From the “Capital Reporter” column
by Donald L. Jackson
[U.S. Representative from California, 1947-1961]
[House Un-American Activities Committee, 1951-1960]
Writing in a recent edition of the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, one of the
paper’s columnists, in an article entitled “Minority Rights Ad Absurdum,” wrote
as follows....
“Now, some day the majority are going to get tired of being
pushed around by the minority. Because we have moved into an era where the
minority is demanding satisfaction for itself even where it interferes with the
satisfaction of the majority. This can get absurd....
“American Negroes have properly battled for the right to
live where they choose and go to school where they live. In some places the
reluctant majority have had to be spanked. These rights have long been
guaranteed there.
“Yet, at the urging of the NAACP, negroes are boycotting a
school in northern New Jersey because 90 percent of the students are colored.
Why? Because white families exercised what Negroes have been demanding, namely,
the right to move where they pleased. And they moved out of the neighborhood.
So the Negroes are demanding that white children be driven back into that
school.
“It is one thing to insist,” Mr. Jones writes, “that the
majority accord a minority the rights the majority enjoys. This is justice. But
it is another thing to chase the majority around the block with a stick,
demanding that it behave in a way decreed by the minority.
“We’re getting close to that point. The tragedy is that a
growing public consciousness of minority rights is likely to be soured by the
arrogance of some minority leaders. This could set us back—way back. The
majority will stand just so much kicking.” End quote....
Any citizen has a perfect right to live anywhere he wishes.
He does not have the right to force a property owner to sell, lease or rent him
living accommodations, if for reasons which the legal owner of the property
considers compelling, he is refused rental, lease or purchase. There are those
who will contend that racism is the issue here—that the applicant is being
turned down because of his race, color, creed or country of origin. This is
unquestionably true in many instances, but it does not and cannot invalidate a citizen's
right to acquire, operate and dispose of private property as he sees fit.
For if the Legislature of the State of California can
prescribe—as it has—the disposition of real property in this state, it can go
further at any time to dictate the terms of possession—the price of goods and
service—and the means and methods by which a citizen may dispose of his
belongings, real and personal. When that day arrives, and it may not be far
distant, the flag of total socialism will wave over what was once the “land of
the free and the home of the brave.”
