Thomas Sowell sure looks like a black person, but we are assured he really is not. Clarence Thomas appears to be a black man, but this claim, too, is said to be false. Ditto for Jason Riley; he seems like a member of the black electorate, but we are mistaken. The same holds for Glenn Loury, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Tim Scott, Carol Swain, Allen West, J.C. Watts, Gary Franks, Alan Keyes, and many others. They all look black, alright, but they’re not.

How do I know this? I know it because it’s doubtful that many of these people will vote for Harris; I suspect many will vote for Trump in the fall. How do I know that they, therefore, are not authentically black, that they are really Oreo Cookies, black on the outside but white on the inside? I know because Joe Biden told me so. In fact, he publicly stated: “If you vote for Trump, you ain’t black.” 

Of course, this is more than just insulting. It is also indicative of the plantation mentality of too many Democrats, which holds that the black community is a totally owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. It is time, it is past time, that black Americans get off the reservation, to mix my metaphors.

So, who should black people, and all of us who wish them well, support this coming November?

The Libertarian Party, of course! Why? There are several good reasons.

One, the minimum wage law. This enactment does not raise labor compensation. Instead, it serves as a hurdle over which one must jump to get a job in the first place, and then keep it. The higher it is, the harder it is to clear. Suppose this regulation were pegged at $100 per hour. Is there any doubt that most people, white, black and every shade in between, would become unemployed? Consider a person whose productivity is a mere $40 hourly. That’s pretty decent for a working-class person and cashes out at a salary of $80,000 per year, since wages tend to equal productivity. (LeBron James earns vast compensation not because the Lakers are generous, but due to his ability to add to his employer’s bottom line).

If an employer were foolish enough to hire such a person at this hypothetically legal mandated minimum of $100, he would lose $60 per hour, and invite bankruptcy. It is no accident that due to this pernicious legislation, the black unemployment rate is roughly double that of the white. Let me repeat that: blacks are unemployed at approximately twice the rate of whites based upon the minimum wage law pegged at present levels.

Two, rent control. This program, also beloved of the “progressives” is like a red light for investment in residential housing. If your aunt Tilly leaves you $20 million, you can invest it in numerous corners of the economy: in ships or sailing wax; in fish or bicycles; in the stock or bond markets; in stores, factories, office towers, or rental units for tenants. There is only one of these in which you cannot freely raise prices: rents. Therefore, funds tend to be diverted to pretty much everything under the sun, apart from housing accommodation for tenants. There are no enduring shortages of anything else in the economy but there sure is a dearth of rental apartments.

What is blue blazes does this commonsense assessment have to do with the well-being of minorities? Is it simple: blacks are disproportionately homeless compared to whites. Thus, any program that retards the building of residential structures, hurts them more than anyone else.

Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and other leaders of the Democratic Party are staunch supporters of these two programs. Donald Trump is not as big a fan, but he would not eliminate both, root and branch, entirely, and immediately. Only the Libertarian Party would do that. Then, there are many other government programs on which, to be sure, the party of the elephant is better than that of the donkey, but the porcupine beats both: government regulations, tariffs, tax levels, etc. They know full well that free enterprise brings about prosperity for all, not socialism.

But would not a vote for this the third most popular party in the country be wasted, since there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of it winning the election? Well, yes, this cannot be denied, at least in such swing states as Arizona, Virginia, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where the election is likely to be close. In those states people of color would be better off with the GOP than with libertarians, for this reason.

Black voters in every other state of the union, however, will not at all “waste” their vote if they support the Libertarian Party. Rather, they will be sending a message to the leaders of not one but both major parties that socialism is not really in the best interests of black people, nor is it in the interests of anyone else for that matter. They will be demonstrating a goodly level of sophistication in economic theory.

Let us all show that we have indeed learned something from the almost laboratory-controlled experiments of East and West Germany and North and South Korea.