How Milton Friedman Aided & Abetted Segregationists In His Quest To Privatize Public Education

[appalachiablue]

- Friedman receiving The Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan in 1988. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

- Naked Capitalism, Sept. 29, 2021. Ed. When Milton Friedman's libertarian, anarchist economic theories didn’t have much of a following, he was able to do real harm by backing school voucher schemes designed to preserve school segregation after Brown v. the Board of Education. - By Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History & Public Policy, Duke University.

In 2021 the “school choice” cause advanced as Republican control of a majority of state legislatures combined with pandemic learning disruptions. Seven U.S. states have created new “school choice” programs & 11 others have expanded current programs, with laws that authorize taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schooling, provide tax credits, & authorize educational savings accounts to invite parents to abandon public schools. “School choice” sounds like it offers options. First implemented in the U.S. South in the mid-1950s in defiance of Brown v. Board of Education, the idea aimed to block the choice of equal, integrated education for Black families.

Friedman, who was soon to become the best-known neoliberal economist in the world, abetted the push for private schooling used by states in the U.S. South to evade the reach of the ruling, which only applied to public schools. Other libertarians also endorsed the segregationist tool, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, etc.

Friedman & allies saw an opportunity in the backlash to the desegregation decree. They could leverage it to further their goal of privatizing government services & resources. They helped Jim Crow survive by providing ostensibly race-neutral arguments for tax subsidies to the private schools sought by white supremacists. To achieve court-proof vouchers, defenders of segregation learned from the libertarians that the best strategy was to abandon overtly racist rationales & embrace both an anti-government stance & emphasize liberty, competition, & market choice. In 1955, Friedman had published his first manifesto for “educational freedom.” This was when conservative white leaders in Va. were inciting a regionwide strategy of “massive resistance” to the mandate to desegregate public schooling.

The success of the strategy hinged on state provision of school vouchers to parents who otherwise would concede to desegregated schooling. Virginia & other states maintained the vouchers until 1968 when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed them as intentionally discriminatory. Yet Friedman held up the discriminatory Va. plan as a model for schooling everywhere. In Capitalism & Freedom, he wrote, "Whether the school is integrated or not,” should have no bearing on eligibility for vouchers. Black Virginians opposed these vouchers with near unanimity. But libertarian thought leaders & the neoliberal cause’s main funder saw no problem with tax subsidies to segregation academies, even in states that denied voting rights to African Americans harmed by the policy. While Friedman & most of his neoliberal collaborators made their case for privatization in race-neutral language & may not personally have been driven by racial animus, they had no scruples about exploiting white supremacy to move their otherwise unsaleable policy agenda...

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/how-milton-friedman-aided-and-abetted-segregationists-in-his-quest-to-privatize-public-education.html



- Donald Trump meets with Betsy Devos in 2016.

[2naSalit]

1. Heh, uncle Milty...

He ratfucked America a long time ago and few saw it coming.

[appalachiablue]

2. Little Miltie was a force, in the wrong direction. 'Freedom'

and Markets uber alles. He did extensive damage that would take decades to unravel.

I wonder what Thomas Piketty and others make of him, ha!