12 February 2016

The Return of Jim Crow

I watched ‘Selma’ the other night. I found myself cheering and clapping and crying along with the heroes of Voting Rights history. That was 1965 and racism was out in the open. As horrible a time as it was at least they were honest. Now it’s 2016 and racism is here but it is a festering underbelly. The children and grandchildren of those who fought against Equal Rights and the Voting Act see their elders actions as a different kind of “Patriotism”; just as the Confederate flag is still argued to be a symbol of historic pride. During the film they show actual footage of the Selma march. Southerners line the roads, taunting the marchers, spitting on them and giving them the finger all while waving the Confederate flag - yes that really shows the truth behind such an iconic piece of Southern history. A Southern woman, a few years younger than me, has told me with pride that her parents were activists against desegregation and equal rights. Another tells how she could be friendly with black girls at school but they were not to be brought home, this 15+ years after Jim Crow was officially over.

I’ve been told that if people went and got better-paying jobs there would be no need to make the minimum wage a living wage. There is a disconnection between a white person with higher education and poor people, who are mainly black and don’t have the same educational opportunities. The idea that anyone who is a head of household and is working two jobs because one job won’t afford full-time hours and even then that two jobs don't pay a living wage and is still be below the poverty level is foreign to many Americans.


Private and/or religious schools popped up everywhere in the South during desegregation, due to white's not wanting their children to go to school with black children. The quality of education plummeted for poor whites who could not afford the better private schools. We see that still in the South but with a slight shift. Poor and lower-middle class whites and blacks are held at arms length by upper-middle and upper-class whites that are able to extricate themselves from the public school system and put their children into private and/or religious schools. While public schools struggle to maintain federal standards of education private religious schools teach biblically centered subjects that leave a whole new generation ignorant and private preparatory schools to cater to those with the cash. School vouchers are just exacerbating the problem by keeping sub-par private religious schools afloat by injecting much-needed cash into their reserves.


Voting Rights are being restricted through uncompromising voter ID laws. A total of 36 states have passed laws requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. 33 of these voter identification laws are in force in 2016. A photo ID can be a significant burden and such laws intrinsically discriminate against minorities, students and the elderly. North Carolina now mandates government-issued photo IDs at the polls, the bill does provide for a "free ID" to be offered at DMVs but it is difficult for those without transportation or the appropriate paperwork to get one. The state's early voting period was reduced from 17 to 10 days. "First of all, we didn't shorten early voting, we compacted the calendar," said Governor McCrory. The law also ended same-day registration and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day.


What also doesn't help is when you have a Presidential candidate spewing bigotry and racism among people that are already twisted with fear and hate. He allows them to think that it is ok to release their repressed hostility because he, a "respectable" businessman and Presidential front-runner, not only speaks to their fears of the "others" but encourages their brutality as well. Mr Trump puts forth statements, conjecture, assumed to be true by his supporters and the persons that are the focus of his diatribes are demonized and sometimes physically attacked. The color-bar seen at his rallys is a darker mindset that is giving a new face to Jim Crow.



These and other issues are what America needs to address in order to deal with the vehement hatred that is permeating our country. Jim Crow is alive and well and is coming out of the closet again after 50 years to see what mayhem he can accomplish.

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