In America, could you get in trouble for being 'too nice' to black folk?

Factual Questions
21

Thanks for the links and replies; it’s insane to think how hate-filled and ignorant the population was just a few short centuries (or even decades!) ago.

That’s a plot point in the book of the OP; one of the main characters notices a black man reading. The black explains that he’s now free, and doesn’t think he can forget how to read. Eventually he is taught mathematics, too.

Speaking of which, one of the cases I was thinking of is the horrendous case of Jesse Washington in Waco Texas, I seem to remember the Klan lynching him for accused rape, but Wiki says that it was the local population who mutilated him due to accused rape/murder.

ETA; I don’t get the reference to ‘articulate’ - was this a well known faux pas or something?

22

The “articulate” means don’t compliment someone for something that should be normal. Sort of like “gosh, you’z smarter than I thought you was!”

The question really to the OP is “who’s gonna stop you?” and “who’s gonna stop them?”
It’s not like there was a law to stop the boss for firing you for being nice to bunch of underclass; after all, if you got them too uppity they might think they were entitled to equal wages or something. So people with a poor attitude toward race relations were and did take out their hatred on any whites who were too sympathetic.

And if a person fired you, or called you a nigger-lover and got you ostracized, who’s going to stop them? The majority seemed to go along with the status quo. So you severely limited you career and social prospects by sticking up for a bunch of outsiders. Is it any wonder the general population kept their head down and accepted the loudest most obnoxious squeaky wheels?

One comment I recall during the 60’s was the sympathetic people liked forced integration, so now when they hired a black store clerk, say, and the customer complained, they could say “but the government makes me.”

23

This is a very complicated topic and I will be happy to write at length on it. I grew up in in northwestern Louisiana in the late 1970’s - early 1990’s. Would you believe me if I told you that we had segregated schools until 1980? Believe it or not, it was a fact despite what your school books will tell you. Both of my parents taught at the black school and my grandfather was not only the president of parish school board, he was also the head of the national one as well.

My town kept segregation until 1980 through a technicality. We were a very small town and whites literally lived on one side of the railroad tracks and blacks on the other so all you had to do was to draw two separate school districts dividing the town of 1,300 people in half to keep it segregated. The courts finally noticed and my grandfather had to come up with an integration plan starting in the late 1970’s. He received so many death threats for it that it was probably a contributing factor in his early death at 55 in 1982 due to heart failure.

The above may make it sound like we were a progressive family in a backwards area and that is true in a way but completely untrue in others. We were fighting the white trash of the area which had a completely different view than the teachers and other professionals that lived there. White trash is the lowest form of person there is and we didn’t tolerate them to any degree. On the other hand, my family is really conservative in general but fair to everyone and we do not agree with modern progressives about anything significant.

Being nice to a black person was never forbidden in the South and it was never uncommon at all. That would be crazy because there are different unofficial ranks of black people even in the most racist societies. Some of those are quite high and surpass even biological family members. You protect them like a best friend even with your life. Most people, me included, were partially raised by black nannies who we loved dearly even more than most of our biological family members including your own grandmothers.

I am 40 years old and my nanny, Lola ,only died 4 years ago. She was old when she got me at 17 months old and stuck with me until the end when she was over 90. I still tear up when up when I think about her but we stuck together until the end and I always went to see her when I went back home. She still had pictures of me and my brothers as well as my daughters on her walls in the nursing home the last time I went to see her mixed in with her biological grandchildren. That is just the way it works in the Deep South.

Threads like this make me realize that many people have no idea what they are talking about because they are trying to visualize something that they have no real reference points for. Blacks are a majority in many of the cities in the Deep South (New Orleans has been majority black for a very long time for example as are most of the large cities in Louisiana; many of the smaller towns like my home town are roughly 50% black).

There are some people that are quite racist but you will go insane in short order if racism is a major thought process in the Deep South. Everybody gets along just fine on a day to day basis even if there is limited voluntary segregation in lifestyle choices like church services. If it weren’t for the younger black male demographic, everything would probably work out even better. I have a few black male friends from my home town that made good. The rest crashed and burned in the prison system. OTOH, I had a few surprises. A black woman from the absolute worst family I have ever encountered (literally; almost all the rest of her family has been or is in prison and some of them for life) just made full Bird Colonel in the Air Force and I am super-proud of that achievement knowing the situation she grew up in.

I live in the Boston area now which has a serious history of racism of its own. The ‘enlightened’ solution to racism here seems to be to price out all the undesirables out of the state and then comment on how it could be done better from the safe confines of exclusive mainstream white and Jewish communities.

Racism isn’t a solved problem in the U.S in the least and I don’t expect it to be in my lifetime. However, I do not like race relations in the U.S to be misrepresented by people that probably grew up in a non-Southern city or suburb. It doesn’t work the way you think it does and never has. You can always find examples examples of atrocities but tjose are not typical.

24

I’ll echo what others have already said about being made the subject of social ostracism, and add that even those at the very highest echelons of society weren’t immune from this. No less than the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was viciously condemned by the public and the press in 1901 for inviting a black man, Booker T. Washington, to a White House dinner. An anonymous poem attacking the president, “Niggers in the White House”, was published in newspapers all over the country.

Nearly thirty years later social attitudes hadn’t changed significantly. In 1929 Herbert Hoover’s wife, Lou Hoover, again invited a black person to a White House party, and newspapers were quick to condemn this supposedly heinous act of pollution. (Never mind the fact that the invitee was a congressman’s wife.) The “Niggers in the White House” poem resurfaced and was even incorporated wholesale into a Senate resolution (which, fortunately, was later withdrawn and stricken from the record).

25

Yeah, it’s dangerous, and patronizing, and generally icky, to me at least. The only thing worse would be to note how surprisingly intelligent and clean a black man is.

But who knows, you might become Vice President of the United States, if you were a Senator talking about another Senator.

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

(Audio here.)

26

(bolding mine)

Very well said! :cool:
I was born and raised in Houston, my parents are from, and the majority of my relatives still live in and around, Winn Parish, La. (Which is the general area that Shagnasty describes so eloquently.)
Having spent considerable time there in my early years, I concur with, and can attest to the accuracy of, Shagnasty’s excellent post.

27

The kind of paternalistic racism that Shagnasty describes is pretty insidious because it places expectations upon individuals who go on to play a particular role in life, thus it becomes self-fulfilling.

Ask why such a high percentage of blacks ended up in prison or with poor education, after all the school facilities may well be perfectly good, and it all comes down to self expectation.

Any teacher will tell you of this effect, why poor people behave like poor people, etc

28

(bolding mine)

May I ask your age and where you’re from?

29

I’m trying to get my brain around how you could possibly have a jazz show without any black musicians… :confused:

30

I’m from the UK, racism back in the 1960’s was substantially different to the US, however it was there, you would get back handed comments that were supposed to be a form of flattery but were just as insulting as the more direct sort of abuse.

‘You’re all right for a Pakki’

‘You don’t act like other Pakkis’

and plenty of others, along with total strangers in the street asking about your origins.

The self fulfilling roles in the UK were more usually related to class rather than race, so that everyone knew their place and would reach only as far as they imagined they were expected to reach.

Put another way, if you live in a certain part of town, or your family have any associated stereotype then you would soon pick this up, and fulfil it. We had a few Indians and Chinese in my school, the stereotype at the time was that they were diligent with homework and good at maths, and guess what - they tended to fulfil that expectation.

Similarly it was well known through the same stereotype system that if you were black you were not going to do well, so ‘allowances’ were made in classes - the black student would not try, and the teacher would not push - because to do so was unkind - paternalistic racism.

Its rather like the white men can’t jump, and black men can’t swim stereotype, but taken as a societal level.

31

The 50’s was a very ‘transitional’ period, concerning the terms used in the music/radio industry.
‘Jazz’ (like Daithi Lacha is referring to) that was played on the radio in that time period, may well have primarily consisted of ‘white’ bands. Just a WAG. :cool:

32

Understood, but I don’t think that the ‘class problem’ came into play as much, here in the U.S.

33

The most popular swing and big band orchestras of the 1930s and 1940s, many of which were still around and popular in the 1950s, seemed to get by just fine without black musicians. Doesn’t seem at all inconceivable to me that you could fill an entire jazz radio show with them.

34

I’m a big R.E.M. fan, as my username implies, and when their drummer, Bill Berry, was an adolescent, his family moved from the upper Midwest to the Deep South. Not being familiar with cultural mores, on the first day at his new school, he sat next to a black girl in the lunchroom, and got beaten up after school for doing this. Had he done that in his old town, even ca. 1970, nobody would have batted an eye.

:eek:

35

Perhaps the biggest tool in my teaching toolbox is the ability to change people’s expectations for themselves (sadly, I can’t always use it):

“I’m no good at this technology stuff” becomes “this is SO COOL!” and a Valentine’s for the wife made using MSPaint.
“We’re an underdeveloped country… we’re no good at doing things by ourselves…” becomes “yes we can!” and brainstorming sessions where the foreigner’s role is limited to that of note-taker.

Belief doesn’t give you a roof, but believing that you are able to get one is the first step towards getting it.

36

As Reginald D Hunter says, racism is how you discriminate against people who look different to you, class is how you discriminate against people who do look like you.

They are not the same thing, on first glance, until you start looking at it historically.

37

In the mid 1960s, Dad flew to Virginia on business. The white cabbie got lost and they found themselves behind the factory with no visible entrance to the property. The cabbie hollered over at a black man doing yard work, demanding rather rudely to know how to get to the entrance to the plant. As they drove off, Dad called out “Thank you” to the man who had helped them. The cabbie jammed on the brakes and spun around in his seat to glare at my Dad.

Dad had not made any point of being “liberal” or commenting on the cabbie’s behavior. His “thank you” was the sort of thing he’d have said even if the cabbie had already thanked their benefactor. The cabbie, however, decided that it was not appropriate for a white man to thank a black man for assistance.
The glaring response was as far as the cabbie went; Dad was 6’3" and 280 lbs and his travelling companion was slightly larger. Neither made a point of rebuking the cabbie; he just decided to be a jerk.

38

Thirty years earlier than that, Ida McKinley made sure that all callers were admitted to her White House receptions, regardless of race.

39

A white lady I worked for hired a black cleaning lady while stationed w/ her husband and 3 kids at an Army post in GA in the late 50’s; at the end of the first week she tipped the cleaner what she tipped her other cleaners when she lived in Michigan. This earned her a visit a few days later from a concerned white man (who she’d never seen before) who let her know that her overpaying of the cleaner was causing trouble for everyone else who had a cleaning lady as it made them all ‘uppity’ to have so much money. He told her she was to only pay the cleaner a certain much lower amount or else her family may face repercussions for going out of their way to be troublemakers on post. He also mentioned that their being Jewish already had them on thin ice but since her husband was an officer it would be overlooked so long as they made no other trouble.
She moved back to Michigan and lived w/ her in-laws till her husband’s two years was up.

40

How did it work out back then if/when a “nigger lover” tried calling their detractors “bigots”? Did nobody even think to try it?