Most of your evidence is from decades ago. But we have a cite (that you did read) that blacks often shop in that town. When was the last time a black person was harmed while shopping in Vidor? I’m not talking lynched, I’m talking “harmed”. If you can’t come up with something recent, then I’d say your assertion wilts like an unwatered plant in an East Texas garden.
So how does work for, say, the Diocese of Kansas City which is organizad as a corporation? Can they not be Catholic?
But the argument puddleglum was making is that the protections that make this kind of thing illegal shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t rightfully matter that it doesn’t exist any more; by making it legal again, one opens the door for it to come back. And the fact that the most recent example may or may not have stopped being a thing in 1993, almost three decades after the Civil Rights Act (and going by what others have pointed out here, may still be ongoing) does nothing to mitigate that. In fact, I made my response to puddleglum thinking this shit had been stomped out in the 70s at the latest; the fact it may be ongoing is just yet another reason why faith in humanity is entirely overrated.
In any case, arguing that we don’t need these laws because they’ve been so successful that we no longer need them is nonsense. It makes your response about as sensible as the supreme court case which shredded the VRA - you know, the one that was immediately followed by restrictive and in a few cases racially biased voting restrictions. Exactly the things those protections were there to prevent. It’s like throwing away an umbrella because you’re not getting wet right now.
Are you saying that an absence of lynching and physical harm to black people is enough to say that it’s not a sundown town? If so, I strongly disagree.
If virtually all black people in the region don’t feel safe living there, and the vast majority (if not 100%) don’t feel safe shopping there or otherwise stopping, then I think this is more likely due to real (if informal and mostly unspoken) behavior and practices by residents and business owners of Vidor than due to figments of their imagination. And I think this is supported by the recent history of KKK activity, including my recent personal witnessing of KKK signs and symbols on the main roads of Vidor. And I think that the most likely explanation for all these things is that there’s still significant and strong sundown-town sentiment in Vidor, and thus it’s reasonable to characterize the town this way.
In the past, sundown towns weren’t black and white (no pun intended) – there were tons of gray areas in the broader category of sundown towns. In some, black people couldn’t safely stop at any business for any reason, day or night. In others, they could stop during the day, but better not stay overnight. In others, they could stay in certain parts of town overnight, but not the white parts of town.
Which of those descriptions accurately describes Vidor now?
In which of these hotels/motels can blacks not stay?
Vidor is not a “sundown town” in the same way that Trump is not a “fascist”.
To play devil’s advocate here:
In all these situations, two ideals seem to be in conflict. One is a “social justice” objective to ensure that protected classes can go about living normal lives somewhat free from constant persecution. The other ideal is that, unless there is clear harm from what a business is doing, we would prefer less government intervention than more, that we should let business owners be free to run their businesses as they choose, even if we find their values abhorrent.
If (and that’s a big if) the modern world really is one where any member of a protected class has sufficient choice of which businesses to patronize, without undue hardship in living their lives if a few bigoted businesses refuse to serve them, then there’s an argument that the bigots’ right to be bigots should not be infringed; and perhaps even that we’re all better off it the bigots self-identify, so that we can all know what businesses to avoid.
Personally, I don’t think that our society is remotely close to meeting that if condition. I agree that, in practise, if the law were changed, a huge amount of 1950s-style racism (let alone homophobia) would rear it’s ugly head again. But, anyway, I think that’s the argument.
Imagine a town in which the white residents were icily polite to black visitors, treating them with courtesy but no friendliness.
What kind of law would you pass to remedy that?
I agree that that’s probably the argument, and I agree it fails on exactly those terms. If this last year has taught us anything, it’s that we’re a lot worse than we like to imagine, particularly when it comes to things like race.
I think it’s worth remembering that this hijack started when you said:
and realizing that most of this thread’s participants were alive in '93 when a Klan ralley ran out black residents of the public housing in Vidor.
I don’t see that. A t-shirt printing shop serves its customers by printing t-shirts. So if they refuse to print a t-shirt for somebody, they’re refusing to serve that person.
I do see the point you’re making here. But I don’t feel the situation is as clear-cut as you’re presenting it.
Here’s the shirt in question. I defy anyone to claim there’s something offensive about the design. If the exact same design had been submitted by a sports team, for example, the company would have printed it without a problem.
So the company’s policy isn’t directed against the design. It’s directed against the people who are submitting the design. Or as you put it, they’re refuse to serve a person buying the same product that the business would provide to anyone else solely because of that persons’s membership of a protected class. Except that being gay isn’t defined as a protected class. And my argument is that it should be.
The argument comes down to that. Should gay people be a protected class? Or should it remain legal to discriminate against gay people solely on the basis that they are gay?
That’s only indisputable if they refused to make an “I love ice cream” shirt for a gay customer. As it stands, they refused a bunch of designs in the past. If the strip club owner they refused to make a shirt for was jewish, we should assume racial discrimination?
I agree that it isn’t clear-cut, that these are difficult questions. But I do think your claim that “product” and “person” are equivalent is rather obviously wrong.
Let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that we are in a jurisdiction where sexual orientation is a protected class (which I agree it should be).
(1) Suppose I’m a straight supporter of the Gay Pride rally, and I go into a t-shirt store and ask them to print a Gay Pride t-shirt. The owners refuse, because they don’t like what it says.
(2) Suppose I’m a non-bigot running a t-shirt store. A gay man comes into my store and asks me to print a t-shirt that says “Hitler was right about the Jews”. I refuse, because I don’t like what it says.
I don’t think you understand what sundown towns are. They rely on informal and unspoken covenants, not written rules, for the most part. They’re almost impossible to prove with 100 percent accuracy, and probably even harder to legislate against.
All I’ve said is that the best explanation for all the facts about Vidor, IMO, is that such informal and unspoken covenants play a role in why there are no black people in the town, when the region is so black. Do you have a better explanation?
And I think it’s reasonable to characterize this as a sundown town. I haven’t suggested a legislative solution.
I haven’t suggested any legislative solution at all.
I will bite, and offer one. It is exactly the legislation that we already have, making race a protected class.
In the short term, the effect on die-hard benighted towns such as Vidor might be negligible. There will never be direct legal recourse.
But in the long run, as such protective legislation assists in the civilizing process and racism is marginalized in broader society as a whole, as the death of old bigots the birth of a more enlightened and civilized younger generation changes the demographics of racism, a place like Vidor will eventually either change, become de-populated, or become an irrelevant isolated curiosity, a town of old bigots that we might visit only as part of a mixed-race tour group to point and laugh.
Some social ills, such as “icily polite” non-engagement, cannot be addressed by legislation. “Don’t be a jerk” is beyond the reach of our laws.
The small town where I grew up was nearly all-white, with a few hispanic families, in a little micro-barrio. I remember when the first black family moved in. They weren’t harrassed, exactly, but they were shunned. If one of them walked into a store, all the other customers made a point of walking out.
In time, the family lost heart, and moved out again. And the shit-kicking red-necked sons of bitches in that town considered it a moral victory.
There isn’t any way to write a law against that kind of behavior.
And I think you are using an anachronistic term as an appeal to emotion, in just the same way that folks do when they claim Trump is a fascist.
Hard to prove, but you’re sure it is one. That’s convenient in a debate, but that just means you have an opinion.
Now you’re the one who doesn’t understand what a sundown town is. Most towns used to have explicit covenants back in the day, but even those towns were not necessarily sundown towns. A sundown town isn’t “a place where there a whole lot of racists” or even “a place blacks are afraid to go”. There has to be some real physical threat to blacks just for being there. And usually, it was not just because the folks were racist, but that the police were either in on the game, or at least were willing to turn a blind eye to when the citizens took matters into their own hands. Here’s a quote from the linked article: * "charles Jones is a 62-year-old African-American man who lives in Beaumont. He told us when he was 19, he and three of his black friends were changing a flat tire on their broken down car in Vidor one night. A white policeman stopped.
“He said, ‘Well, let me tell ya – you boys better wrap and get out of here, because I’m going to go to that next exit and come back around. You better be gone!’ " Jones recalled.”*
And I think it’s unreasonable. But I’m not the one who has to prove it. You are, but you haven’t been able to do so.
Just to make your position clear, John Mace, are multiple KKK flags/signs along main street not a threat of violence or do disbelieve iiandyiii saw them?
I’m not sure, but I think the evidence strongly points in that direction. Of course, it also depends on the definition of a sundown town.
Based on all the facts, including things I’ve personally seen, I think the town qualifies. I think it’s very likely the Vidor PD is in on it, or at least tolerates it – I don’t believe all the facts would be possible without their tolerance. I don’t think they routinely overtly threaten black people, but I think prominent KKK displays constitute an implicit threat, and I think the town tolerates these displays (and maybe even encourages them in many ways).
It’s likely a milder version of a sundown town then it used to be. I doubt they’d lynch a black person who managed to get a hotel room. But a lack of lynchings, or even the occasional actual black person who safely shops or stays there, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a sundown town, unless to qualify, black people must always, 100% of the time be threatened to the point of staying away. I think if most black people are so threatened, as I believe they are based on all the facts I’ve previously laid out, then I think it’s reasonable to characterize the town as a sundown town.
The social and political milieu has changes enough in the US that such a term as “sundown town” just doesn’t make sense anymore. It describes a situation that was not uncommon at a time when segregation was the norm and could be (and often was) enforced by the government. I think we cheapen the term and do a disservice to the folks who actually lived through that time. Not every racial situation amounts to a sundown town just like every heavy handed government action doesn’t amount to Naziism.