What if an overwhelming slew of blacks started buying up land on and migrated to a couple of the border states and, by nature of white flight, drove all of the whites away. Could that mass, which now collectively owns the property legally, peacefully withdraw as a sovereign nation (yes, I remember the civil war!)? What does it take, anyway, for a U.S. governed land mass to be granted independence? If a seperate nation is impossible, what about seperate governments per state? A repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, at least, so that seperatism can be volunteered? Is there a real viable chance that the country can head into a seperatist direction, or are U.S. blacks forever doomed to the short end of the quasi-integration stick?
I know the libertarians have a project called the free state project where they want to take over a state government and withdraw from the union. http://www.freestateproject.org/about/essay_archive/strategies.jsp
Or could it possiblly be that Blacks are “doomed” to full participation in a society as part of the greatest country on Earth? Nah-- that would be too obvioius.
Suppose that Blacks succeeded in establishing a completely Black state, within the US system today. How would you porpose that that government should differ from any other state’s government due to the Blackness of the inhabitants?
wellforone,there would be no black in jail.
Anyway,I,for one,would be happy to see Farrakhan separate and leave the U.S.altogether!
Nothing different legal-wise, but the outcome would be that there’d be no race problems.
So you would kick out all of the non-blacks that lived there?
As stated on their FAQ page, the Free State Project does not promote secession.
Obviously, that’s not happenning.
“What if an overwhelming slew of blacks started buying up land on and migrated to a couple of the border states”
Well since we are starting with a ridiculous premise for a foundation, I don’t know how the rest of this will go.
“and, by nature of white flight, drove all of the whites away.”
What? Like the Mexicans drove all the Californians away? Cause you know we whities don’t be wantin any Negros around.
" Could that mass, which now collectively owns the property legally, peacefully withdraw as a sovereign nation (yes, I remember the civil war!)?"
No. (Remember the Civil War)
“What does it take, anyway, for a U.S. governed land mass to be granted independence?”
Probably a new Amendment
"If a seperate nation is impossible, what about seperate governments per state? A repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, at least, so that seperatism can be volunteered? Is there a real viable chance that the country can head into a seperatist direction, or
No. There is no benefit to segregating schools by race. “Separate but Equal” was proven not to work in the 60s and wouldn’t work now.
“are U.S. blacks forever doomed to the short end of the quasi-integration stick?”
Yes, as long as people like yourself view Black folk as somehow requiring special treatment in order to be successful.
Guess Whitey will have to get used to having them around.
Kind of like there are no “race” problems in Rwanda? Or in the former Yugoslavia? Or among Koreans living Japan. The list goes on.
Everyone being of one race just gives the folks something else to look for. We humans are experts in finding differences in people.
Would your new state not allow Whites to migrate back? If so, would you expect Whites to be treated equally to Blacks? If Whites were not allowed to migrate back, how could that state be said to be free of racism?
Slight nit-pick, but Brown v Board of Ed was in the 50s, not the 60s. 1954, IIRC.
(ignoring the “special treatment” bait…) Arrgh! What is “sucessful”? What’s the point of having a hundred cars if I’m still assumed a criminal when driving them? What’s the point of having the best clothes if people still avoid me in clubs? What’s the point of flying first class if I’m still detained for a three-hour search upon landing? Money isn’t EVERYTHING!
There is no good point. Those are all wrong headed reactions by people who see all blacks as being the same, and that same being “criminal.”
But seceding from the country wouldn’t help. As has already been pointed out, people are really good at finding things to differentiate themselves from others. If not race, then religion, political party, economic class, or some other ridiculous “unequalizer.”
The best way to prevent those sorts of reactions by people is to keep fighting to make everybody aware that we’re all just individuals trying to get by, day after day.
Well, as a black person, I’d hate to seperate myself from my history, heritage, countrymen and country.
American blacks are inextricably wound in the fabric of this nation. So much so that we are more “American” than many of our newer, whiter countrymen.
Besides, didn’t we already fight a war to decide whether or not secession was a viable choice?
Yeah, but Pizzabrat is having trouble getting people in bars to talk to him. Can’t we have just one more war to fix that problem?
Sorry, PB, I know that wasn’t the only form of discrimination you brought up, but I had to call you on it. You know, you can spend your life being a victim, or you can try and succeed despite the difficulties life throws at you. I encourage you to fight racism (the real kind, like cops pulling you over for no reason), but you can’t let that direct the course of your life. This country offers too many opportuinites to pass up.
The premise is fundamentally ridiculous. People can’t be evenly divided into White and Black any more, even if they ever did. Where do the mixed-race people fit into this racial secregationist fantasy? After the races have split, how long before the more black people start discriminating against the less black? Or the more white against the less white?
I think I can provide instances of the same things happening to white people I know.
Maybe black folk shouldn’t assume that all white people go through life with everything handed to them. We have problems like everyone else.
Going back to this ridiculous scenario, what happens when Blacksylvania seccedes from the Union and finds itself economically disadvantaged compared to the 49 United States of Whitey?
Pizzabrat,
What you’re proposing is called Territorial Black Nationalism. It’s as viable as the majority of black Americans want it to be. If it was supported by a large majority of black Americans, it could achieve an independent black American nation state, in theory as prosperous and free as Canada. Thus far, only a handful of black radicals have seriously advocated TBN. Black Americans with the highest levels of education and highest incomes are probably less supportive of separatism than black Americans in general. The more education and the higher the income a black American has, the more likley he or she is to live in a white majority neighborhood, marry a white person, send his or her children to white majority schools etc.
Roughly half of the 40 million black Americans live in the South. The other half would have to migrate (return?) to the South, become the effective majority in the states of the lowland South (MD to LA), and vote themselves out of the Union. If this new nation state were armed with conventional weapons, the US could still invade and reestablish control, but only at tremendous expense and loss of life. If this new nation were armed with chemical and/or nuclear weapons (not so hard to get for an advanced industrial nation), reestablishing US control would be impossible.
By effective majority, I mean being in control of the greater share of a state’s business and economic opportunities, not just the greater share of political power. Political control alone leaves you with nominal authority but no real clout (like black folks in DC). In order to get control of a given state’s economy, black Americans would have to make a massive upgrade in their savings, investment, education and job skill levels. Without this upgrade, no viable separatist movement is possible.
A massive upgrade is also important for economic competition with other nations. Once Black America was independent, it would be in fierce economic competition with the Japanese, Germans, Koreans, Swiss, French, and Taiwanese, not to mention the awakening giants of India and China with their impoverished but highly skilled technical classes. If the average Japanese kid graduates from HS with a knowledge of basic Calculus, and the average black American kid graduates having trouble reading a road map (an exaggeration of the difference, but not by much) - the Japanese will win every battle.
Incidentally, there’s nothing crazy about ethnic separatism per se. It’s one standard solution to the problem of ethnic strife througout the world. Part of the reason it wins support is that people want to avoid the hostility and contempt they receive from outsiders.
It’s worked well in some cases, and disasterously in others. Ireland breaks away from Britain, the Czechs break away from the Slovaks, European Jews abandon Europe and establish an ethnic homeland in the Middle East, the Quebequois are likely to break away from Anglo Canada at some point, the former Yugoslavia fragments into bloodthirsty, warring tribal states…
It worked OK in one case, Czechoslovakia, and that was because both sides wanted to split. The others have been terrible disasters. And you’re not going to get away with counting Quebec. That province hasn’t seceded yet, nor is it likely to do so. There is no way the federal government would allow a state to secede. Your proposal is a recipe for bloodshed and mahem.
OK, all of these fall on the disaster side of things except for Czechoslovakia. The Czechs saw the Slovaks as poor, backwards, and mostly rural, so when the Slovaks said “we’d like to split”, the Czechs said “OK!”. Kind of like if Arkansas wanted to split from the US…
As for Quebec, the only reason you don’t know that it is a disaster is that Canadians don’t believe in doing politics with guns. Instead they do it at the negotiation table and the ballot box. Death by a million paper cuts. Quebec is not independent, and it won’t be anytime soon, but the separatist rhetoric of the '70s and '80s certainly took its toll. Montreal used to be Canada’s largest city, now it is half the size of Toronto. Montreal used to be the city where major corporations were headquartered, but now most of them are in Toronto. Quite a big switch in just 30 years.