David McElroy

After slaves were freed in the United States in the 19th century, how much really changed for them? For the most part, they worked on the same land, did the same labor and worked for the same plantation owners. How exactly did their lives change when they were told they were free?

The slaves in the United States had worked hard and had nothing to show for their work. When we look at the sharecropping contracts they signed after they were allegedly free, it’s clear that their lives were just as controlled as they had been before. The only difference was that they now had a piece of paper that said they were free.

If you look at the typical sharecropping contract they signed, it’s clear that they didn’t have a chance to change their lives. They were leasing small tracts of land from the plantation owner. They went into debt — to the plantation owner — for the tools and animals they needed to work the land. They were required to mill the cotton at his cotton gin at a specified price. They were required to pay back the money for the tools out of the first cotton of the season. If there was anything left over, they could buy their own food, of course. But the plantation owner had the right to end the contract and kick them off any time he wanted.

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Which is more important — letting people make their own decisions about what to do with their property or forcing them to make decisions that are morally acceptable to you? You have to pick one. You can’t have it both ways.

Discrimination is a dirty word today, but there’s no reason for it to be. Discriminating is actually a neutral thing. Merriam-Wesbster’s first definition for the word is, “Making a distinction.” That’s all it is. It’s only when you discriminate on grounds that we think are wrong that discrimination becomes a bad thing. A woman who chooses one man over the others who might want to marry her is discriminating. She’s making a choice based on what she sees as the differing characteristics of her choices. A man who chooses between different job offers is discriminating. The woman who chooses one pair of shoes over another is showing discrimination. The list is endless.

What you’ve come to think of as discrimination is a specific class of discrimination, characterized by choosing among people for reasons that are considered wrong. Examples are racial discrimination, sex discrimination or religious discrimination. If you hire a white man instead of a black man because he’s white, you’re engaging in racial discrimination. If you hire a woman as a teacher because you refuse to believe that men can be good teachers, you’re engaging in sexual discrimination.

Until the 1960s, this sort of discrimination was perfectly legal. In fact, the law in some places required racial discrimination in many areas of life. (In the U.S. South, the legal requirements to separate races in many ways were called Jim Crow laws.) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 changed all of that. The law said that restaurants and other private businesses must serve anyone, regardless of race.

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The voting was tight, but the judges were fair. There were no hanging chads and no spoiled ballots. In honor of the site’s first birthday, here are the posts that got the most readers over the past year. A few of them still have me scratching my head.

‘I’m just quitting’: A scene right out of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ in Birmingham — The most popular story on the site in the first year was read more than 50,000 times. When I started, I wasn’t sure I’d have 50,000 views for the entire year put together, so this was gratifying. I happened to attend a public hearing about environmental issues, because I was doing some research that I didn’t think would turn into a story. But I wasn’t counting on an angry coal mine operator to tell the environmental officials that he wasn’t going to open a mine he had planned — because of the attitudes he saw in the meeting that made him believe people didn’t want him. The comments posted after the story are amazing and heartbreaking in some cases, as people give their own stories about having businesses hurt by the government.

The story was picked up by Instapundit, The Blaze, Free Republic, Fark, Reddit and dozens of other sites. For a few days, it was viral. This one story contributed hugely to increasing overall daily traffic on the site immensely. (Here’s an interview that a radio station in Indianapolis did with me about the story. I wasn’t happy with the interview, but it was my first radio appearance in years, so I wasn’t too upset.)

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