On the Civil Rights Act

The Civil Rights Act has been unquestioned by every legal institution in the country for almost half a century.

Not exactly an under-discussed topic, but here's my answer to a question from today's livechat.

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Comment From Daniel:

Isn't the 1964 Civil Right's Act's constitutionality at least questionable? I mean, however good the intention of the bill, doesn't a racist black Muslim store owner have the right to exclude Jews like me from his store?

David Frum:

Disclaimer: I was trained as and think like a lawyer.

So I can't process the thought that something can be described as "constitutionally questionable" when it has been unquestioned by every legal institution in the country for almost half a century.

Maybe here's the real problem with your question. When libertarian minded people pose these hypotheticals, they usually couch them - as you did - in the form of some act of boycott by a very marginal member of society against a generally well accepted group in society. Racist black Muslim store owners may exist here and there, but they are hardly going to interfere much with your shopping however broadly we extend their rights.

But the authors of the 1964 act did not confront this classroom hypothetical but a century of caste-like governmental, social and economic exclusion of an impoverished minority by an all-pervasive majority, reinforced by mob violence and individual terrorism.

So my counter-factual to you would be: what if Wal-Mart and Target and every other US big box store together agreed that they would not sell to Jews? And if dissenting Wal-Mart managers were murdered by their colleagues - or rather if so many had been murdered 90 years ago that none would break the boycott even if they wished, which of course none did, because the Jews had been so systematically and deliberately impoverished that they were barely worth selling to anyway?

Rather a different social problem, no?