Election cycle maneuvering seems to be in full swing, and so the political silly season has descended upon us once again. With all of the unrest surrounding us this year – COVID curfews, demonstrations over police violence, and a nascent recession that can only be exacerbated by these other factors – this promises to be quite the interesting cycle. Current events may presage ballot initiatives regarding police funding, qualified immunity, the proper level of prosecution for rogue officers, and other similar matters that fall under the aegis of social justice. Indeed, for certain voters, the Downs paradox (the concept that for rational, self-interested voters, the benefits of voting are generally exceeded by the costs) just might be turned on its head.
I realize that for many, the notion of “social justice” is a pejorative of the highest magnitude, but as my friend and fellow EconLog contributor Steve Horwitz has observed over at Libertarianism.org, the foundational classical liberal precepts regarding a just society require vigilance to ensure that our institutions remain just:
Justice, by nature, is social, as it invariably involves the redress of grievances between counterparties with different interests. This, however, is an argument for a different day. What interests me in the backdrop of these happenings is the choice of date and venue made by President Trump to officially kick off his reelection campaign.
Ninety-nine years ago, the Greenwood community in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma was the victim of one of the most devastating instances of interracial violence in American history. Driven by a false report of an assault by a Black teenager, Dick Rowland, on a White teenager, Sarah Page, White residents of Tulsa descended upon Greenwood in an orgy of fire and blood. Prior to the incident, Greenwood had been a successful, if segregated, community of some 10,000 African Americans comprising roughly thirty-five blocks of the city and known colloquially as the Negro Wall Street. After a lawless night of looting on March 31, 1921 by an angry white mob, several of whom had even been deputized by local law enforcement, Greenwood lay in ashes, with hundreds dead and some $25.8 million of property damage in today’s dollars.
The economic success of the residents of Greenwood, who lived in the area precisely because it was the only place in Tulsa where they were allowed to live, had long been a sore spot for the other residents of Tulsa. The fear was that with rapidly growing wealth the blacks of Greenwood would begin to demand greater political power, and they would have the economic wherewithal to achieve it. As such, they were a threat to the status quo, and in the absurdity that often comes with group threat theory, what was in fact an innocent encounter between Rowland and Page served as a pretext to eliminate that perceived threat. To further illustrate this point, despite numerous investigations, there were few convictions in the aftermath of the Tulsa massacre, nor was there any attempt on the part of either the city of Tulsa or the state of Oklahoma to provide remuneration to the dispossessed victims. Many of the suddenly impoverished residents of Greenwood simply left, their abandoned properties acquired at a discount by those who had burned them out.
That this is where President Trump has decided to begin his campaign for reelection is made even more interesting by the date on which he will appear in the city. June 19 is a day celebrated by many African Americans as Juneteenth*, or Jubilee: the day in 1865 on which the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Although the extractive, exploitative economy of slavery was not really ended until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Emancipation Proclamation was still a powerful symbol to former slaves. Thus, in the sort of absurd timing that can only occur during an election cycle, we have a President restarting his campaign cycle in the city with the worst racial incident in American history on a day celebrated as a day of freedom by many African Americans during a period of heightened racial tension.
I doubt that Mr. Trump did such a thing purposefully, or was even aware of the strange symbolism that his choice of date and location would evoke, but in this strange cycle, in this strange year of instability, the underlying notion of structure-induced equilibria – that majority rule in complex societies is inherently unstable – becomes ever more apparent.
*Correction: This article stated that Juneteenth is the celebration of the day on which the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This is incorrect, as the Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. June 19, 1865 is the day on which Union soldiers marched into Texas and announced the order, making Texas the last state to be Emancipated.
Tarnell Brown is an Atlanta based economist and public policy analyst.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Jun 11 2020 at 2:46pm
I’ve tried to read this essay several times to find out what the “absurdity of voter choice” means and could not. Perhaps another reader can illuminate me.
Rebes
Jun 11 2020 at 10:24pm
I believe it means that the choice available to voters – Trump or Biden – in the 2020 election is absurd.
robc
Jun 12 2020 at 9:48am
Fortunately I will have more choices on my ballot and will be choosing one of them.
Fred_in_PA
Jun 12 2020 at 11:31am
I read the “absurdity of voter choice” as saying it is absurd to believe they can have an effective choice; Particularly, that structure dominates will.
Ricky
Jun 11 2020 at 2:50pm
That is a historically dangerous proposition. To promote a more tyrannical form of government, simply because you do not agree with another citizen, is unfathomably arrogant.
Tarnell Brown
Jun 11 2020 at 2:57pm
I am somewhat unclear on your meaning.
Fred_in_PA
Jun 12 2020 at 12:01pm
Yes, it is arrogance. But we have a lot of that in society today.
Too many, both Left & Right, would prefer the tyrannical imposition of their own views, with the dismissal of any commandment to listen to those annoying “others”.
The “Social Justice” Left and the “Economic Necessity” Right have little use for each other. Each dismissing the other, they both grievously wound themselves.
Steve Horwitz
Jun 11 2020 at 5:38pm
Trump is surely ignorant of the place and date, but his advisors are not. Even my deep well of good faith has its bottom. This is intentional and ugly on the part of the worst elements of this Administration.
Tarnell Brown
Jun 11 2020 at 6:10pm
Regarding his advisors, we are in complete agreement. This was planned ugliness on their part.
As to Trump himself, had he known beforehand, it is my belief that there would have been a tweet.
George Carpenter
Jun 11 2020 at 8:05pm
Steve, indeed. While Trump might employ ‘plausible deniability’ those planning his appearances know how to blow a ‘dog whistle’ seeking to ‘energize the base’.
The baser the base the louder the whistle.
Mark Z
Jun 12 2020 at 2:23am
When I first read this post, I thought the implication was that he was going to make cynical use of the Emancipation Proclamation in reference to his campaign, rather than as a dogwhistle to white supremacists. I guess we’ll see if he references it in his speech.
MarkW
Jun 12 2020 at 7:06am
I’ll withhold judgement until I see what transpires. Trump, before George Floyd, has not been useless on these issues. Has everybody already forgotten this?
A smart move by Trump (or his advisors) would be to come out for both law and order AND police reform and to point out that urban black communities tend to suffer the most from riots, looting, and destruction and need police forces to be on the streets rather than napping and snacking in the alderman’s office. While those Chicago cops were relaxing, this is what was happening on the south side. Lower–income neighborhoods that had limited access to grocery stores before now have next to none. Trump might even argue that the protests would have remained peaceful if it weren’t for ANTIFA — mostly a bunch of spoiled, white-kid revolutionary wannabes who helped trigger the broad swath of destruction than now runs through many urban neighborhoods. Understand that I’m not any kind of Trump supporter, but I really doubt we’re going to see a red-meat-for-racists sort of event.
vikingvista
Jun 15 2020 at 11:20am
I don’t know what it is about their past actions that make you think so highly of Trump’s advisors. Between “incompetent” and “calculating”, history favors the former.
As popular, worthy, and longstanding a celebration as it has been in black communities, it is very obscure, usually little more than a vague literary reference, to most everyone else–including, most likely, Trump’s “illustrious” advisors. Even the thoughtful and learned author of this article didn’t know what it was, so I don’t know how you could expect more from Trump’s political hacks.
David Henderson
Jun 12 2020 at 9:42am
Tarnell,
I think you’ve ignored another explanation. My guess is that not one in 10 white Trump supporters in Tulsa knows the significance of the date, whereas probably a much larger percent of black people know the significance. Trump knows he needs black support. So he chooses the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation as his date to kick off the campaign. In other words, he actually could be reaching out to black voters.
mike
Jun 12 2020 at 10:13am
Yep, i was going to make this point! I hope (HOPE, but who knows) he uses this to say this day (June 19th) was a start to writing our historical wrongs, but as was seen here in 1921 showed not enough was done. George Floyd murder has shown that we still haven’t solved it. I want my second term to be a time to continue solving these problems (and then give something along the line of “our great economy was helping people of color, and “sleepy joe” won’t continue that). But for progress to happen we need law & order, not rioting, and then reforms can happen
I doubt he will be that articulate..but i do think he is using it for outreach to black people, not to white supremacists…one would hope
Tom West
Jun 13 2020 at 4:22pm
I would not be surprised if there’s a few words in his speech that could be construed as outreach along with paragraphs contradicting that outreach (possibly all in the same sentence).
As with all his speeches, I think the majority will be about just how great he his.
Sarah Skwire
Jun 12 2020 at 10:27am
David–
Perhaps I have grown cynical, but I suspect that the date and location were chosen in hopes of inciting a large and violent protest, in order for Trump to be able to point to it and insist on more incarceration, an even heavier hand for police, and so on. I hope that potential protesters will be able to resist what I see as a bear trap, all laid out and waiting.
Sarah
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 12 2020 at 11:27am
If the President wanted to reach out to Black voters, he could have put on a mask and lead a protect march.
Tarnell Brown
Jun 12 2020 at 12:44pm
David, I can only hope that you are right. However, this type of a conciliatory approach would not be consistent with this President, whose wont is generally to capitalize on divisions.
Idriss Z
Jun 13 2020 at 3:46pm
@ David, this is an excellent point. This administration plays politics and campaigning like chess. An old chess maxim is that every move should be achieving at least two purposes. Thus he is certainly giving himself, as you suggest, something he could entice the African Americans on the margin (or at least break apart their solidarity in removing him from office.) This is doubly impactful because of what Tarnell posted and Sarah further elaborated on.
As to those talking about voter absurdity-> what Tarnell (please correct me if wrong) appears to be talking about is that the effort taken to cast a single ballot for an individual is far greater than the value of that individual ballot’s significance in the final count. This is a natural mathematical result that stems from the No-Dictator Rule in social choice theory (no one person’s vote can change the outcome, because that would actually render everyone else’s vote worth 0). However, we as a nation recognize a non-zero value to a vote as sacred, much blood has been shed for it. Thusly, any person who has morality and humanity will vote for Biden, he has proven himself a capable public servant who cares deeply about the people of this country and is far from tyrannical or dictatorial as other commenters have falsely equivocated. The other candidate not so much. Please do not take this is as a matter of political opinion or preference but the reality of the situation.
Mark Z
Jun 13 2020 at 5:10pm
It seems, made aware of the date, he has now opted to move his event to a different date.
Tarnell Brown
Jun 14 2020 at 8:38am
We can pretend, Mark, that it’s because his strategists read EconLog.
Mark Z
Jun 16 2020 at 10:16pm
Haha, indeed, we can dream.
Paul Marks
Jun 15 2020 at 11:08am
In case the writer of the post does not know, the term “Social Justice” is the doctrine that all income and wealth belong to the collective and are to be “distributed” (“fair shares for all”) according to an egalitarian principle of “fairness”. Social Justice has got nothing (nothing at all) to do with “keeping our institutions just” or with preventing killings in Tulsa or anywhere else (in it is a Collectivist economic doctrine). Ditto the “Social Responsibility” doctrine under which large Corporations justify giving the money of stockholders to Marxist groups such as “Black Lives Matter” who wish to exterminate the “capitalist” stockholders.
As for Tulsa – the mass revenge killings there in 1921 were despicable and the white people responsible should have been hanged. However, your article leaves out what the despicable mass revenge killings were for – namely the murder of six white people at the Court House. The revenge killings were horribly unjust – but your post implies that people just got up one morning and decided to murder black people out of envy, that is not what happened.
President Trump will be in many States before going to Oklahoma (he was in Texas a couple of days ago – at was a rally in all but name), but the day of the rally in Tulsa has been changed, to reflect your concerns.
Tarnell Brown
Jun 18 2020 at 3:38pm
I am aware, in the sense of the Hayekian opposition to and the contemporary Rawlsian norms, of the meaning the term social justice has taken on.
This does not, however, negate my point that justice is inherently social in nature, or that classical liberals have done a grave disservice in ceding the discussion to others.
Moreover, characterizing what happened at the Courthouse as the “murder of six Whites” is revisionism at its best. A gathering of armed Blacks, fearful that Rowland might be lynched, precipitated a gathering of armed Whites. One of the White men demanded that a Black man surrender his pistol. When the demand was refused, he fired a warning shot.
After this, shots were exchanged by both factions. Both sides were at fault.
Felix
Jun 15 2020 at 10:12pm
The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1862, during the Civil War, effective Jan 1st, 1863.
June 19th, 1865 was “when Union general Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas, that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free.” according to Wikipedia.
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