Posted on 05/29/2010 5:38:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
If someone offered me twice the assessed value of my home -- in cash, no questions asked -- I’d schedule a moving van. It wouldn’t matter whether the potential buyer was black, red, brown or polka dotted. The only color I’d be interested in would be green.
However, if I’d lived in my home in 1952, the year after it was built, and an African-American potential buyer had offered me twice the assessed value, I would have been forced to turn the offer down. It was the Jim Crow era, and state and local laws made it illegal to sell homes on my street to blacks.
Again -- not only was this discrimination legal, it was mandated by law.
Here’s part of a Virginia law passed in 1912: “The preservation of the public morals, public health and public order, in the cities and towns of this commonwealth is endangered by the residence of white and colored people in close proximity to one another.” Thus localities were empowered to create “segregation districts.” It was, unbelievably, a misdemeanor “for any colored person, not then residing in a district so defined and designated as a white district, to move into and occupy as a residence any building or portion thereof in such white district.”
That, in a nutshell, is why the country needed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other federal intervention. Many states had enacted laws that prevented free enterprise. It was up to Washington to restore choice to millions of citizens.
That law is much in the news again these days, thanks to Rand Paul. On MSNBC, the Senate candidate seemed to suggest that parts of it over-reached. Dr. Paul has since clarified. “You would have voted yea. You would have voted yes in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Wolf Blitzer asked on CNN. “Yes,” Paul responded.
But that’s coming at this the wrong way. The question should be, “Given societal sea changes over the last 46 years, what parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act need to be reauthorized today?” Consider another question Blitzer asked Paul. “Did Woolworth -- Woolworth, the department store, have a right, at their lunch counters, to segregate blacks and whites?”
That misses the historical context. Owners were often mandated, by law, to segregate blacks and whites. “All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license,” read a Georgia law. For its part, Birmingham, Ala., passed a “separate accommodations” law as late as 1963.
The better question would be, “Would any business operating today make it a practice to segregate blacks and whites?” It’s possible. But highly unlikely. Businesses don’t make money by turning down customers.
Of course, there could still be discrimination. The owner of a Bed & Breakfast could decline to host homosexual couples, for example. In that case, federal law could theoretically force that owner to cater to gays.
But again, look at that example from the other direction: If you were gay, would you and your partner want to stay with an owner who self-identifies as opposing your lifestyle? You’d probably want to do the exact opposite -- organize a boycott of the anti-gay owner and deny him business.
There are those who look around, even in 2010, and see a deeply bigoted country. For example, moveon.org is collecting signatures on a petition to oppose “whites only” lunch counters. But is any politician or lobbying group pushing to resegregate lunch counters? It’s a petition to oppose a position that simply doesn’t exist.
Instead of seeing the progress we’ve made since the 1960s (that’s in living memory for many Americans) some insist minorities should live in fear that their rights are about to be stripped. But the burden of proof should be on the fear mongers.
Do they really believe Americans are so bigoted that we’re eager to go back to segregated facilities? Nobody could make this case, because there’s no evidence that American voters would stand for resegregation, and overwhelming evidence (based on the people we’ve elected in recent decades and the laws they’ve passed) that we wouldn’t.
Jim Crow laws were a profound injustice, based on the mistakenly decided Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that enshrined “separate but equal” facilities. It required federal intervention to fix that injustice, since it had been triggered by the federal government.
But now that Jim Crow’s flown south, he’s never coming back. News flash for those in the news business: It isn’t 1964.
Do "lunch counters" even exist? I've seen only two, that I recall, in my life, and both were in consciously-quaint local stores.
bump
Government screws things up.
It’s all about Rand Paul’s comments about private property rights.
It isn't about them seeing a bigoted country - it is about them deliberately concocting the illusion, for political gain, that the country is still bigoted.
Forgive me if this sounds racist; I wasn’t alive during this time in our country’s history: the law is written to state, essentially, that the forced segregation of races was intended to maintain morality and community cohesiveness within the respective communities. Has integration made society any better? I agree with you ClearCase, government screws up everything, and in this case, these laws created a perceived injustice. In reality, however, wouldn’t it be safe to say that the white and black communities segregate themselves on purpose anyway?
I live in a 95% white community. The nearest black “community” consists of a few blocks of row houses and section 8 apartments about 15 miles south of me. Those folks can’t afford to live where I live, and likewise, no one from my area would want to move there. Why push the issue of integration between races when they’re going to subconsciously segregate anyway?
Humans are animals like the rest of the orders, phyla, and geni on this planet. To be colorblind to race is to ignore fundamental differences in each other. That doesn’t mean that hyenas, lions, and gazelles can’t live together, it just means that on occasion one of those lions is going to get hungry and attack.
Thoughts?
Socialist-funded government K-12 schools remain the most massively segregated institutions in America. There is nothing that comes even close. Why?
Answer: Socialist government interference in the education market greatly poisons private housing decisions.
Introduced, support, passed and defended by DEMOCRATS!!!
The only people in America today that support and enforce segregation are liberal black people.
“I live in a 95% white community. The nearest black “community” consists of a few blocks of row houses and section 8 apartments about 15 miles south of me. Those folks can’t afford to live where I live, and likewise, no one from my area would want to move there. Why push the issue of integration between races when they’re going to subconsciously segregate anyway?”
There are already government programs to buy up housing in areas like yours and provide that housing to Section 8 occupants. Some federal laws require aggressive action by local governments to implement such programs.
Liberals believe that if Section 8 housing is available in upper middle class areas, the Section 8 residents will adopt upper middle class values and that when the upper-middle class see how badly Section 8 need assistance they will drop their resistance to welfare and higher taxation.
I know I’m stating the obvious, but that’s completely counterintuitive. Upper-middle class folks have no tolerance for 18” woofers booming in their neighborhoods at 2 in the morning. Likewise, if some section 8 thugs were having a party at 3 AM and shot rang out, you’d have half of the neighborhood establishing a cordon around the area armed to the teeth with privately owned weapons. We would then be called racist, Jim Crow loving, KKK members for trying to defend out properties and our families.
Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.
Replace “race” with “culture” and you will be on far better footing here, philosophically.
And in that frame, you might have something. Minorities that have fully assimilated American middle class cultural values be a problem to you?
Not at all! As a matter of fact, there’s a wonderful family living a few doors down from me. They have beautiful kids who play with the neighborhood kids, swim, ride bikes, and go to school together. Likewise, the father is a businessman and the mother a teacher. They pay their taxes, go to association meetings, and help out around the community. I have no problem with any of them, and I’ve even been to barbecues at their place. If every black family in this country could be like them, I’d be all for complete an total integration.
The problem is that there are so many welfare mentality blacks in this country who disdain the “white” lifestyle, they think it better to live in the slums where whites won’t go and live their lives off of our tax dollars. Until the government does away with all forms of welfare, the blacks in America will continue to be enslaved. We have a right to pursue happiness... it’s not guaranteed to us.
Why limit this to lunch counters? Shouldn't they also include soda fountains and malt shops?
ping
Schools are segregated due to quality of life issues. Blacks and Hispanics are associated with crime and school violence. Ask Asian immigrants who come to the US. The ones that go to majority black and hispanic schools receive daily beatings, lunch money robbery and tauntings from mainly black and hispanic students. Most Asians find the blacks are the worst while the hispanics are the least. Contrast the experience of Asian immigrants who go to majority white schools. Attacks and harassments drop drastically. So based on that experience, guess where most first generation American Asians are going to live and send their kids to school?
You are trapped in the liberal mentality of keeping people in stereotypical categories. This creates the cycle you see where people self-segregate and end up living the culture they are told they must fit in. You do have a lot of community self-segregation though attitudes that you must 'keep within your category' and act the culture you are 'expected' to act. This results in the 'other side of the tracks' mentality that seems to have segments of cities and communities that have higher crime, etc.
Free individuals living as individuals, not bound by what or how others say they must act and who they must associate with is the only way to break that cycle. It destroys the collectivist/statist attitudes where the 'controllers', be it government, community leaders, or just attitude, keep groups segregated and acting the way others define them.
You are also way off base with your 'lions and gazelles' analogy. We aren't talking about separate species here, we are all one species who happens to have slightly different traits in things like melanin content.
No offense, but a lot of what you say is just a reflection of that old collectivist, categorization attitude that keeps the cycle going- it allows others to categorize you and define your behavior by your category instead of you being and acting like an individual, not bound by your category, and not having a category to blame for your actions.
There would be no welfare if there weren't a demand. We let Big Brother control us through carrots and sticks. This isn't any sort of mentality by race, it is a liberal mentality. People of all races are enslaved by Liberalism and the only way to be free is for them as individuals to wake up and say no, I'm not going to accept your carrot. The government only supplies what there is a demand for.
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