The Aftermath

It’s pretty easy to get on board with equal rights for all people if you are steeped in American culture.  Our founding documents say it. It’s easy to do symbolic things to signal that you are on board with equal rights.

As a country, we made some pretty big errors when it came to living it.  However, we have tried as a country to overcome our mistakes.  No country in human history has tried to correct the errors like the United States.

• We fought a war amongst ourselves that was at its core about ending slavery. We spilled more blood in that war than any other war and our history after would have been far different had Lincoln not be murdered.
• We excluded, in most cases deliberately, a whole class of people for almost a century based on the color of their skin.  Yes, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball in 1947, but Jim Crow persisted in the South and a special kind of racism administered by people like Chicago’s Mayor Daley was practiced in the North.  Baseball was the dominant game at the time so Robinson breaking the color barrier was huge.  As big as Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus.
• In 1965, we passed the Civil Rights Act and since then have spent $21 Trillion dollars in all kinds of ways to try and end racism.
• When MLK was murdered in 1968, there were riots that decimated neighborhoods in cities all over the country.  Those neighborhoods took decades to come back and in many cases never have.

In some ways, some policies have worked.  In most others, they most certainly have not.  Certainly, the standard of living is better for all people today than it was in 1965, or 1968.  It’s a bad standard, but the poor are “richer” today than they were then.  There is less virulent and obvious racism than there was.

Again, I want to stress, it’s easy to get on board with equal rights for everyone.  The policies to get there are very very difficult.  What we did from 1965 to today has clearly not worked.  If you think we should be doing more of the same, or spending more on the same policies all you are doing is setting yourself up for more riots sometime in the future.

Why aren’t we thinking differently?  Why are the people that are all in favor of thinking differently refusing to think differently?

Maybe it’s because they don’t know where the resources are.  I have a few suggestions.

• 1776 Unites  Bob Woodson was in the Civil Rights movement back in the day and left the movement when it became about getting power and money for individuals rather than getting equal rights for everyone.  Woodson’s focus is on entrepreneurship and teaching people how to be entrepreneurs.  When you run your own business, you learn about merit and you learn about equal rights.  I have a good friend that works closely here and I have donated money to the effort.
• The Institute of Justice  Often we focus on the big stuff.  Big Law, Big Consultancy, white-collar out front type jobs.  The reality is that laws and regulations that were passed are the hugest obstacles for people seeking to start a business and move up to the middle class. Those regulations were put in place to eliminate competition.  They have succeeded.  Eliminating a lot of rules and regulations should be a quick fix coming out of this debacle.
• School choice  If there is any benefit to our Covid 19 experiment with socialism it’s that we can figure out new ways to educate our population.  The public teachers union and the public school system in urban areas are jokes nationwide. Kids aren’t prepared.  If we want them to experience an opportunity we have to prepare them so they can take advantage when opportunities are put in front of them.
• Being Comfortable with Choice  Not every person is going to make the same choice.  For example, some women don’t want a career and actually want to be homemakers.  They are told they are letting down womanhood.  Everyone needs to be free to choose their career without judgment.  One size doesn’t fit all.
• Focus on the Family  The data is clear.  Kids of all races that grow up in two-parent families do better than kids that are raised in one-parent families.  Most African-American children are born out of wedlock.  That needs to change.  The way to encourage it is to change the economic incentives around families.
• Teach People About Risk  This is a generalization.  In America, we don’t understand risk.  Risk and taking risk is an integral part of a free society and equal rights.  Taking risk comes with potentially big rewards, but also comes with responsibility.  Responsibility means consequences.
• Teach People That Victimhood Isn’t An Acceptable Choice Choosing to be a victim makes a person powerless to combat the situation they are in.  Choosing to be a victim allows other people to usurp your rights.
• Teach People That They Have to Prepare Themselves For Success Success is not something that is just given.  You don’t start out as CEO.  The country just watched a documentary about Michael Jordan.  See what he did to prepare himself to be successful.  That isn’t just for athletics but extends to the corporate boardroom too.  What are you doing today that will prepare yourself to be successful tomorrow?
• Capitalism Is The Path Forward Capitalism rewards risk-taking.  Capitalism raises standards of living faster and more evenly than socialism, monarchy, dictatorship, or communism.  Private business, and owning and operating private businesses will do more to help a community than any government program.  Our country has scads of laws and regulations that limit competition and encourage the centralization of businesses.  They need to be repealed.  Ask yourself, why are there only X number of banks?  X number of major insurance companies?  X number of oil companies?  It has a lot to do with the way they are regulated which hampers an even playing field and competition.

Here is another thing we can look at.  Credentialism.  Take the Venture Capital industry but it might just be any industry.  If you look at the big VC firms, they are mostly white.  However, ignore the skin color issue. Look at where they were educated.  How many of the partners went to a state school.  A no-name college?  They virtually all went to elite, selective schools.  Out of those schools, they went to Penn, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, Yale, or Cal.  When you go deeper and look at second-tier firms, it’s the same.  When you go deeper and look at the endowments and pools of capital that fund the VC firms, it’s the same.

If you look at Big Law, the partners went to the US News and World Report top ten law schools.  Others need not apply.

I think about someone who might have been a kid like me.  Community college, state school.  That kid no matter what their color is doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting hired at a VC firm.  As a matter of fact, after getting an MBA from the #1 business school in the world, Chicago Booth, and having a big part of taking CME public, I was told by firm after firm and headhunter after headhunter that I didn’t have the “necessities” to be in venture capital.  Can you imagine what I would have been told if I was black?

Unfortunately, I have become pessimistic.  The political divide in our country is too deep and many of the forces marching in the streets don’t really care about equal rights for people.  There will be few minds changed when it comes to actually enacting policy that can combat the problems we all agree are there.  The forces that seek to take power and control only use racism as a cloak to go after capitalism and the points I made above.  If they win, the divide and the hurt and the pain will only get broader and deeper in the United States.

I see a lot of MLK quotes being tossed over Twitter these days.  He was extremely quotable but the quotes that resonate with me are the ones that have to do with judging people by merit.  Judging them by their actions.  Judging them by the content of their character, not their color, or just because they have a certain credential or have the window dressing that makes them seem acceptable.