore, what gives rise to the passing of such laws is the denial of human agency.... beautifully encapsulated by Aristotle: 'It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it,' which infers a human being is capable of witholding acts of initiatory violence in the presence of unwholesome thoughts.

Such denial of human agency, when un-opposed or tacitly supported, leads to the kind of self-censorship which relies for judgement on labels handed down from on high by authority, rather than the freedom to stand all ideas side-by-side and thereby allow good ideas - established on merit - to flourish.

Only when individuals in a society can tolerate discrimination of all kinds, per se - including racism, can those individuals be said to be truly respectful of their fellow human beings' right to life liberty and property.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it well: "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."

There is something which acts as a powerful disincentive to maintain superficial i.e. unmerited discrimination, and that is the very real risk of being ostracized by not only the discriminated-against but potentially others, for such discrimination.