I agree that things have improved a lot. But I also think that those old feelings, and old practices, are still here to a more-significant degree than many folks (most of them white, in my experience) understand (and often are willing to accept). I think we harm the fight against these remnants by denying they exist, or if we’re not willing to be harshly critical of them (including using terms like “sundown towns” and “white supremacism”).
It sounds like it’s a tactical or semantic disagreement at worse – I think the best way to fight this kind of stuff is to describe it accurately (as I see it) and have no compunction about using descriptors that some find harsh, if they fit.
As bad as Vidor is, it’s not usual – most small towns aren’t like it. But it’s not unique, either. Is it really that shocking to you if a small number of sundown towns might remain in the US? Very significant portions of many southern states still believe (according to polling) that interracial marriage should be illegal. With that in mind, is it really that shocking if there are still a handful of towns that, informally and usually in an unspoken way, try to avoid giving services and space to black people?
In my experience, this is the kind of thing that most black Americans say “duh, obviously this stuff is still happening” – but most white Americans, for some reason, can’t accept. 50 years ago, so many white people were really shocked to find out the reality of what life was life for so many black Americans. Is it really that surprising if many white people still are blind to the realities of life for many black Americans? Why do you trust your own instincts on this?
If every cop in town says “move along” to any black person they see, without any enabling legislation or public statement by the police chief, is that enforcement by the government? Would that be a sundown town?
@John Mace: I ask because one of the anecdotes in iiandyiii’s earlier link said that when a black guy and some friends were changing a flat tire a cop rolled up and told them “you better finish up quick because I’ll be back soon and you better be gone when I do”. I don’t get the impression that you think that qualifies as “sundown town” behaviour since it’s not legislation or a beating.
It’s not irrelevant to people that live nearby. And there’s plenty of reason to believe that there might be similar towns scattered around the country, even if they’re unusual.
It’s reasonable to talk about bad things, even when they’re not terribly common.
Do you have a cite that the police were acting on explicit covenants if they asked those guys to get out of town back in '64? You say it used to be a sundown town, so what municipal legislation changed that makes you agree it was in 64 but not now? Which hotels refused service in 64 to black people? How many lynchings happened there before 64?
I agree that racism is alive and well in the US today. I am not disputing that.
Maybe it’s an age thing, but I actually was alive during the Jim Crow era, and although we mostly lived in New England when I was growing up, I did live a few years in the South, and remember actually seeing “Colored” water fountains. There is quite a bit of difference between institutionalized racism, enforced by the government, and the kind of informal racism you are talking about.
Yes, there’s a difference, but there’s also overlap. Sundown towns mixed them – but the informal practices could be as significant in terms of effects on black motorists, travelers, and emigrants, at least in some circumstances. The Green Book existed as much or more because of those informal practices – unwritten covenants that meant that many gas stations and hotels wouldn’t serve black travelers – as due to formal and written racist laws.
Should I ask you before I assert anything negative, just so you can tell me whether it’s a common enough bad thing to not qualify as RO? Maybe you could post a long list of the requirements to save us some time?
Or maybe one guy on the internet saying I shouldn’t talk about something because it’s not common enough isn’t really worth worrying about?
I thought you hated argument by assertion. I guess it’s only when it’s the assertions of others.
Maybe. But when those circumstances center around some podunk town of 10K people, I’d say we’re in a different era. And when you throw on top of that your own admission that there is not a thing we can or should do about it, legally, what is your point? If you’d like to get a boycott of Vidor businesses going, you can sign me up. I promise to never do business there at least until they improve their relations with the minority community around them.
Discrimination against homosexuality is equivalent to discrimination against homosexuals. You can’t discriminate against one without discriminating against the other.
I thought I had already answered that question. I have no problem with a store owner who refuses to print shirts with Nazi slogans. Nazis do not deserve any legal protection. You should be free to discriminate against Nazism and to discriminate against Nazis.
Ironically, the West Virginia law that we’re discussing does protect Nazis. It says that you can’t discriminate against people because of their political affiliation and I feel being a Nazi is covered by that. So West Virginia law gives more legal protection to Nazis than it gives to gay people. Which, in my opinion, is a bad law that should be changed.
I think we are indeed in a different era. But these things still exist, and are still significant in the lives of many Americans, even if it’s significantly fewer than before, and lesser in its horror. I think it’s worth discussing, and worth reminding folks that significant remnant of these past eras remain and still do harm to our country. I brought it up because a poster indicated that they thought it didn’t happen at all any more.
There don’t have to be a huge number of these towns for a very large number of black children to grow up, having witnessed friends and family be mistreated, not feeling that they have a true and fair shot at success and fair treatment in our society. Vidor may only have 10,000 people in it, but probably tens or hundreds of thousands of black children (or more) pass through it every year traveling down I-10.
Bringing it up helps remind people of the need to oppose this when they see it. For all you know there might be a small town like Vidor within a hundred miles of where you live right now – if so, maybe one day you’ll be in position to do something, however small it might be, to oppose it, simply because you’re aware that such towns can still exist today.
You seem to be advocating a “protected class of speech”. I don’t think that’s going to go well. Suppose I am not a member of a protected class myself, just so we can be clear that’s not a factor in the transaction. Who decides exactly what range of slogans I can legally force any business owner to print on a t-shirt, and which slogans he can legally decline to print? Will there be a list? Who writes the list?