Okay. I just finished reading Rand's article on racism. I feel like my mind just exploded. That was one of the most incredibly profound pieces I've ever read about racism. It laid everything out so very clearly.

It's interesting that Rand talks about the very things that end up coming to fruition, with so many laws that are ultimately racist being implemented (Affirmative Action). So I see that apparently black leaders back then started what has led to the black 'leaders' of today and their unfortunate ways of thinking.

I admit, I felt like I'd gotten hit with an intellectual baseball bat when Rand spoke against the Civil Rights Act. I'd always been taught in school/history that it was the best thing since sliced bread for black people. So I really had to take a moment to collect myself about that and rethink it all. (And also to realize that if I spoke against the Civil Rights Act at home, my family would think I'd lost my mind and become some kind of warped Uncle Tom/Oreo/etc. It's hard to have an intelligent conversation at home, but that's another story...a result of my more irrational choices...)

The more I thought about it in line with Objectivism, the more I understood why that position makes sense. Individuals cannot be legislated out of being racists. It's a moral problem, not a legal problem. The laws may change, but people who are racist do not change with the stroke of a pen. So the law, in the end, used force against people who did not want to trade with black people. It was a case of two wrongs not making a right, 1) racism, and then 2) legislation that violated individual liberties in a vain sort of attempt to make racism illegal.

Another very good point was that the plight of many blacks has not improved, despite these new laws.

(I won't try to quote percentages, because I don't know them, I can only look at the neighborhood I grew up in and the experiences I had with people in school and since then. Example: My neighbor was in the military and got dishonorably discharged. He came back home, lived with his aging grandma, sat around and did nothing. Eventually, he strangled her and shot her caretaker. He's doing 60 years in prison now.)

In the end, no one can escape reality. And reality is that one must create one's own value by one's own efforts. Some people who got so much handed to them still didn't put forth any effort, and for some inexplicable reason, some of them still blame or hate white people.

Another excellent, excellent point was that we're individuals, so trying to point to 'great black inventors'--as if to say that being black somehow enables me to share in their glory though I haven't invented anything--is an example of racism and collectivism. This is why I've often wondered about stuff like Black History Month, when the history is really just part of human history. Blacks don't have a separate piece of history that belongs to them collectively; they lived in amongst other people, as individuals, and shared a history with them, as individuals. Again, the question comes up, phrase it differently and how does it sound? White History Month would be taken as a racist, evil thing by black people, I'm sure.

I'm just really, really impressed with how sound the logic is about this issue.

I did experience racism once in my life, about 8 years ago, when I went to a friend's wedding in Missouri. A friend and I, both of us black, pulled up to a diner, and I noticed that there were only whites eating inside. I wasn't sure what the dynamic was like in the area, but I sensed we would not be welcome in the diner. We went in anyway. We sat there for an hour and no one came to take our order. Others came in who were white, ordered their food, and started eating. Finally the dishwasher came out and took our order. The food was not very good. It was the only time I can recall that I'd understood what racism felt like.

But in a free society, as much as I don't have to like it, the owner of that diner has the right to not trade with me. I do not have the right to force him to give me food. I do have the right to eat breakfast somewhere else, and trade with someone who is willing to trade with me. And indeed, why would I want to trade with someone who doesn't want to trade with me, especially when their motivation is a warped moral code that doesn't see me as an individual with values, but as part of a group arbitrarily labeled as savages? It wouldn't be rational.

And frankly...now I can make my own pancakes. And they taste a lot better than the ones given to me by that diner, essentially, by force.

After reading something like that, I try to understand how people of today continue to label Rand's philosophy as something they experimented with in college like it was drugs or rock and roll or really long hair. And then they moved on. Were they frightened by what it revealed about their true nature? Perhaps so.

As a novelist, I thought the characters in TF were more interesting than in AS. There was nobody like Dominique, Toohey, Keating, or Wynand in AS. They were characters with unresolved philosophical and personal conflicts (Dominique and Wynand), or were interesting "villains" (Keating and Toohey). The closest Rand came to the former in AS was Rearden, with his loveless marriage and affair with Dagny Taggert. Her other heroes seem to have emerged from the womb absolutely perfect (see especially Francisco D'Anconia, who was able to do everything superlatively the first time he tried) and while she perhaps had reached an intellectual zenith where she found that interesting, I did not. As for her villains, they were less than comic book, with the exception of the wet nurse. He was interesting because he grew as a person and there was a note of tragedy with Rearden when he died. However, such moments and personal evolutions were rare in AS. Contrast that with Keating, Wynand, and Guy Francon in TF. They all had personal, and interesting, arcs; Keating realizing too late that Roark is right; Francon belatedly supporting his daughter; Wynand betraying the ideals he shared with Roark, his best friend.

Reading "The Fountainhead" for the first time myself. I was a bit surprised at that one part also, but knew by reading, it wasn't how she termed it. Roark is an excellent character.. I see so many similarities to Atlas Shrugged in her writing and characters and of course, life itself. "The Virtue of Selfishness" will be a book that you will continue to read after you finish. So much in it, I keep it on my kindle to read a little each day, just to keep me of sound mind in this crazy world.

The Fountainhead is my favorite. Roark is uncomplicated, but since we are so conditioned to not appreciate his nonconforming ways we don't, at first, understand him fully. He live his life for himself with no concern, whatsoever, for what other think or feel about him. He creates for his own pleasure, by his rules and for no one else.
As for the rape scene I think you have to understand Rand's view of sex. I understood it better once I watched Barbara Brandon's interview when she explained her own interpretation of Rand's views about intimacy. (I think it's on youtube and it's been posted in the gulch before, do a search) Again, it's outside typical, but makes total sense once it's spelled out. Speaking of the Brandon's....Nathanial and Ayn Rand had an affair (they both gained permission from their spouses prior), but Nathanial turned out to be a fraud and that's when Ayn Rand broke off all relations with him....hence the updated forward in The Virtue of Selfishness.
One more thing, I highly recommend reading For the New Intellectual and watching Ayn Rand A Sense of Life on Netflix... and also The Prophecies of Ayn Rand.
Keep us posted on your progress of reading more Rand and what you think. We love that in here. :)

Both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden wrote auto/biographies about Rand. Both are extremely interesting, and give details on "the breakup". I think it's best to get info from the source, because there are bound to be so many more & broader side notes included.
Tellingly enough, the title of his book is "Judgment Day; My Life with Ayn Rand" and hers was "The Passion of Ayn Rand". Both are worth a read.