No. But I’m scouring the internet, trying to find stories about white people who could not go to school because of MR. And I’m not finding any.
However, I’m finding plenty of stories about black people.
Just curious: Why would one assume that white people suffered significant harm from these blatantly anti-black policies? I can buy a teeny tiny minority were inconvenienced (like having to ride a bus to a far-away school, perhaps). But there were no schools that white kids could not attend. Those “private” schools were private in name only. The wiki article that I linked to talks about this.
I apologize for coming across as frustrated, but I feel like I keep repeating myself. It’s like no one can be arsed to read the OP or the information linked within.
I think part of the problem is you’re all over the place.
Are you wanting to debate whether or not this woman should have received the benefit under the terms of the scholarship?
Or whether or not her receiving the benefit is “gaming the system?”
Or whether or not people who are opposed to some types of reparations are not being logically consistent by supporting this thing?
FWIW, if I (an old white guy) had $10m and I decided “you know I really liked MLK, I’ll establish an MLK & Victims of Jim Crow Memorial Scholarship Trust” that was entirely based on academic standards and had no connection to race or Jim Crow–I don’t think it’d be improper to give white people money from it if they qualified. Just because a scholarship trust is established in “memoriam” of something doesn’t mean the criteria for award have to be 1:1 affiliated with whatever is being memorialized.
I read the OP, I even linked the bill that created the scholarship program and found you an announcement with details about the program. I keep trying to discuss the scholarship program and you seem determined to make this thread about Jim Crow reparations, so after this post I’ll bow out.
[QUOTE=From the announcement link]
The program offers scholarships for eligible, current residents of Virginia, who were enrolled in the public schools that closed in several Virginia localities between 1954 and 1964 to avoid desegregation.
[/QUOTE]
The scholarships aren’t reparations and the criteria used for eligibility are straightforward. Anyone who attended the schools that were closed during “Massive Resistance” is eligible, there is no requirement that they were harmed.
Were all Jews given reparations for the Holocaust? No. Just those that were Holocaust survivors. As I’m sure (and hope!) so were the individuals belonging to the other ethnic groups that were victimized. I think your definition is not the same as my definition, which has nothing to do with race or ethnicty, but rather government-sanctioned harm and victimization. If you are a member of a group of individuals who were harmed and victimized, then you are eligible for reparations. Not, if you are a member of a group that was collectively harmed and victimized, you are eligible for reparations. I’m not saying this is a universal definition, but this is my definition and the way it has played out in precedent cases.
I don’t think I hijacked my OP. I was simply expanding on it.
Reparations have been a legislative product, but that’s not the only avenue to receiving them. You can also sue for reparations. I wanted to find out if Dopers had a problem with THIS path of getting a scholarship. Because to me, there is no fundamental difference between the two means. In both cases, you are receiving money from the government as a way to make amends for wrong-doing. It’s just that by suing, you are forcing the government to admit that it was wrong and that it should pay.
Yes, you have to already be enrolled in a school to receive a scholarship. That makes sense to me, because why would they award scholarships to people who are just kinda playing around with the idea of going back to school? And you still have to show that you were affected by Massive Resistance to receive one. Thus, IMHO, the scholarship you receive is a form of reparations. (If you didn’t have to be enrolled and you could still receive a scholarship, would it suddenly become a reparations program?)
It’s kind of sad that regardless of the conditions that the white kids had, they still suffered and no one is picking up on why. They missed out because they weren’t part of their larger community. (Is this the same kind of ‘missing out’? No, but bear with me.)
White kids suffer from segregation because they tend to be inclined towards bigoted and small-minded thinking. Black kids’ only interaction with white people ends up being their teachers, and that’s not always a good thing. I think that kids who have never seen a disabled person in their school also miss out. Diversity is good for everyone.
Latino, black, and white kids in NE Denver all suffer something when the white kids are bussed elsewhere and the black and brown ones are left behind. Jewish and Arab kids in Israel shouldn’t be segregated (throwing this out there cause I have a feeling someone will toss it in my face). I wouldn’t like it if I lived in bread-and-butter palefaced Nebraska. (No offense to those living outside of Omaha…)
So, no, the white kids didn’t ‘suffer’ the way the black ones did, but let’s not fool ourselves. Creating alternate race realities for our children harms them. All of them. It inflames racial tensions and that is good for no one.
Jeffrey should not have received a damn scholarship then, because her school only shut down in name only. It shut down as a public school but then reopened as an explicitly all-white “foundation” school. She still continued her education. Her education was not disrupted at all.
I appreciate you looking into the links because you have made me lose a lot of respect for this program. If it just awards scholarships to anyone who was a student during that time, regardless of how they were affected by MR, then the bill is feel-good crap and it’s not a real atonement for anything. I’m glad some black people have benefited from it and I hope victims–real ones–continue to take advantage of it. But yeah, if it’s just a grab bag for anyone who was a kid during that time and happened to live in a racist school district, then I won’t call it a reparations program. It’s not.
Wasn’t Israel the recipient of a good deal of the reparations from Germany? Or am I remembering that wrong?
Maybe you should look up whether reparations has a specific legal meaning.
I think you are thinking of damages. I would tend to see damages as the result of violations of laws or torts. I would tend to see reparations as a form of compensation for wrongs that may have been specifically legal at the time, but now are viewed as being morally wrong. The holocaust was, in a sick sense, not a violation of law, but a huge moral wrong. Same with slavery. I would say most class action suits would be based on actual violations of law.
I am frankly unsure to what extent Massive Resistance was a violation of law, no matter how immoral it was.
You know, Monstro, I understand your frustration. For most of us, when we learn about Brown vs. the Board of Education we’re taught in schools, for the most part, that things were pretty much peachy keen after the Supreme Court decision. Except for that bout of trouble in Little Rock in 1957 but that was just a little hiccup. Of course it’s a lot more complicated than that. Some schools were integrated prior to Brown vs. Board of Education even in rural Arkansas. Rural school districts didn’t always have the money for separate but equal facilities (even if they weren’t really equal). In other areas following the B vs. E decision, blacks had to fight very hard to reap the benefits of the Supreme Court decision. Governor Faubus of Arkansas closed the schools in Little Rock down for one year. Rather than have their children attend school with blacks, whites fled Little Rock in droves to nearby suburbs like Conway. The neighborhood around Central High used to be predominantly white but now it is overwhelmingly black and poor since the middle class fled in the 60s and 70s. Of course, white flight is hardly a phenomenon found in Arkansas alone.
While we may disagree on the question of reparations, I too share your dislike when I hear someone say “let’s just put the past behind us.” Well, great idea. But what happened in the past continues to have ramifications today. I think we’d be a lot better off if history books used by schools could do a better job teaching about race relations and the Civil Rights movement.
If nothing else, it seems to be a violation of the state constitution, which said, “The General Assembly shall establish and maintain an efficient system of public free schools throughout the State.”
The courts had struck down “separate but equal,” thereby making such practices illegal.
By defying this order, then yes, the commonwealth was breaking the law. Hence, why politicians eventually caved in when they were threatened with prison sentences.
Also, I’m thinking it would be against the law to shut down an ENTIRE SCHOOL SYSTEM, depriving kids–at least on paper–the right to a free education. That has to be either or a state or federal mandate. But maybe I’m just thinking out of my gourd here.
Right - at least in part because black schools under segregation lacked many of the facilities that white schools had. IOW, black students suffered a significant blow to their education because of state actions.
By that logic, Jeffrey is entitled to her scholarship. She was denied access to facilities that would have furthered her education as a result of state action.
Although I agree with you on the problems of actually establishing that the recipients of scholarships have suffered harm. The solution would be (IMO) a consistent standard. And that standard would have to be race-blind to be fair. Just being black or white wouldn’t be enough.
What facilities did her school lack? As far as I can tell, her school didn’t change a lick before or after the shutdown. The only thing that changed was the name, according to the article.
The anti-deseg policies were written with the benefit of whites in mind. Any inconveniences experienced by whites were incidental and to talk about them as if they are worthy of sympathy trivializes the real harm that occurred during this period of time.
If there were some whites that actually suffered from harm, the article didn’t do a good job of presenting them. Can we all at least agree on that much? “Lack of access to facilities” is either codeword for “some bullshit excuse I’m making up to get some money” or the person who wrote the article is a horrible journalist who doesn’t know how to ask follow-up questions and actually present both sides of the controversy so the reader can have an informed opinion. I know how the black people were harmed, and I’m all for being educated about how whites were harmed (in a real way, not in some kumbaya they-didn’t-get-to-know-about-black-people kind of way). But I was not educated by that article. I don’t understand the viewpoint of someone who isn’t the least bit suspicious of Jeffrey’s claim that she suffered harm. Though it appears she qualifies for the scholarship regardless, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Nothing matters as long as everyone is treated the same…now.
I go the impression that the school went from public to private. How else could they have avoided the Federal requirement to desegregate? But I don’t know, the article was unclear. What is clear is that Jeffery lost some aspect of a high school education. Maybe access to a library, access to a fully stocked Gym, maybe access to a teacher? Don’t know. In any case, if the scholarship doesn’t say you have to be black to get it then you don’t have to be black. The complainers are racists. If the scholarship did say you have to be black then I would have a very big problem with it.
I was affected somewhat by the Massive Resistance program in Virginia and I’m white. Too bad I don’t need a scholarship Local governments were doing all kinds of crazy stuff at the time to avoid giving blacks an even break and they weren’t above damaging anyone they had too. My county converted to a city at the time, I believe in an effort to dodge desegregation, and then redrew the school district boundaries every year in crazy ways.
I was also affected by desegregation in that I was first bussed long distances and then made to go to a formally all black school. That school taught me that education was not “separate but equal.” The facilities there were horrible even after they fixed it up 'cause the white kids were coming. Far below the facilities at my former white school.
But some finally got reparations from Germany if they were forced to flee or hide or somehow avoided a camp. Anywho.
Local governments were doing all kinds of crazy stuff at the time to avoid giving blacks an even break and they weren’t above damaging anyone they had too. My county converted to a city at the time, I believe in an effort to dodge desegregation, and then redrew the school district boundaries every year in crazy ways.