Everyone raised in the Unites States over the last fifty years has been required to memorize the official dogma regarding Jim Crow laws. These were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. The official version preached to this day is that they were draconian restrictions on blacks preventing them from having a normal life. Modern blacks are told that their condition is the direct result of white discrimination against blacks via these laws.
Now, there is a debate as to the intent and the effect of these laws, mostly because the Left has re-imagined that period in American history. The official version of the Civil Rights era is a fantasy with little connection to reality. What is not under dispute is that these laws existed and they had a negative impact on blacks. Black institutions did not receive public support. Blacks were denied access to the legal system, which often denied them justice when the victims of white malfeasance.
The best argument against these sorts of laws is that they created a second class of citizens, as a legal construct. You cannot have democracy if you have second class citizens, as democracy assumes all men being equal before the law. If the effect of Jim Crow was separate and equal, then maybe they would fit into democracy. In reality, they were separate and unequal, even accounting for the differences in the races. Therefore, as a legal construct, they violated the ideal of equality before the law.
The Z Man, “The Jim Snow Laws”, The Z Blog, 2019-12-01.
March 7, 2020
QotD: “Jim Crow” laws
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