Justice & Law Quote by Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s line is a masterclass in rhetorical jujitsu: it takes the language of fairness and flips it into an argument against structural help. “Open doors” sounds like opportunity; “price to get in” quietly recasts inequality as a personal budget problem. The metaphor smuggles in a moral claim: if you can’t afford entry, you haven’t earned it. The second sentence sharpens the blade. “If he has the price, he may not need the laws” frames civil-rights enforcement and anti-discrimination policy as training wheels for the unqualified, implying that merit naturally triumphs unless government interferes.

The kicker is the final assertion, delivered like a commonsense mic drop: “There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts.” It’s technically narrow and politically potent. By focusing on the absence of explicit legal compulsion, Reagan erases the machinery that actually produced segregation: redlining, restrictive covenants, steering by realtors, exclusionary zoning, lending discrimination, white violence, and the plain economics of unequal schools and jobs. He’s not arguing that ghettos are good; he’s arguing that they’re voluntary, and therefore not government’s responsibility to remedy.

Context matters: Reagan rose with a post-civil-rights conservatism that translated backlash into “colorblind” governance. The intent is to relocate racism from systems to individuals, turning the state from guarantor of rights into an overbearing doorman. The subtext is blunt: inequality is unfortunate, but it’s not unjust in any way that requires collective repair.