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And money was the point of the American Revolution.
Yeah they were living tax free and the Boston Tea Party they were protesting tax cuts on tea since it would have driven out the illegal smuggling of tea. That's right the legal tea that was better quality would have been cheaper so people would have bought it and people like John Hancock who was a tea smuggler would have been out of business so he organized the Boston Tea Party to protest the tax cut.
Bill Cosby has a comedy bit about when he was playing sports and traveling in the south. The first time they were told they had to eat in kitchen they were upset and mad until they got in the kitchen and all the cooks were black. The cooks always heaped their plates full and fed them more than the white players were going to get.
Then once they went to a southern cafe to eat while on the road and they gladly headed to the kitchen only to be told every thing has changed and you don't have to eat in the kitchen anymore. He said they began to bawl and protest "we want to eat in the kitchen."
Also you might remember the book recently published by a black man who went under cover as a bus boy in an all White country club. I believe he was a lawyer. He said all the Whites spoke disparagingly about black people in his presence as if he was not even standing there.
I don't doubt the accuracy of any of these anecdotes. The problem people have is in understanding when they were true! They hear the stories and believe they are true today.
That time-warp occurs everywhere. Recently I heard Chris Rock, the comedian, begin a routine with, "Every time there is a lynching in The South...." As if it occurs regularly - just pick your week.
There's nothing we in the South can do about it. Can't kill a myth with a fact.
I don't doubt the accuracy of any of these anecdotes. The problem people have is in understanding when they were true! They hear the stories and believe they are true today.
That time-warp occurs everywhere. Recently I heard Chris Rock, the comedian, begin a routine with, "Every time there is a lynching in The South...." As if it occurs regularly - just pick your week.
There's nothing we in the South can do about it. Can't kill a myth with a fact.
http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/cosby_bill.htm His travels with the U.S. Navy track team took him into the Deep South, where he was forced to enter restaurants through the back door and eat in the kitchen.
The problem with bigotry is you can't kill ignorance with facts.
Anyone who has a remote fondness for 60's comedy, knows the routine I am referring to. Cos' picked up a little in those days from the black protest comedy of Dick Gregory and Godffrey Cambrige.
Last edited by thriftylefty; 02-12-2014 at 10:01 AM..
Come on now...not all restaurants were segregated, the scenes in the movies were just that, designed to promote the plot of the movie and dramatize the problem. Of course black people worked in restaurants, not just as dishwashers, but all the other positions too, even as owners.
Lived in Arkansas for a short time as a kid back then and don't remember any problems in the little cafes we went to; people of all races were both customers and employees and no one really seemed to care. Did anyone really care who cooked their hamburger or who was going to eat it?
I'm sure that some little redneck places existed in the deep south or maybe in upper Maine where people were funny about those sort of things, but I don't think the "problem" was as wide spread as some think.
No, I won't "come on now...". Do not attempt to revise history. Learn from it.
My family, on it's way to Florida stopped at no "red neck cafes". We were solidly upper middle class. When traveling, we mostly ate at chain restaurants to ensure cleanliness, I suppose.
They were SEGREGATED. The same restaurant that would have black servers and customers in the North had only black janitorial staff or kitchen help in the Coastal south east. I would say that the Jim Crow segregation started around Maryland and Delaware, and got worse as you traveled South.
What you saw was the exception, not the rule. And exceptions such as these were few and far between.
And money was the point of the American Revolution.
Money was a point of the American Revolution, there was an ideological component as well.
That self interest was also present might dilute aspects of the ideology does not negate its presence. Many of those living in the colonies had come, or were the descendants of people who had come, to escape from the social paralysis of societies which featured privileged nobility. A revolution which set out to create a society sans nobility had an enormous amount of appeal.
There was no draft, everyone who fought in the revolution was doing so on a voluntary basis, and we can hardly assert that all of them stood to realize some direct or immediate financial gain with victory.
I am a bit too young to provide such a definitive first hand recollection as some have provided. My own knowledge is derived from stories told to me as a young child about my parents life before I was born and their childhood and school days stories. I have a few personal memories of places and people I met as a very young child, but they predate my understanding of segregation and discrimination and thus the events of the time were not viewed with that type of scrutiny.
Based on that and the extreme differences in the family and friend recollections told me and those posted here, I can only surmise that even across the south there were great differences in how race relations were perceived and acted upon. I did not see the extreme segregation in my area at all. Blacks were at least tolerated in public even by those who harbored racial bigotry and hatred. Perhaps things had already changed by the time I was born in 62, but I suspect not that much so soon.
I grew up in San Antonio, TX and sure there were racial tensions in the early 60s and 70s. Some exist today. The concerns in those days were racial gangs and thugs more than concern of a black family moving into the neighborhood, although that was surely of some concern too. I can recall seeing black servers in a some of the few restaurants we went to in those days. There were not many, but we did not eat out much so my exposure was very limited.
I recall my father having black workers in the construction crews. Again, not many as the predominant worker was hispanic in the building trade even then. Hispanics did not get along well with blacks, even less so than whites, so it was a rare event to have them working side by side on the same crew. it was more common to have a black subcontractor or a black crew on a job rather than as part of a mixed race crew. I never got the idea in those days that it was because the blacks were any different than anyone else, just that the older hispanics would not work with them for some reason. I am sure now that many whites were probably objecting as well, but there was no institutionalized ostrization that I was made aware. I never heard "You just don't do that" like I hear in the movies.
Church was mixed with all races in attendance. The mix tended to reflect the neighborhood, but we would have some people that would travel out of their home neighborhood to attend.
There was lots of what would be today considered unacceptable racial slurs used by everyone. The N word was common, as well as cracker, whitey, *******, spick, greaser, *****, taco, oreo, ***** and lots of other words. At my age I never felt these were bad words, but I was surely aware when someone used them and was being hateful. It was not the word that conveyed that, it was the tone or context in how it was used.
Much the same way today that ***** can be a benign term or a hateful term simply by adjusting the tone and accent of th e pronounciation. I can remember hearing the difference in the term Mexican. There was a lot more animous toward hispanics in my childhood than there was toward blacks. Probably just because of the population ratios in my area.
I know my grandmother used some of the most dreadful hate speach ever villified in popular media today when she spoke of her best friends in childhood. She did not mean anything mean or disrespectful about them. Growing up in the Indian territory of Oklahoma she had many words for her childhood playmates that were out of vogue 60 years later. She grew up with them and they were just part of the vocabulary. Many years ago "gay" had a very different connotation than it does today. My grandmother, today if she were still with us, would likely talk about the gay man she saw laughing with the children at the parade. You know, the one with all the makeup and funny hair and nose. He made those silly ballon animals. He was so gay and cheery.
I think there was and is real discrimination. I don't think it was a pervasive everywhere as it was in some places in the south. I think even in the south it varied in intensity and application. Not every white person alive in 1950 had the same opinion or acted the same way in relation to racial relations. To paint an entire culture with the same brush is almost as bad and painting an entire race with the same stereotypical belief system.
I have experience in my adult life much more intense racial hatred in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington DC than I have in modern Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Lousianna or Texas. I will grant you that Lousianna and Eastern Texas are the worst racially of any of the southern states I have been to, but Pennsylvania and New Jersy have them both beat easily in my personal experience.
My point is that history is clear that racial discrimination occurred, it is just not clear on exactly where it happened and did NOT happen or to what degree it occurred in every locale. It focuses on the extreme and worst cases, not the everyday and mundane experiences.
To my experience there were certainly people who disliked blacks and most other races other than their own. White, Hispanic, Vietnamese, whatever. It did not matter. They did not run around with flaming crosses or walking across the street to avoid being close (unless the person really smelled bad I do remember one vagrant people were avoiding one day). Given a choice on who to associate with, many would be picky. Sitting next to in a restaurant or in church? Not so much.
I do know that attitudes today are still very different in Huntsville and Birmingham Alabama than they are in San Antonio Texas. I have seen firsthand the preserved history in Birmingham and the physical hurt left over from the 50-60s. It is not a stretch for me to believe that things were worse then than my memory can supply, but given how far Birmingham and San Antonio are apart today it is difficult to believe things were ever that bad in San Antonio.
Sure there were white individuals in the South that did not hate blacks. And there were some that probably opposed Jim Crow (Segregation) laws.
But most didn't say a word.
No one is saying that everyone in the South was actively racist. But history tells us that quite a few were. My honest Southern friends tell of parents and grandparents that to this day wish for the "good old days". I believe them and I believe history.
I also believe my own eyes. What I saw in the South is forever emblazoned in my mind, and I have passed my recollections down to my children.
Well as I said it's often libertarians. They dwell in a fantasy world. These are the same people who think the minimum wage should be abolished and that unemployment would vanish as a result.
Wrong.
Libertarians DO propose abolishing the minimum wage. You just made up the rest. Platform | Libertarian Party
Nope I didn't. Libertarians want the laws that made Jim Crow illegal repealed. They want businesses to be able to discriminant based on race.
Nah....
Quote:
....3.5 Rights and Discrimination
Libertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights. We reject the idea that a natural right can ever impose an obligation upon others to fulfill that "right." We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual's human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs. This statement shall not be construed to condone child abuse or neglect.......
Isn't it amazing how many people look back to the sixties and beyond with great fondness reporting to anyone who will listen how great it was for everyone - especially how content black people were with segregation.
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