and then gets kicked out strictly for being black, and the new Republican senatorial candidate (as in he won the Republican primary and it's now between him and the Democratic candidate, come November) from Kentucky, Rand Paul (Ron Paul's son, yes that Ron Paul) says (through what he refuses to say) that it's ok. This is what suave racism looks like. This man is a white supremacist in a business suit. And he tells you it's not a big deal.
HE FUCKING DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964.
And then goes on to say that anyone discussing it is "not an issue...a red herring...a political ploy...brought up as an attack weapon from the other side."
This is such insane bullshit. He views segregation and physical, exclusionary discrimination as "free speech." They aren't even related. Segregation and the refusal to serve people in a place of business based on race, gender, sexuality, or whatever, is not in any way related to speech.
The entire time, he keeps reiterating that discrimination, segregation and racism are "a stain on our history" and other such bullshit. He also "would have marched with Martin Luther King." Then he goes on to lie and sanitize King, like people so often do, and says that most of the things that Dr. King was fighting "were laws, he was fighting Jim Crow laws, he was fighting legalized and institutionalized racism." True, he did fight those things, but he also went after things that were not inscribed in law, such as segregated housing, a lack of jobs (after all, the famous August 28th, 1963 "I have a dream" speech was given at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom) and the Vietnam War among many.
According to Rand Paul and his continual use of a "free speech" defense, the issue is that black people would go into restaurants and the waiter would say, "Hey, nigger, what do you want?" when in reality, the waiter said, "Hey, nigger, get out," which had definite physical consequences for disobedience. The former represents a free speech issue. The Civil Rights Act had nothing to do with speech. It had nothing to do with prohibiting "hate speech" as Paul cites. Segregation was physical and economic, not verbal. Fucking stupid.
Then he keeps talking about how if you maintain the federal laws that force owners of restaurants, stores and whatever else to serve black people, you have to also force them to allow people to carry weapons of any and all varieties into bars. What a fucking ridiculous reduction. Here is a very simple way to look at that - refusing service to people demonstrably harms them in a variety of ways. Refusing to allow guns into a business harms no one.
The Civil Rights Act did not say that if you own a business, you now have no rights. It said if you own a business, you now have no right to exclude people based on physical traits.
The only real reason people support shit like this (segregation) is because they will never be the ones excluded. What kind of place is going to say, "Hey, rich white piece of shit, get the fuck out of here, your kind's not wanted!"? The Crimethinc Convergence? A black nationalist bookstore? Perhaps a basement show? No place a rich white piece of shit would want to go, that's for sure.
Additionally, a refusal to serve is not an issue that stops there. It means that people cannot buy things that they need, it means that people are prohibited from doing things that they enjoy, and it means, fundamentally, that groups of people, based entirely on physical traits, are excluded from many aspects of daily life. They become second-class citizens, at best. Refusal to serve also creates extensive economic problems, because people are not able to earn money (a place that won't serve black people sure as hell isn't going to pay them a decent wage) and thus are not able to spend it.
Finally, segregation is not dead. Far from it. Read Denton and Massey's American Apartheid.
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