The South and Civil Rights

[dazzleman]

The south was obsessed with maintaining segregation and keeping blacks in an inferior position.

Like slavery before it, segregation of blacks to an inferior position in society was considered part of the southern way of life at that time.  Although Roosevelt nominally endorsed better treatment of blacks, he did little to advance that cause, while Truman showed some signs that he was serious about improving the position of blacks in the south.  This alarmed many southerners, and pushed them to Thurmond in 1948.

Likewise, in 1968, with the civil rights revolution having already happened, Wallace gave voice to southern fears and frustrations in its wake.  By then, the issue had grown larger, in the wake of the massive urban riots of the 1960s, the huge growth in crime, and the countercultural and anti-war movement.  Wallace tapped into all these issues by articulating the linkage that many people saw between them - it was liberals who supported civil rights, liberals who advocated a therapeutic and forbearing approach to rioters, liberals who were soft on crime, and liberals who supported the countercultural movement.

I think that old-line southerners had a deeply buried fear that "the negro" as they called them would rise up and pay them back for two centuries of brutal treatment, if he wasn't kept firmly in his place.  Segregation was meant to keep the negro firmly in his place in situations in which blacks and whites interacted closely together.

There is an interesting contrast in how the race issue plays out between the north and south.  There is an old, cynical saying that is partly true that goes something like this, "In the north, they don't care how big the black man gets, as long as he doesn't get too close; in the south, they don't care how close the black man gets, as long as he doesn't get too big."  It reflects a certain truth, that while the north lacked much of the institutionalized discrimination against blacks that existed in the south, blacks and whites tended to live further apart in the north, and interact less with each other.

To a large extent, blacks became the scapegoat for the south's anger and frustration that its cause lost in the civil war.  I think that is what a lot of the irrational hostility toward blacks in the south came from.

[dazzleman]

What do you consider "civil rights?"

Anti-discrimination laws are extremely totalitarian in nature.

I completely disagree.  It is not totalitarian to insist that citizens enjoy the rights guaranteed them under the constitution.  It's a shame that antidiscrimination laws were necessary, but without them, there was a sub-government totalitarianism in the south, effectively.

[dazzleman]

So are "discrimination laws," but what does that have to do with anything?

Well I guess I am supposing that if the Civil Rights Bill had anti-discrimination laws then there must have been a degree of discrimination (legal or illegal) otherwise it would have been irrelevant legislation. I just think it is curious that only the confederate states seemed to have an issue with this to the extent of voting for segretationalist candidates.

Maybe the south was correct and the rest of the USA were wrong.....I don't know I am just interested.

It's actually not quite true that only southern states supported segregationist candidates.  George Wallace won the Michigan Democratic primary in 1972 because of a federal court ruling that would have meant busing between Detroit and its suburbs.  This ruling was later overturned in a landmark (notice how this term is usually only used to refer to liberal rulings) Supreme Court ruling in 1974 that invalidated forced busing across local jurisdictional lines unless it was proven that those lines were drawn with the intent to discriminate.  This ruling effectively ended the threat of forced busing between inner city areas and the surrounding suburbs.

Wallace also had strong support in Boston in 1976, also as a result of forced busing there.  Candidates who were not sufficiently condemnatory of busing were shouted down and jeered.  I think it could be fairly said that much of the northern enthusiasm for forcing change on the south evaporated when it started hitting the north also, in the form of forced busing and court order to put public housing in middle class white neighborhoods.

[dazzleman]

What do you consider "civil rights?"

Anti-discrimination laws are extremely totalitarian in nature.

I completely disagree.  It is not totalitarian to insist that citizens enjoy the rights guaranteed them under the constitution.  It's a shame that antidiscrimination laws were necessary, but without them, there was a sub-government totalitarianism in the south, effectively.

It is not totalitarian to say you must have a culturally diverse workforce and you must give a certain percentage of your contracts to women?

Let me be clear.  I think that the original civil rights laws were right and necessary, but I do agree that the whole thing has gone too far in many ways.

I don't think it should be legal to refuse to hire a person simply because he/she is black.  On the other hand, I don't think that anybody should have as a goal to change the ethnic/racial, or even economic, composition of schools, neighborhoods, etc. through forced means.

I simply advocate treating blacks like you'd treat anybody else.  If a black person can afford a house in a certain neighborhood, he/she should not be prevented from buying it.  Let the chips fall where they may.  But I have a big problem with government trying to change the ethnic composition of a neighborhood by placing subsidized public housing there.  Same with schools.  There should be no intentional of students on the basis of race.  But by the same token, students should not be forced out of their neighborhood schools in order to satisfy some demand for diversity in the school.

It is wrong to allow systematic discrimination without good reason against citizens who are supposed to be equal.  But government coercion in this sphere needs to have very definite limits, and I fear that those lines have been crossed in many ways.