Cooperation

Today our nation honors the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the major forces in the civil rights movement during some of its toughest -- and in many ways most effective -- years.

Something that sometimes gets overlooked in reflecting on the struggle for civil rights was how segregation and racism disrupted so many basic human relationships. Extra drinking fountains so whites and blacks wouldn't mix. Separate areas for seating. Extra bathrooms in buildings. Refusal to serve a large chunk of the population and thus cutting off a significant source of revenue. I'd have never succeeded as a segregationist -- aside from recognizing it as evil, I'm way too lazy to go through all of that mess.

When you read about the civil rights movement, you see a variety of opinions. Some leaders wanted to focus solely on the political arena, and ensure African-Americans could exercise their right to vote and hold office. They thought that things like bus seats and lunch counters could come later. But the thing about doing business with people is that it doesn't take too long before whatever barriers custom and history put up get knocked down by plain ol' commerce.

And from there, it's barely a generation before community ties erode even the memory of the divided place of business: The diner founder refuses to serve black people. His son starts that way but new laws require him to serve everyone. And his son, if he thinks about segregation at all, shakes his head at how much money gramps let slip away by limiting himself to only part of the population.

P.J. O'Rourke, in an essay about the meaning of trade in American Consequences, references a 1958 pamphlet by an economist named Leonard Read, called I, Pencil - My Family Tree. It highlights how one of the simplest and most ubiquitous items on the planet is beyond the grasp of any one person to make from its most basic ingredients. Only through trade -- a formalized kind of cooperation involving money -- can pencils arrive in the hands of those who want them. Leaders like King saw that the more ties were forged across the barrier of skin tone, the more each race would understand it gained as a result. And commerce offered an abundance of opportunities for such cooperation.

Today voices on both sides of the melanin line talk more about separation and disunity than they do about a shared destiny and common ground. King's kind of voice is heard amid a lot of others, many much less irenic and unifying. It's cause for concern that we might lose some of the ground we gained as a nation through the efforts of civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. And we should keep an eye out for that kind of slippage.

In the end we might find ourselves saved by commerce and good ol' Adam Smith's invisible hand of self-interest. Because if bigotry resurfaces and someone somewhere decides they don't want to sell to someone of a particular race, they'll have a competitor who will be more than happy to do so -- whether from altruism or ugly naked greed. But sell they will. And they'll be the ones left in business.