James Crow, Esquire -- insidious modern racism or blame-whitey rhetoric?

[december]

On the one hand:

James Crow, Esquire, Morial says, is a more insidious form of modern racism that extends a welcoming hand and a friendly smile, all the while working to hold down black advancement. As such, this Crow is harder to spot and, therefore, more difficult to confront and challenge.

“Jim Crow looked like a person who would stand at the schoolhouse door” to block entry, the former mayor of New Orleans said in an interview. "James Crow, Esquire, is dressed well, is smiling and saying, ‘You can come in, but I won’t let you go upstairs.’ "

…“It underscores the fact that if someone starts behind in a race, even if he runs just as fast, he will never catch up,” Morial said.

…He sees the handiwork of James Crow, Esquire, everywhere. Sometimes it’s obvious, he says, such as when police use racial profiling to identify suspects. Usually, it’s more subtle and sometimes even the result of good intentions.

On the other hand:

Skeptics say that to invoke Jim Crow today irresponsibly exacerbates racial divisions and diverts attention from pervasive societal problems that disproportionately hurt blacks but are not racially motivated.

“It’s blame-whitey rhetoric and doesn’t move the ball ahead,” said Abigail Thernstrom,…

…they argue that charter schools have been the most successful kind of public schools because principals have a free hand in deciding how long the school day should be, which teachers will be in the classroom and how to allocate money. She said many public schools are hamstrung not by racist policies, but by labor unions’ collective-bargaining agreements that dictate working conditions.

“I wish the Urban League would talk about roadblocks to reforming the public schools, like collective-bargaining agreements, and go to bat for vouchers to get kids out of programs that have failed them,” she said. "I wish they would take on some of their political allies and say, ‘You’ve been failing our kids.’ "

Personally, I find the term “James Crow Esquire” insulting to the African Americans who were forced to live under the Jim Crow system and who courageously overcame it.

[elucidator]

I stand ready to debate these excellant points with you, december. Rest assured, the very moment I figure out what the hell you’re talking about…

[eman77]

Count me in elucidator

[Avalonian]

*Originally posted by elucidator *
**I stand ready to debate these excellant points with you, december. Rest assured, the very moment I figure out what the hell you’re talking about… **

I think I get it… not that december’s mangled OP had much to do with it. It would seem that Marc Morial, the new President of the Urban League, recently referred to “James Crow, Esquire” to underline his point that some things have changed for the better in America, while other things have stayed the same. He is not the only one to have done this.

Racism remains, he writes. In the last 30 years, “there has been a strong shift from Jim Crow – the overt manifestation of racial hatred by individuals and white society – to James Crow, Esquire – the maintenance of racial inequality through covert processes of structure and institutions,” he says.

Though blacks are no more likely than whites to mistreat their children, they are over-represented in the foster care system, he says. Nationally, black children comprise about one in five children, but account for almost half of the 550,000 in foster care.

The problem with the OP, and the counter-arguments in the Times-Picayune article cited in the OP, is that the arguments Morial and others make in their statements are never addressed. For example:

Morial doesn’t dispute that the lives of most African-Americans have improved, in some respects dramatically, in the four decades since the dismantling of Jim Crow laws segregating schools and rail cars, prohibiting interracial marriage and levying poll taxes on voters. African-Americans’ incomes have risen and given birth to a new black middle class. Educational opportunities have expanded. African-Americans occupy more suites in corporate America and hold more political offices at every level.

But when compared with white people, Morial said, troubling “equality gaps” remain. Black unemployment is twice that of white workers. African-Americans earned 61 percent what white people did in 1970 and 62 percent in 1999. Compared with white men, nearly eight times as many black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison in 2000. Those gaps, he said, are a part of James Crow, Esquire.

“It underscores the fact that if someone starts behind in a race, even if he runs just as fast, he will never catch up,” Morial said.

But nowhere, Hill said, is James Crow, Esquire, more active than in the criminal justice system.

Hill said it is racist for federal laws to call for longer sentences for possession of crack cocaine, which is used predominantly by black people, than for the just-as-dangerous powder cocaine popular among white users. Ernest Drucker, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and editor of the journal Addiction Research and Theory, said drug incarceration rates in New York state in 2000 were 41 times higher for black men than white men.

“All the evidence I know of says that blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate. Why would 40 times as many be in prison?” Drucker asked. “You can call that a drug problem. I call it an incarceration problem.”

Even the critics of Morial and Hill’s rehetoric conceded this point:

Kirsanow, however, said he is troubled about racial disparities in drug prosecutions. He doesn’t think it is the work of racist policy-makers trying to lock up black men, but he also doesn’t see why the sentences for different kinds of cocaine should be any different. The Civil Rights Commission took up the issue at a hearing in June and is expected to issue a report this fall.

To make this simple, this is not about vouchers or “blame-whitey” rhetoric." Citing James Crow, Esquire as the problem modern African-Americans face is an illustration of the limitations and prejudices they still labor under, without necessarily assigning blame to any one group. It’s a way of saying some things have improved, while others have not. It’s a way of saying that there is still work to be done.

I should think even december, taking all of the above into account, couldn’t argue with that.

[andros]

Anyone who thinks that Jim Crow is not still influencing this nation is fooling himself, IMO. Thus, I cannot see the suggestion that Jim Crow might be alive and well under an assumed name as “insulting to the African Americans . . . who courageously overcame it.”

I find the term “blame-whitey rhetoric” to be much more insulting.

[december]

*Originally posted by Avalonian *
To make this simple, this is not about vouchers or “blame-whitey” rhetoric." Citing James Crow, Esquire as the problem modern African-Americans face is an illustration of the limitations and prejudices they still labor under, without necessarily assigning blame to any one group. It’s a way of saying some things have improved, while others have not. It’s a way of saying that there is still work to be done.

I should think even december, taking all of the above into account, couldn’t argue with that. **

I agree that there’s still plenty of prejudice and there’s still work to be done. I also think that African-Americans have had insufficient improvement in many key areas, because of prejudice AND because of causes other than prejudice. Opinions may differ on whether prejudice is the main impediment to black progress today.

I think the label “James Crow, Esquire” implies that prejudice is the main problem. OTOH the argument from Abigail Thernstrom is areas other than prejudice are more important, such as finding improvements in the educational system.

[tomndebb]

Anyone who thinks that Jim Crow is not still influencing this nation is fooling himself, IMO.

I’m not so sure of that. Jim Crow was explicitly the series of laws as well as societal strictures that kept blacks relegated to sub-citizen status.

No one talked about a Northern Jim Crow–blacks left the South in increasing numbers from the teens through the fifties in the twentieth century with the express purpose of escaping Jim Crow–yet there was plenty of oppressive societal action in the North, from “last hired, first fired” employment practices, point systems on housing, exclusion from trade unions, to mistreatment by police, and hundreds of other greater or lesser indignities.

The North was “better” because the discrimination was not enshrined in law, but it was quite capable of relegating blacks to second class citizenship.

I suspect that the “Jim Crow, Esq.” label is not appropriate because it starts up silly discussions such as this one. With all the issues that a black person faces in order to succeed in this country–continuing discrimination not least among them–getting caught up in this sort of discussion simply detracts from the overall needs, allowing people to diffuse the effort by expending energy playing “which problem is the ‘really’ most important” rather than addressing the actual problems.