Virginia's compensation fund for victims of "Massive Resistance"

Great Debates
1

Hey! We finally get to talk about reparations with a real life example!

Some of Virginia’s Desegregation Scholarships Go to White Applicants, Sparking Controversy

Essential background reading from Wikipedia:

*Senator Byrd, representing Virginia in the U.S. Congress, waged vocal and bitter opposition to the high court’s ruling and subsequent actions to implement public school integration in Virginia. Leading the state’s Conservative Democratic political machine, on February 24, 1956, he declared a campaign which became known as “Massive Resistance” to avoid compliance. Byrd stated: “If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South.”[2]

To implement Massive Resistance, in 1956, the Byrd Organization-controlled Virginia General Assembly passed a series of laws. One of these laws forbade any integrated schools from receiving state funds, and authorized the governor to order closed any such school. Another of these laws established a three-member Pupil Placement Board that would determine which school a student would attend. The decision of these Boards was based almost entirely on race. Another facet of these laws was the creation of tuition grants which could be given to students so they could attend a private school of their choice; again, in practice, this meant support of all-white schools that appeared as a response to forced integration (the “segregation academies”)…

When faced with an order to integrate, Prince Edward County closed its entire school system in September 1959 rather than integrate. Prince Edward County was the only school district in the country to resort to such extreme measures. In 1963, schools were ordered to open, and when the Supreme Court agreed in 1964 in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, the supervisors gave in rather than risk prison, and public schools were reopened.[3]

During the interruption in access to Prince Edward’s public schools, white students were able to get educated at the Prince Edward Academy, which operated as the de facto school system, enrolling K-12 students at a number of facilities throughout the county. Even after the re-opening of the public schools, the Academy remained segregated, losing its tax-exempt status in 1978. In 1986, it accepted black students. Today it is known as Fuqua School.*

So…back in the day, for a period of time during the 50s and 60s, if you were black and lived in certain places in Virginia, your right to a free education was fucked up. You either did not go to school at all, or your parents had to pay out of pocket to have you schooled. I remember reading that some parents would ship their kids up north to be educated.

Imagine if you lived in Prince George County. That’s four years without school! So if the shut-down happened when you were, let’s say, 12-years-old, then you’d be a 16-year-old when it came time to go to the seventh grade (and let’s hope you retained everything you learned in the sixth grade!) You could DRIVE to school. WTF.

There were no doubt many people who simply dropped out of school because of this mess.

So now Virginia is trying to do the right thing FINALLY and compensate the direct victims of this embarrassing history. The state administers a scholarship program. The eligibility requirements are given in the linked article.

There hasn’t been controversy over the existence of the program, as far as I know. The tension stems from the fact that a small number of whites have also benefited from the program. At first I thought, well, perhaps these were white people who did not get to attend the all-white schools, for whatever reason. But no.

:scratching head:

Say what?

My questions for debate:

  1. This scholarship program is a form of reparations for Jim Crow. “Reparations” have been equated to everything evil under the sun around these parts. I’m just curious. Are there any Dopers who object to this program? If so, on what grounds?

  2. Should whites receive compensation too?

  3. Can anyone explain to me how Jeffrey is not gaming the system?

  4. The program has only been around since 2004. I imagine that these grants really won’t substantially benefit the direct victims because they are now in their 60s. Or they are dead. I’m not saying learning for the sake of it isn’t meaningful, but it’s not like these scholarships will provide much of a career boost or compensate for all the missed opportunities. However, if your education was screwed up by Massive Resistance, it would have affected your occupational choices, which would have then affected your children’s lives. Do you think it would be wrong to open the scholarship program up to the victims’ children? Why or why not?

2

Well, as a result of the “Massive Resistance” campaign in Virginia, a lot of public schools closed rather than accept black students. So the white students’ education was disrupted too. So weren’t they victims of the Virginia government’s action to close the schools as well as the black students? It seems like they were.

3

It’s like you didn’t read the OP at all, dude.

4

When a child’s education suffers because of adults being stupid, it doesn’t matter what race they are.

5

No, I did, I just don’t understand it, maybe. I don’t understand why you’re saying she’s “gaming the system”. Jeffery’s school closed as a result of resistance to immigration, and the reconstituted “foundation school” had to meet in private facilities and be funded by the parents. So she suffered from the state’s actions. To answer your other questions:

  1. I don’t object to the program
  2. Anybody who can show they were affected, white or black, should be able to receive compensation.
  3. I don’t think she’s gaming the system.
  4. I don’t think it should go to the children of the people affected, because those children weren’t directly affected.
6

How can someone who still got to go to school for being the “right” race get compensation that is designed for people who belonged to the “wrong” one?

Jeffrey suffered harm because she missed out on the use of some “facilities” during her senior year? What the hell does that even mean? If she learned the three Rs and met the requirements for receiving a high school diploma and college admissions, then what more are you entitled to? Unless the facilities she was denied access to were related directly to her ability to learn (like a library), I fail to see why she deserves anything. Based on the article, her high school never closed. It just changed names.

It would be like me sticking my hand out for money 50 years after the fact because during my senior year in high school, I had to eat lunch in a classroom instead of the cafeteria because of on-going construction fiascos. I did not have full access the school’s facilities, dagnabit! So I’m in the same boat as the guy who didn’t get to go to any school for five years and ended up dropping out because he was embarrassed being a 20-year-old high school student with a fifth-grade education. You don’t think her receiving a grant belittles the whole point of the program?

Note: Just because I have beef with her claim does not mean I don’t think there were any whites who were harmed. I just don’t think she was harmed based on the little information provided in the article.

7

It’s all those missed years of schooling. :smiley:

Interesting situation. It’s been a long day, and I hope to get to this tomorrow. But for now, that was all I had. Cheers.

8

Can I ask why?

As a society, we really pump up the value of education. White society drills into black Americans the idea that their disadvantage is due to their lack of appreciation for education, despite the fact that black Americans have collectively recognized the importance of education (defying the Black Codes that forbade learning to read, creating black institutions of higher learning, creating the UNCF, etc.) throughout history.

Let’s say you’re the son of a janitor and maid in 1959. You’re 14. No one in your family has ever graduated from high school because when your folks and their folks were coming up, colored schools only went to the 8th grade, if that. Before then, well, nigras didn’t go to school. So you’re 14 and you’re about to start high school. You dream of graduating from high school and becoming “somebody.” But suddenly the school you’re supposed to go to shuts down. At first, you and all your friends are glad. Yay, no school! Your parents are concerned but don’t know what to do except make you get a job. Maybe next year, the schools will open again and things will go back to normal.

No? Well maybe next year.

Not then either? We have to wait three more years? Well, damn.

So now you’re 19 and you’re a grown-ass man. Your father wants you to show those crackers how smart you are by finishing up your schooling. But that would require going to school with a bunch of little kids. And all that stuff you learned five years ago? You’ve forgotten it all! You love your old man to death, but hell. You aren’t going to go back to school…certainly not a school that doesn’t even want you now.

So what do you do? Well, in Virginia, all the colored boys with eighth grade educations get work at Phillips Morris, rolling cigarettes for minimum wage. At least you don’t have to pick cotton or clean toilets. And you get free cigarettes!

You try to do right by your kids, but hell. What kind of a place can you bring up a family on minimum wage? And it’s not like you can encourage them to do well in school because you certainly were not inspired by it. You were disillusioned by it. So when they decide to follow in your footsteps and drop out of school, all you can do is just shrug and say to yourself, “Dammit to hell. We ain’t never gonna amount to nothin.”

So if we both agree that the wealth that comes with education can be passed down through the generations, we must also concede that the lack of education–as well as the distrust of education–can also be inherited. If we can watch a man rise up from poverty because he had inspiring teachers and access to great books, full of great ideas, then we can also watch a man sink further into the depths of poverty because of the lack of these things.

So it would seem fair to open the program to the children of the victims. Because as I said in the OP, a scholarship is not going to do much for a 60-year-old financially, but it could for a 40-year-old. That would really make amends for a horrible wrong.

At any rate, this makes more sense than awarding money to anyone who was a student during the time, no matter the duration or degree of the “harm” they endured.

9

Because it’s not. It’s “for the purpose of assisting students who were enrolled in the public schools of Virginia between 1954 and 1964, in jurisdictions in which such public schools were closed to avoid desegregation, in obtaining a high school diploma, the General Education Development certificate, career or technical education or training, or an undergraduate degree from a public institution of higher education in Virginia.”

It’s not a scholarship for black people. It’s a scholarship for the people harmed, regardless of color.

Because of the difference. You (the you in the example, who was shut out of school for five years) didn’t have the opportunity to go to school. You suffered direct harm from the action.

Your kids didn’t. They suffered indirect harm from the action…having a father who had to raise them on minimum wage, lack of encouragement by you, and all that, but they had the opportunity. The schools weren’t closed to them as they were to you. They chose not to take it. This is unfortunate, but it isn’t direct harm in the same way you suffered.

10

If Warren County schools back then were at all like they are today, switching from public to private schools ought to have been a net benefit for her.

11

but her parents would’ve had to pay.

12

No they wouldn’t have. Read the wiki article.

And to add: Even if Jeffrey’s parents would have had to pay for her senior year, she would not have incurred out-of-pocket expenses. Why should she get reimbursed for money she didn’t even pay?

13

Correct. But do you not think that, like, 99.9% of the people who were harmed by this were black people? I would think a white applicant would have to meet some higher standard of proof showing harm than a black applicant, since the policies were put in place for their benefit and black people’s harm.

It sounds like you want to universalize oppression here. “Oh, we were all hurt by this! What tragedy!” Bullshit. It’s like a German demanding reparations for being stuck in all the traffic jams caused by all the freight trains carrying off the Holocaust victims. No, we weren’t “all in this together.”

I guess we can take this to a philosophical discussion on “choice”. Does a person born to well-educated, deep-pocketed parents have the same choices available to them that a person from a under-educated, poorly paid parents? Of course they don’t. If a person can show that their poorly paid parents situations could be anyway linked to the oppressive society that they grew up in (I would say demonstrating evidence of a government-sanctioned 5-year disruption to their education would do that), then why the hell shouldn’t they receive help? Virginia’s program sounds like a great one, but it doesn’t really right a wrong if it’s only meant for people who are not likely to even use the money, simply because they are at an age where they would not be able to reap any tangible benefits of it. It’s not like Moe the 60-year-old janitor can now go to VCU and turn himself into the history professor he could have been if this shit hadn’t gone down. Hell, even getting a GED this late in the game would be merely symbolic. It would be a more bitter than sweet compensation, IMHO.

Still failing to see how Jeffrey’s even in the same ballpark, if she was in fact able to go to college after graduating from her exclusive all-white school.

14

As the perfect master said, little things cause little problems, big things cause big problems. If she were denied bathrooms, recreation, library, or lunch facilites due to the shutdown, then her quality of education directly suffered because of the state’s decision, so she should be compensated proportionate to the harm.

If on the other hand she received the same award as everyone else but some stairwells weren’t as maintained up to code all the time, then she is gaming the system.

15

I don’t object to it as a program to compensate individuals for harm suffered, but I would object strenuously to any general program of reparations. People should be compensated for harm done as individuals, not as members of a group.

If they suffered substantial harm from the closing or disruption of the schools, yes. Not being able to attend the senior prom or go to football games does not qualify as substantial harm.

I would have to know what “facilities and benefits” she was deprived of before I could answer that question. See reply to #2. The way she worded it, though, makes me suspicious.

Why stop with the children? Why not the grandchildren and great grandchildren? Why not the siblings and parents? Why not second cousins? It could be argued that they were all affected by that particular incident. If you try to compensate everyone who may have been harmed in any way, where do you stop? The car accident a co-worker had a few weeks ago, which landed her in the hospital, affected a lot of people besides her. It affected her family and friends, her co-workers, the clients she was working with, and so on. Should the insurance company compensate all of those people? It is impossible to completely rectify every harm and injustice; the cure would be worse than the disease.

16

I… agree with LonesomePolecat. Holy shit.

Except about the children - I think it’s reasonable to compensate one additional generation, since they were directly harmed. That is, a parent’s lack of education adversely affects a child, while a grandparent’s does not.

17

Most objections against reparations have been against reparations for slavery on the grounds that nobody in the United States has been a slave for many generations. Compensation for people directly injured has been acceptable to most people in previous threads on the subject. In fact, in some of the previous threads on reparations for slavery some people said that those living under Jim Crow probably have a better case for reparations than simply having an ancestor who was a slave.

Of course. Just because someone is white doesn’t mean they weren’t affected by the closing of their school.

Jeffrey is just a player and we should hate the game and not the player. Actually, without knowing what facilities he was deprived of it’s not easy to know whether he’s gaming the system or not.

It’s been more than fifty years. I’m not sure these scholarships would be any more useful to the children of those who missed so many years of school.

18

Nope. A white applicant should not have a higher burden of proof than a black applicant.

And it sounds like you want to lump all whites together. Is it really difficult to believe that some whites might have been affected negatively by the school closings? Recognizing that some whites were adversely affected doesn’t mean ignoring the fact that African Americans were the ones who bore the brunt of the school closings.

19

Let’s just get a few things straight that the OP glossed over.

This is not a reparations program. It is not about apologizing for past harm. It is a scholarship program to assist those who are currently in school and who were affected by the closure of schools half a century ago. Finally, it appears that 90% or more of the beneficiaries are African-American.

The white person who received the scholarship is enrolled in an English class at a community college. On the face of the facts presented, it would appear as though she isn’t being compensated for not having a school gym or missing her prom. The most logical reading of the facts provided is that a 60 year old woman is trying to address some shortcomings in her education by now taking English classes.

It also appears that Jeffreys has been active in teaching the current generation about the tragedy of massive resistance: Link.

I don’t have a problem with her getting a scholarship.

20

I know how you feel. I’m gobsmacked, too.

Well, maybe you have a point there. After all, you can sue for wrongful death, and obviously the person filing the suit isn’t the person who died. My main concern is that the circle of benificaries doesn’t keep widening and widening. I suppose some close relatives could be covered without raising such a risk.