Jim Crow (1877-1967?) was the way of life in the American South for about a hundred years after the black slaves were freed. It kept the races separate with blacks at the bottom. It fed on fear. The laws that it was built on were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s by Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr and others in the civil rights movement.
Many older white Americans are still Jim Crow racists in their thinking, but most younger whites are colour-blind racists.
Jim Crow was named after one of the main blackface characters from the old minstrel shows of the 1800s.
Under Jim Crow blacks (then called coloureds) went to separate schools, hospitals, waiting rooms and so on. They had to sit at the back of the bus. In most cases they were not allowed to eat with white people, much less marry them. They could not call white people by their first names – they always had to show them respect. Blacks could not vote in elections or hold public office. They could not even kiss in public.
If you did not know your place as a black person you were dealt with. First white people would break your windows or burn a cross in front of your house as a warning. If that was not enough, then they would come and lynch you: beat you up and then kill you by hanging you from a tree. That is what Billie Holiday sings about in “Strange Fruit”.
The Ku Klux Klan was behind much of this violence. They were white men dressed in white sheets with two eye holes and a point at top. They kept blacks down by striking terror into their hearts.
The sheriff and the judge in town knew what was going on but they looked the other way. Because blacks could not vote or stand for office, the government and courts were completely white. Even the juries.
In those days no white man was ever thrown in prison for raping a black woman, much less put to death. But a black man or even a black boy could turn up dead for so much as whistling at a white woman, like Emmett Till. His killers would walk free.
The stated reason for Jim Crow was to keep the white race pure. If blacks were equal to whites, then the races would mix. The South, which is mainly white, would become mainly brown. The white race would be destroyed.
Jim Crow laws even had the backing of the highest court in the land. In 1896 the Supreme Court said that it was not unjust to separate blacks from whites so long as everything was kept equal. Only in 1954 did it come to see that in practice separate meant unequal. In 1967 it said blacks could marry whites.
Jim Crow as law was now dead. But, as we saw in 2006 in Jena, it still seems to live on in the hearts of some white people.
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I really read the hole thing and i think that it suck for black people to live that way and evern sleep that way that other people do that kind of thing to them and still live with there self. and walking down the street knowing that white and black could not walk together on eat together. Some times i feel like it is still happening still and i really sucks i do not like it at all.
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The laws have been struck down, but the way people feel has not changed nearly as much.
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Africans were put through the worst. Worst than the Jews who weren’t even as innocent as the Africans.
Racism may be in every race, but the whites represented it the most and in the worst way.
No ism of Satan can last.
Only the ism of G-d forever prevail.
Satan is dead.
G-d is alive.
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Jim Crow was a real guy! He was a slave who taught Thomas D. Rice (aka “Big Daddy” Rice”) the “Jump Jim Crow” song and dance.
Now Jim’s had a whole system named after him. I’m sure he feels blessed and highly favored now. 😛
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Most people don’t know this but I believe the reason so many back people were lyched during the Jim Crow era was to do more than just Kill them. In the Old Testament its said that a man that hangs from a tree is cursed. The Crucifixtion of Jesus also represents a man being hung from a tree. To me there was a deeper meaning to Lynching Black men, white people didn’t just want to kill us they wanted to curse our Souls for all eternity preventing them from going to heaven.
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You mentioned “Jena” but didn’t explain it. Is there a post about the Jena 6?
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I live in the south and I hate it, the white people in the neighborhood treat me like the invisible woman, and I have light skin and pin straight hair, and european features but the one drop rule holds true (European granny)
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Edit: Do you think the whites in my neighborhood are racist?
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Such an easy to understand overview of Jim Crow. My 7th graders will be reading this article during our Reconstruction unit.
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^ IT is great to see teachers incorporate this material in their teaching. It was completely omitted from the curriculum when I went to public school.
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Reblogged this on IBHE Collaborative University.
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Reblogged this on Steph's Blog and commented:
“American racism is always gendered; racism and sexism are mutually dependent, and cannot be unstitched.”
I’m more comfortable separating racism from misogyny and sexism. Their separate ideologies. I get that they can work in conjunction with each other but shifting racism to gender allows white feminists to claim they are just as oppressed as blacks which historically is not the case.
“This white supremacist and benevolently sexist ideology depends both on the subjugation of white women by white men, and on the subjugation of all people who are not white—by white people (including white women).”
Again this statement puts white women on the same par with black women. It suggests they suffer the same kinds of oppression. You can’t have it both ways by putting white women are on a pedestal yet claim white women are equally oppressed. I believe white women are the standard of beauty not just here in America but the world over. That gives white women tremendous privilege.
“When Donald Trump announced his bid for the presidency last week, he dredged up a common fear about immigrants crossing the border from Mexico: “They’re rapists.” To protect the women of America—the white ones, because when we say “women,” we usually, by default, mean “white women”—we must practice this exclusion on the basis of race, Trump implied. This highly selective concern about preventing sexual violence is dependent on the peril of white women; Trump failed to mention that 80 percent of girls and women crossing that border are raped as they make the journey.Those girls and women aren’t white. Gender is always raced, and race is always gendered.”
The author here failed to mention that all the rapes happened in Mexico which would seem to validate Trumps point about Mexicans being rapists but that claim doesn’t hold up either once I took a look at it. The author ends with “Gender is always raced, and race is always gendered ” when racism had nothing to do with the sexual violence happening in Mexico. Classism and a parasitical class did.
Amnesty international states that “Women and girl migrants, especially those without legal status traveling in remote areas or on trains, are at heightened risk of sexual violence at the hands of criminal gangs, people traffickers, other migrants or corrupt officials,” the 2010 Amnesty International report stated. “…Many criminal gangs appear to use sexual violence as part of the “price” demanded of migrants. According to some experts, the prevalence of rape is such that people smugglers may require women to have a contraceptive injection prior to the journey as a precaution…”
So we see its a very small percentage of the Mexican population committing rapes. It was gangs and government workers. In fact Mexico didn’t make the top ten rape countries but the U.S did.
http://top10for.com/top-10-countries-highest-rape-crime-2014/
About a week ago an illegal alien shot and killed a white women in San Francisco and the press just lost its mind. 96 Californians have been shot dead by the police here since the beginning of the year but nobody talks about that. Their is talk about passing a bill that would mandate a minimum five year prison sentence to those who are caught in country after previously being deported. If we cant drone brown people we will lock them up. National boundaries shouldn’t determine human value and the right to travel seems to me to be a basic human right.
“It was also the latest in an unbearably long line of lethality meted out in the name of white womanhood—in my name, and maybe in yours. In the name of my purity and virtue and perfect femininity. We must not ignore the role of white womanhood in this act of white supremacist violence, or in any other. We must not find a way, yet again, of avoiding talking about whiteness. And until white women decide that we will no longer be used as an excuse for violence, until we decide that we will no longer tacitly condone and benefit from the violence, we will continue to have blood on our pale, “perfect” hands.”
White women are used as an excuse for racial violence that’s true.
I’m looking at the white feminist savior complex. Lets just keep talking about racism “until we decide” but no mention of institutional and structural racism and its deconstruction.
I could be wrong about this and I’m sure other’s here will let me know. 🙂
THIS!
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Reblogged this on mercyfulgrace.blog and commented:
Heart breaking
#MercyfulGrace #LoveIsLove #Love
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If I went to live in Japan, I wouldn’t expect to be treated the same as the Japanese. It’s highly arrogant to demand equal rights with the descendants of the creators of a country that your ancestors didn’t create. When you are a guest in someone else’s fatherland, be a gracious guest.
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