THE FREEMAN interviews professor of sociology Anne Wortham. Here are some excerpts:

Throughout the twentieth century blacks have had the opportunity to present their demand for civil rights in a way that would move Americans and their government toward a greater appreciation for individual rights. However, in every instance, black and white civil rights advocates have reinterpreted the Constitution as protecting group rights to justify and expand the welfare state. Rather than liberating blacks from their dependency on the state that began with the New Deal, and respecting them by insisting that they take responsibility for their freedom, civil rights leaders, politicians, and the American people proceeded to expand New Deal policies with Great Society policies that have cultivated the American people’s expectation that the costs of an individual’s risky behavior will be borne not by the individual but by a pool of people—by taxpayers in general, by “the rich” in particular, by society at large.

Whenever there is a crisis that is defined as exacerbating the wound of racism, the air is filled with the ritualistic cry for a “conversation on race.” The problem with the call for a conversation is that it requires that whites and blacks lie to each other. The conversation is stymied by two pathologies: the self-indictment of whites who were raised to believe that acknowledgment of collective guilt is a badge of honor, and the self-indictment of minorities who were raised to believe that collective victimhood is a badge of moral superiority. With such irrational sentiments on the part of both whites and blacks at their disposal, “diversity” merchants and political race hustlers can play their deuces wild in perpetuating the lies that all whites are variously racist, and that black race consciousness is a rational response to inherent white racism, and should therefore be tolerated.

I very much resent being viewed as a source of validation by virtue of my racial and gender categories. It evades the fact that I represent myself, that my commitment to the principles of liberty rejects the equation of individuals with statistical categories. It is bad enough that race-conscious collectivists portray my defense of liberty as a cover for the rejection of my race. But it would be doubly insulting and ludicrous for white advocates of liberty to view my presence among them as proof that they are not racists—as though they allowed me to their ranks. It is also disturbing when white freedom supporters judge the validity of their ideas by what pro-freedom black writers, politicians, and pundits say. Their thinking is: “If Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, or Dr. Ben Carson says it, it’s okay for me to say so as well.” My response to this attitude is: Assume ownership of your own thinking.