STILL A TOUGH QUESTION. Knowledge Problem's Michael Giberson questions the necessity of state action to end racial segregation.

Should we give government power credit for ending Jim Crow, when Jim Crow attitudes were turned by state and local governments into laws that used government power to force segregation? How long did it take the Times‘ lauded (federal) government power to overcome the use of (state and local) government power imposing segregation requirements? In what vision of a “purely free market” can the government tell a business that it must segregate its customers by race?

He's reacting to reactions to Kentucky senate hopeful Rand Paul's ham-handed responses to a question Rachel Maddow put to him shortly after the Kentucky primary. I have to wonder if civil rights policy wouldn't have been less controversial if the Supreme Court had ruled that laws requiring businesses to deny service to people based on ascriptive characteristics were contrary to the Constitution in such a way that did not hold businesses that chose to continue to refuse service also in violation. Civil rights laws or no, there is still self-selection by customers and businesses. A gentleman who would like to have a quiet conversation with a cultivated lady is not likely to go to a biker bar. And there are plenty of barbecue joints with bars on the windows and old cars in the parking lots that upscale gourmands will continue to miss.