The New Jim Crow
Classic Jim Crow- 1877–1964
Segregation is a national heritage every bit as ubiquitous as fireworks in July.
Many groups have experienced segregation over the generations, the most notable, severe, and persistent being the oppression African Americans have endured. [Are enduring.] Segregation is so ingrained in the American psyche that we have segregated Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Italians, Jews, Native Americans- basically every non-Anglo ethnicity and religious group, along with any group that arrived more than 20 minutes after the Mayflower.
The segregation we probably know the most about is what arose out of the abolition of slavery following the American Civil War, but the truth is actually more tragic, if that is possible. Immediately after the war concluded, Black Americans experienced a brief renaissance, gaining representation in the local, state, and Federal governments. All this was despite the ‘Black Codes’, harsh laws designed as both basic oppression and as a means to re-enslave people through the 13th Amendment the utilization of the 13th has continued right up until current day to generate slave labor from our comically large prison populations].
In 1877, the Federal government ended the period of Reconstruction, and with it, the enforcement of the civil rights that had led to these significant gains. Almost immediately, white southerners began implementing what we call “Jim Crow” laws. The name itself is aggressively racist, taken from a popular minstrel show character. The collection of laws and policies included segregation of public facilities, private businesses, and, of course, schools and housing. During this era, civil rights were pealed back, both by law, and through incessant terrorism, both from the criminal justice system, mob lynchings, and white terror groups like the KKK. This period continued on until the Federal government once again began taking action across the 50’s [Brown v Board] and 60’s [Civil Rights Act].
Classic Jim Crow was led by public opinion. In 1860, whites made up 87% of the population- approximately 27 million people. Of those, only ~ 200,000 agreed with the abolition of slavery, not even going so far as to extend equal rights. That’s 0.7%, and that’s including those in the North. That support- 99.3% of the public unwilling to take a stand against slavery, let alone for equal rights, translated into virtually unlimited political power and business support.
End of Jim Crow, 1964
It took 84 years from the end of Reconstruction to the toppling of legalized Jim Crow. There were innumerable steps along the way- acts of courage from Black America, the savage violence perpetrated against them by racist terrorists, and everyday oppressions and cruelty- segregation, voter suppression, dilapidated schools, etc.
The turning point, in my mind, was the television news coverage of the brutality visited upon peaceful protesters across the South. This, plus a generation of powerful leaders forged in the fires of protest and retribution inspired a sea change of public opinion.
In the 100 years from 1864 to 1964, the white population actually grew by 1% as a share of the total- 158 million in total, accounting for 88% of the population. Unlike 1860, however, 59%- some 93 million people- approved of the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
While that amount of public support was just enough to get such critical legislation across the finish line, it created an incredible amount of chaos and political restructuring.
It is important to remember that Lincoln was a Republican, and that at their genesis, the Republican Party were the political and social progressives of their day. Following the Civil War, any ‘decent’ white person in the South was a card-carrying Democrat. Out of 34 Republican Senators, 2 were from states of the former Confederacy, and one of them became a Republican immediately after passage of the Civil Rights Act. Out of 177 Republicans in the House, only 10 were from former states of the Confederacy. Regardless of party, Southern representatives voted against the Civil Rights Act to a man.
Just as the South voted solidly Democratic for a hundred years in response to Lincoln’s betrayal, Lyndon Johnson’s signature on the Civil Rights Act began a transition that led to almost a complete transition to Republican control by 2010.
This transitionary phase was the result of both a push and a pull. The push was LBJ’s signature. The pull was Richard Nixon’s embrace of the Southern Strategy.
“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 per cent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that . . . but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and be come Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”
- Kevin Phillips, Ethnic Expert, Nixon Campaign
Phillips contended that victory belongs to the party that could hold together the largest number of ethnic prejudices.
Lee Atwater, who brought the Southern Strategy forward to Reagan and Bush the Elder, had an even more damning and cynical take:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, n*****, n*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, n*****.”
The GOP has been grievance farming for the better part of sixty years. Racism, abortion, homophobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, transphobia…. Most consistently, they have rang the bell on racism, using dog whistle terminology such as ‘working class’, ‘law and order’, ‘welfare queen’, ‘states’ rights’, ‘tough on crime’….
This path has rewarded the GOP, but it has also cursed them. They have cycled through all of the grievances, and the folks in the middle are numb to it. This cycle, it’s CRT and trans athletes. The weight of the curse is now being felt: they have never put the work in to become a party that attracts any votes outside of the aggrieved white man. We have to look back at what Kevin Phillips said some sixty years ago:
the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 per cent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that
The fact is, they typically get less than 10% of the Black vote. The bigger truth is that Phillips might not have acknowledged that Hispanic people vote at all.
When he described the path forward, whites made up 88% of the country. Today, white people barely account for 61% of the country. To be fair to his prognostication, after maintaining above 87% for a hundred years, to see an almost 30% decline in 60 years must have been tough to fathom. Just from 2010 to 2020, we saw a 10% drop.
Perhaps even more startling is the change in attitudes of the public- As each culture war / grievance has emerged, we have quickly been inoculated against it and moved on: Less than 1% of the country were active abolitionists; 100 years later, 59% were pro-Civil Rights Act. Now, a scant 60 years later, 70% support marriage equality, 70% support access to early voting and universal availability of mail-in ballots, and more people cite voter oppression as a bigger issue than voter fraud.
Alas, in the face of these immense changes, political conservatives, through the GOP, have come up with a new scheme to hold power.
Jim Crow 2.0
Classic Jim Crow was the response to a shocking loss of political power. In 1860, wealthy planters‘ political power was magnified by three-fifths of the population they enslaved. Not even a decade later, they had not only lost that power, but they had to witness it deployed by their former slaves, and to great effect. At first opportunity, they deployed terrorism and concentrated political power to destroy the progress of southern Blacks.
We have entered a new era of Jim Crow. I would argue it began in 2010, in response to the shocking loss of political power as demonstrated by a Black President. Opposition to any President is common, but the base, racist nature of the opposition was not something seen before. People went out of their way for years to portray President Obama as ineligible to even hold the office. Such was the vitriol even before he’d been elected that his opponent was forced to defend him from attacks on the campaign trail
The GOP and conservative voters tapped into latent anger to create a landslide in state houses and Congress, which they used to create a new, highly accurate gerrymander, which was the first step toward robbing people of political power. By the end of President Obama’s second term, the GOP held nearly every Congressional seat in the former Confederacy. They proceeded to use that power to deny even discussion on Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, let alone a vote.
This new Jim Crow is perhaps gentler, but for that, it is all the more insidious.
Like they did with abortion, the GOP has moved at the state level to consistently limit access to the ballot box. Among their tactics, they have increased the time in advance you must register to vote in an election, they have decreased the early voting period, they have passed increasingly strict voter ID laws [some states allow gun licenses, but not college ID’s], they have limited ballot drop-off locations to one per county [One box for Harris County’s 2.3 million residents, one box for Loving County’s 64 residents], and added address requirements that disenfranchise the homeless and many Native Americans. In places like Georgia, in-person polling locations have decreased by 10% despite massive increases in registered voters. And, while polling locations were reduced everywhere, most voter increases took place in cities like Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs. As a result, the average wait time in a 90% non-white precincts was 51 minutes, compared to just 6 minutes in precincts that were 90% white. Urban polling places in 2020 saw delays of up to 8 hours, with many votes ending up as provisional ballots because the voting scanners had been shut down.
Most of these measures are couched in familiar rhetoric: “We must protect the legitimacy of our elections!” Such talk comes off as disingenuous though, when you look at the state of Utah. A very Republican state, Utah manages to have an electoral system that is exceedingly easy to participate in. You can register to vote on Election Day, or online whenever you want. You can register to vote at 16. Felons can vote post-release. They are even beginning to roll out ranked-choice voting for local elections. Utah had 21 drop boxes for Salt Lake County in the last election. Anyone can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. If you don’t have a qualified voter ID, you can bring in two pieces of alternative ID- bank statements, utility bills, etc. You might wonder what makes Utah so unique, and the answer is simple: There are less than 50,000 Black people in the entire state. When your state is 85% white, you deserve easy access to the ballot!
Many red states have turned to advanced computer modeling to create state and federal congressional districts that rob minority voters of representation. For example, in 2016, Donald Trump took 53% of the vote, but the Texas Congressional contingent was 71% Republican. We rarely bring it up in this context, but the Electoral College itself is, and has been, a GOP gerrymander. The GOP Presidential candidate has only won the popular vote twice since 1992- 2 out of 8 elections- but it has been handed 4 of the 8 wins.
Then, you have to consider the effects of the U.S. Senate: It is currently divided 50/50, despite the fact that Democrats represent 40 million more people. This is the body that controls Judicial nominations, and is responsible for a Supreme Court that leans heavily conservative despite that majority being confirmed in a time where political conservatives never held a majority of the country. It should surprise no one when the Court then issues judgements that are antithetical to the will of a supermajority of the population.
When you add all of these things together- the active, intentional racial bias in voter regulation, the active, intentional bias in drawing maps to suppress the political power of those who vote, and the in-built bias of a system designed to take power from the everyday majority… What happens when you’ve done all these things, and you still lose?!
The months following the 2020 election were the ultimate confirmation that Jim Crow 2.0 is upon us. We all witnessed the actions of political conservatives upon seeing the death throes of their political viability. The masks that had been knocked askew by Trump’s election fell away completely, revealing a disregard for our democracy, and, indeed, any law-based system that stood between them and power. We saw armed insurrection in our nation’s capital, breaching the halls of Congress in a manner even the Confederacy was never able to do. There were the political terrorist groups- the “Proud Boys” and the “Oath Keepers”, the deranged QAnon folks, and, of course, those in power egging them on, including the then soon-to-to-be former President.
In addition to in-person violence and law-breaking, the GOP has, or is attempting, in a number of states, to pass laws that will allow them to simply disregard the will of the voters if they are not able to successfully control them. 216 laws have been introduced seeking to reduce voters’ abilities to influence elections, and already, 24 of these anti-voter laws have been passed. Knowing that the Supreme Court, as early as 2013 in the Shelby decision, has begun removing the guardrails protecting voters in the former Confederacy, and that it’s unlikely that the court, having moved even farther to the right, will step up now to protect voters or our democracy, they are emboldened to step beyond hateful and device rhetoric, beyond manipulating voters by activating their basest drives, and beyond mere voter suppression tactics. As they have reached the terminus of what can be achieved with a dying demographic, they seek to maintain control by openly subverting democracy itself.
A Path Forward?
I want to let everyone in on what is not quite a secret, but more an amusing aside. The draft of this story started out quite differently, although, it is ending up in a similar place. This story started several days ago, prompted by a CNN piece I read about the growing rift between the GOP and major corporations in the U.S. The thrust of that piece was that key GOP figures are apoplectic with corporations’ recent habit of aiding and abetting various communities that have come under attack by the GOP Grievance Police.
At this point, there are many examples- companies canceling events in states after they’ve passed harmful legislation, companies funding ‘lefty’ charities and putting ‘lefty’ causes such as climate change front and center… Perhaps the most visible has been the obvious and overwhelming support for Pride Month. Some businesses have even had the gaul to state publicly that Black Lives Matter. We’re starting to see representation in toys and the media for so many previously invisible groups. Many stores now have specific bathroom accommodations for Trans persons.
Imagine being a Proud White Conservative Christian Man from Alabama [Roll Tide!] and having to see your kid watch a Disney cartoon with Black kids in it! Then, at the commercial break, you have to watch two men as a couple selling you detergent, or an interracial couple promoting CVS! That’s the kind of thing they have on TV in the middle of TGIF in 2022! The next thing you know, there will be a Black lead in a Hallmark movie! [At one point in 2017, Hallmark had created over 80 new movies without a single lead being Black, and only 6 being non-white.]
The straw, though, that has broken the proverbial camel’s back is corporate support for women who require abortion services in the wake of Roe’s overturning. Hundreds of companies have come out, not just proving assistance if a woman needs to travel to access basic healthcare, but announcing their support publicly and boldly, in what can be seen as nothing other than a direct condemnation of what’s going on.
Senator Josh Hawley offers his thoughts:
“After Dobbs, the alliance between social conservatives and neoliberal corporatists in the GOP is over. Look no further than mega-corporations caving to the far-left and offering to cover all abortion-related expenses for their employees,”
Jessica Anderson, an Executive Director at Heritage Foundation, sees retribution against these companies in the future:
“If the November election goes the way we think it will, there will be a huge mandate for elected officials up and down the ballot to take seriously these companies going so woke.”
Other states are already pursuing the ability to penalize companies for assisting in employees who seek abortion. Some have proposed fining businesses for as much as $100,000 for each incident, and others are contemplating banning companies who provide such benefits to their employers. Of course, this is not new- just a few months ago, in Florida, Governor DeSantis stripped away a number of special legal benefits from Disney in response them daring to speak positively of their LGBTQ+ employees and representation, making it a goal to repeal Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
All of this is an ironic turn of events, but it was also inevitable. Political conservatives through the GOP apparatus, gave up on the idea of representing the nation back in 1964. They decided instead to go for the cheap heat of Southern Strategy prejudice-gathering, and that worked for a fair bit of time.
Walmart needs to win California, regardless of whether it only has two Senators.
The trouble is, our economy is a much more natural beast than the vagaries of our minority-rule electoral process. Walmart needs to win California, regardless of whether it only has two Senators. Starbucks needs to appeal to as many customers as possible, and, especially in 2022, they can only make money if they have people to work their shops. Disney knows that they need a foothold in the next generation, which will be less than 50% white.
The GOP base is old, white, and male. Every generation has leaned further away from political conservatism, women of all ages break toward Democratic candidates 56-to-38 in a gap that is also growing, and the GOP has utterly failed to increase their support amongst people of color. Further, the D/R gap continues to grow when looking at educational attainment. The GOP has lost its bet on just needing to pull white voters, and companies are not willing to make that bet- they do not care about the color of the hand counting out the money so long as the bills are green.
In the past, abolitionists were able to weld their cause to the cause of saving the union in the wake of slaver paranoia. Then, again in the 1960’s, we made strides on Civil Rights on the strength of the Federal government- the voting power of the North, unified across party lines, dragged the entire country forward a hundred years, often kicking and screaming. The path forward here is much different; The difficulty in change led by the federal level is caused by a much greater level of political sophistication, paired with the current Democratic aversion to going against ‘decorum’. States like Texas are banning the ability to hold voter registration drives, while the Democrats refuse to set aside the filibuster to protect voting rights. The GOP is doing their best to destroy democracy as it turns against them, and the Democratic coalition is unwilling to use the legal power available to them to preserve it.
Our best solution, moving forward, is to vote with our wallets and our feet.
As best we are able, Democratic voters should strategically evacuate from helpless states [States that went +15 or more for Trump in 2020]. Most strategically, we can move to states that are barely red in the hopes of flipping them, and if not, moving to states that are barely blue to reinforce them. During classic-era Jim Crow, 6 million African Americans moved north and west to leave behind the worst abuses of the former Confederacy. It would take less than a million blue voters of any colors moving to Texas to flip the state. Such a change would be catastrophic for the GOP.
Next comes our wallets. We have already seen companies willing to step up even on controversial issues. I have no illusions regarding their commitment to specific issues, but I certainly value their commitment to specific markets. It is on us to use that power to go beyond applauding them for taking steps to insure women in their employ are treated as human beings with full access to bodily autonomy- we need to go further, and demand they cease contributing to the campaigns of those who actively seek to harm their workers and their customers. Certainly, there are risks at play when cozying up to corporations, but I think we’re already exposed to those risks. I also think that most companies are willing to be good corporate citizens- you can’t have a business without stable demand, and that comes from customers, not politicians or the 1% .
We have a chance to stomp out this new Jim Crow. Doing so will require dedication, inventiveness, and an overwhelming desire for equity beyond one’s own racial identifiers. White people have frequently only stepped just in the nick of time, typically as we have felt the chill of approaching dark times nipping at our heels. Extending that metaphor, I write this sitting in the shade. We, as white people, have to buy in to the idea that our freedom as a nation must be judged by our least-free peoples. We have to claim every bit of agency we possess- our votes, our dollars, our attention and energy are all needed.
