Jim Crow tactics hearken back to very bad days in U.S. history

[Blue_Tires]

Around my junior or senior year at Aledo High School, an African-American transient was found tangled up in a barbed-wire fence near Interstate 20. Authorities said he had wandered out there and died of exposure. A kid in my class said he had seen the body. When I asked him what it was like, he said it wasn’t like finding a dead man. It was just "a dead n-----."

There was one African-American kid in my class. His father was a law-abiding citizen who used to get pulled over by law enforcement personnel about once a month, just because he was African-American and an African-American man driving in our community looked suspicious.

After college and a few years in Austin, I returned to the Fort Worth area and met and married a beautiful African-American woman. After our third child was born, we moved to Aledo to be closer to my parents and raise our kids. One day a co-worker who was also a member of the Willow Park Volunteer Fire Department (an adjacent town that feeds into the Aledo school district) received a call on his radio reporting an "NIWP." I asked him what that was. He said it was a "N----- in Willow Park." I confronted him and informed him my wife is African-American. His facial features shrunk into a disgusted grimace and he said, "That ain’t right."

Right or wrong, we stayed in Aledo and I began to think things were changing. Then Barack Obama ran for president.

My kids encountered theretofore unheard racial slurs from classmates and were bothered by the petty prejudices that school officials seemed to tolerate more than discourage. My wife and I were disturbed, but we assumed that the bigotry would subside after the election. Unfortunately, it didn’t.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my oldest son’s high school teachers asked the class what they thought of Obama. Many of my son’s classmates said Obama is the Antichrist, vaguely alluding to passages from the book of Revelation. I was shocked and wondered which local church fostered such inanity.

http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1624782.html

[Number23]

1. Good read, Blue. Although I'm a bit confused by what the author coins as "Jim Crow tactics"

There seems to just be a massive amount of ignorance and/or confusion about what Jim Crow was among white people. I blame the schools. :)

[Fire1]

2. It depends on the district where one is taught. In a white

district teachers can't afford to be too literal and the more evasive, the better. That's one of the benefits of teaching in a black school district. You can tell like it is.

[Number23]

5. Well, somebody needs to apparently tell a whooooole lot of white people "how it is"

'Cause I am blown away by the amount of ignorance and stupidity surrounding the issues of segregation, racism, and racial oppression in this country.

The author could have made his point without calling the foolishness of the Birther and teabag movements "Jim Crow tactics". What these idiot teabaggers are trying to do is nothing compared to what blacks endured under Jim Crow.

[noiretextatique]

3. intimidation, i think

remember rosewood? an entire community was destroyed because one white woman accused a black man of rape. of course their white neighbors had long been angry and resentful of the affluent community and its black residents. so they used the false accusation as an opportunity to affirm their superiority by destroying the town and killing at least 8 people. violence and intimidation is a tool of jim crow.

[Number23]

4. "violence and intimidation is a tool of jim crow"

Got ya. When you put it that way, it makes more sense. But the author and many, many whites (including sooooo many of the clueless and hysterical here on DU) just seem all damn confused about what Jim Crow was and it's impact on this country.

The type of violence and intimidation that we're seeing at the town halls and the Teabag rallies is hideous, but it's nothing compared to what our people endured during Jim Crow. It seems odd that he would compare the two.

[noiretextatique]

8. is it any wonder? those fools in texas

want to put rush limbaugh and glen beck in textbooks :crazy: no wonder so many people are bone ignorant. i am not even sure younger black people really understand the impact of the doctrine of white supremacy on this country. it manifested in ugly way against indian, black, asian, and even some white people. IF the teabaggers could get away with killing black people, i definitely believe they would. but they can't count on all-white juries, and sympathetic judges anymore.

[kwassa]

9. The James Byrd, Jr. murder in Texas in 1998 was the first time

whites had been convicted of murdering a black man in Texas.

Ever. In the entire history of Texas.

[noiretextatique]

10. not surprising

appalling, but not surprising.

[Blue_Tires]

6. yeah, i was about to mention the same

[Brewman_Jax]

7. I read the article

and it's definitely mis-named. The author is a victim of the eurocentric sanitized education system and the sanitized version of US history. A mention of a few tactics of intimidation, though used during the Jim Crow timeframe, hardly scratches the surface of the suffering endured by black people during the enforced apartheid period known as the Jim Crow era.