So... how about that Tea Party?

[Final-Fan]

mrstickball said:

Final-Fan said:
The thing is that this is crazy.  The fact that we work to eliminate racial segregation doesn't mean that we should logically also work to eliminate men's and women's toilets.  Dealing with it on a case by case basis as you might say. 

And dealing with racial segregation socially ... didn't work.  Or, rather, the way it worked was the South, 1880-1950.  Now the innermost quoted post by you will say that this is simply a sad consequence of the correct position to take (government noninterference) but the idea that the problem would just go away on its own (once Jim Crow laws were gone) is pure fantasy.  Without the law against them the South may well have held out indefinitely. 

To put it another way, I'm looking at your final sentence.  If I'm not mistaken, racist clubs are allowed to exist, but businesses are treated differently since they are supposed to be open to the public.  American society on the whole decided racism was inappropriate, but Southern society came to a different answer, which they stuck to until American society as a whole used the law to force them to stop it. 

To be fair, the South didn't try it socially as much as legislatively. They had legal racism vis-a-vis the Jim Crow laws. These were state-enacted pieces of legislation. Only when the fed took them on, did it begin to dislodge itself from public laws.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, ect, caused most of the problems in the South after the Civil war for blacks - with few being elected (since they were not eligible to serve in official capacities), more supressive laws were passed, which continued to further damage their standing with businesses, and other realms.

Take a look at Jim Crow law history on Wikipedia. If you look at the anti-black legislation...You can see that the government did the most to destroy black Americans.

I know about all that, and it's a fair point to a certain extent, but the Jim Crow laws were much more of a manifestation of the culture than a cause of it. 

Example from the article:  Wilson got into office and the first thing he did was segregate everything he possibly could.  That wasn't due to any law, and despite his claim I seriously doubt it was for the benefit of blacks along with the whites. 

Jim Crow laws were created for the purpose of resisting Northern efforts to integrate (also mentioned in the article -- the CRA we all know and love was predated by close to a century by the CRA of 1875 which sadly did not take) as well as to keep blacks from gaining political power; and also to discourage any homegrown tolerance. 

I'd blame the Supreme Court more than the legislative branch.  But I guess they count as government so we agree?