The Study of Racialism

A funny thing happened earlier this week, after my lecture on the “race” relations aspects of Stephen Foster’s music. An audience member asked The big Why Question about the Jim Crow event.

I probably should have anticipated this, since no matter what historical topic you address, if you cover the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jim Crow event dominates everything else. It was horrific, it was unique, its effects still linger, and today’s Americans (Black and White) like to pretend that it never happened—that today’s U.S. social pathology stems from mere slavery that ended 150 years ago. Nevertheless, I was caught by surprise and had no readymade answer.

To refresh your memory, the Jim Crow era saw the cruelest wave of "racial" hatred that America has yet experienced. Between 1895 and 1955, millions of African Americans were disenfranchised, killed, brutalized, even discouraged from learning the Three Rs. According to newspaper records kept at the Tuskegee Institute, about 5,000 men, women, and children were murdered outright by the system, tortured to death in documented extrajudicial public rituals—human sacrifices called "lynchings." Public murders not reported by the newspapers plus similar executions under the veneer of due process were estimated by Ida B. Wells to have added up to about 20,000 killings.

Although most Jim Crow scholars (except Loewen) look at the South, it was actually a nationwide phenomenon. Intermarriage was outlawed everywhere. The ODR was adopted everywhere. Nearly half of the lynchings were in the North. In fact, the sundown towns that created today’s crime-ridden inner-city ghettoes (see my review of Loewen’s book) were entirely a Northern phenomenon.

Also, most scholars (including Loewen) blame the Jim Crow event on slavery somehow. But, while slavery may be a necessary explanation, it is not sufficient. It ignores the fact that most other nations in this hemisphere started slavery a hundred years earlier than the U.S., ended slavery later than the U.S., were crueler to their slaves than the U.S. (in the sense of working them to death so that their slave populations could not demographically self-reproduce), and had numbers of slaves, both absolute numbers and as population percentages, far in excess of the United States. And yet they never had lynchings, sundown towns, nor endogamous color lines. They do not have two-caste systems nor "racially" delineated urban ghettoes today. They never had a Jim Crow event. [They have cruelly hereditary class divisions, but this is something else again.]

And so, I ask you, dear reader, how would you have answered The Why Question? Why did the United States (alone) have a Jim Crow event? Keep in mind that it is customary to explain an event unique to the United States by causes also unique to the United States. It would be unpersuasive to claim, for instance, that Jim Crow happened because Americans ate meat; we all know that everyone in this hemisphere ate meat.

It's a "what is the meaning of life?" sort of question. No simple answers.

My impression is that British North America was much more socially and economically egalitarian than South America or the Caribbean islands. Black political and economic power would have been a much greater threat to white Americans in this relatively wide open society than in the Caribbean or South America, where rigid class structures limited everyone's mobility. Outside of the US, New World cultures have proven quite adept at absorbing the upwardly mobile non Europeans and co opting them within the existing class structure.

It's hard to imagine a Malcom X in Brazil, for example, or Mexico, because these cultures wouldn't have labeled him as an untouchable merely for having African ancestry. His path would probably have been limited by class, of course, but the similar limits would apply to people with no African ancestry.

Even though there was prejudice in Mexico against people of African ancestry, it didn't stop slave descended upper middle class men like Pio Pico form achieving powerful positions in the Mexican government.

Yes. When I trained computer tech support staff, I taught them to always answer such with, "Sorry, we do not answer 'why' questions." Still, it caught me by surprise and made me dig deep for an answer.


So, you suggest that Jim Crow happened because widening the franchise to include a million newly freed adult males was seen as a threat to the hegemony? And that it did not happen elsewhere upon freeing the slaves because other nations lacked an effective universal franchise? Interesting. I wish I had thought of that. My answer veered off in a different direction entirely.

I suspect that the middle man minority phenomenon may play a role. The explosive resentment which can develop against distinctive minority groups that become market dominant in a given locale, and if not market dominant, then more successful than the general population. Amy Chua has written about this in World On Fire, and economist Thomas Sowell has examined the issue in a number of his books.

It isn't something typically spoken about in reference to black Americans, but the anti black pogroms seemed to occur when the blacks in a given area were doing too well. The hyperbolic violence against blacks fits the patter of hyperbolic violence against overseas Chinese and other middle man minorities, but black Americans weren't nearly as successful, even in those cases where they were doing better than the local whites. Still, the success of blacks relative to whites seems to have been a powerful trigger.

The examples that first come to mind actually predate the Jim Crow era, so I'm not sure if they fit your inquiry. But the Civil War draft riots, and the anti black riots in 1840's Philadelphia seem to have targeted people who were doing better on the whole than their attackers.

The black American ethnic group in the big Northern cities was certainly entrepreneurial, clannish, distrustful of outsiders, and assertive of their ethnic identities and political power.

That is true in many if not most individual cases. The only destruction of an entire community with which I am personally knowlegable (Rosewood FL) was definitely caused by poor White Sumner FL sawmill workers' lethal resentment towards middle-class Black Rosewood FL landowners. And, if I am not mistaken, Ida B. Wells found that a suprising number of lynchings (ostensibly to deter B-on-W rape) in fact killed middle-class businessmen.

But the question was asked in the context of a lecture on the sweeping nationwide changes in American "racial" perceptions in the 1895-1965 period. The period is not so important as the nationwide scope of the phenomenon.

For instance, as I was struggling to answer the original question, one of the other group members volunteered that she remembered her mother participating (in Vermont) in a derisive blackface minstrel show in the 1930s (my audience was all senior citizens). This prompted another lady to speak up that she had also seen her mother perform in such a venue (in Ohio). At this, a third lady spoke up that, as a child, she had personally witnessed two African-Americans tortured to death and then burned in a lynching in Indiana. This pretty well shut everyone up and they all looked expectantly to me for an answer.

Given the content of my just-finished lecture, I think that they were asking me to explain society's acceptance, even encouragement, of such terrorism. The Jim Crow terror differed from antebellum inter-ethnic street fights, which were actively suppressed by the authorities, not encouraged. The 1830s Phildelphia riots were perhaps, and the 1829 Cincinnati riots and expulsion were definitely, fomented by the authorities, but they were local events, sparking widspread protests against the injustice in other parts of the nation, even among anti-racialist slaveowners in the deep South.

I believe the the data you show in here, Frank, is not precise.

(1) Most nations of the hemisphere ended slavery BEFORE the United States, not AFTER. The exceptions are Brazil and the colonies under Spanish control of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

(2) The British and French slavery has been show to be a lot harder for slaves than the Spanish and in larger scale. The Portuguese slavery was harder of all, no doubt.

(3) In the case of Brazil and the Caribbean you can say certainly the percentages of slaves with respect to the general populations were larger than in the U.S. Elsewhere in the hemisphere the opposite is true. There are many countries in the hemisphere where the regime of plantation and the massive use of African slaves for agriculture was not known, or was in a lesser scale than in southern U.S.

(4) Intermarriage with Africans was permited but NEVER encouraged. Blacks were always considered "different" in the Spanish Empire and Latin America, however, tolerated as human beings or "Christians" (that was the ancient term).

Omar

This depends upon how you measure the "hardness" of slavery. By the explicit measure that I gave, Spanish slavery was as bad as French, B.W.I., and Portuguese. All were far worse than in the U.S. As I said, I am using published demographic tabulations. What measure are you using?


What numbers are you using for a comparison? My numbers come from peer-reviewed sources, the most recent, detailed and credible is Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). In fact, Cambridge University has published database CD that contains the detailed manifests of many thousands of slave voyages. There is no question that 20 times as many voyages, and 20 times as many slaves went to Latin America and the Caribbean as went to British North America. The numbers are simple: 11 million slaves carried across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere, of which 0.5 million went to North America. We have discussed this before. What numbers are you using?

I won't insist in the topic of "hardness" because is too speculative. However, in the topic of numbers, I got certain figures that may be interesting, and that not contradict yours, that should be verified, though:

http://www.colorado.edu/ibs/eb/alston/econ4524/Lecture_3_4524.pdf

Some important thing it say are the following.

2) U.S. imported 7% of the total 10 million slaves
imported to the Western Hemisphere

3) Brazil 36%; Caribbean 40%; Spanish America
17%


Which shows Spanish America got 17% of the slaves, however, as I do know, they were heavily concentrated in the Spanish Caribbean.

And second, the demographic distribution by the time of Independence, and the end of slavery in lot of countries of Hispanic America:

1) Distribution in 1825: U.S. 36%; Brazil 31%
Caribbean 21%; and Spanish America 11%

2) U.S. had the highest rate of domestic population
growth and the Caribbean the slowest.

3) In 1860 U.S. slave population almost 4 million
representing 58% of the Southern white
population

As you can see, the Spanish American slave population was at 11%. And again, heavily concentrated in the Caribbean countries of Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Which is in strinking contrast with the reality of Brazil (31%), the U.S. and the Caribbean. (That was before the large European migrations started that diminished those percentages somehow)

So, the comparisons are righ when done against the Caribbean and Brazil, but not with mainland Hispanic America. That's all.

Omar

I think Frank is looking at Latin American slavery as a whole, whereas Omar is speculating that there were Latin American nations where the importations of Africans were less than or comparable to that of the U.S.



Excellent book! I own it, too.



I'm not sure this makes sense. Fifty-eight percent of the Southern white population were slaves? Or does the author mean that 58% of the southern population (as a whole) was enslaved?



I recently spoke with an African-American teacher, and I asked him this very question. He feels it was religiously motivated, at least partly. He believes the Protestant religions that dominated America at the time became contorted to the point where the followers believed "Whites" were the chosen people. When I asked why he felt Protestant religions here in America would teach this, he said he wasn't sure but he relates it to something of a backlash to the mistreatment of Protestants at the hands of Catholics in Europe. Whereas Protestants, who were rising in number (to the perceived detriment of Catholics) in Europe in the 1500's and 1600's, were the scapegoats there, the newly freed "Black" population in America would become the scapegoats here, since their release in large numbers into free society was perceived as a threat to the status quo, which was a "White" Protestant dominated society. The fact that many "Blacks" are Protestant is irrelevant, since they were not part of this "White" Protestant dominated society. So, his view combines religious and "racial" theories.

I've never heard the possible religious aspect of Jim Crow expressed that way. I have heard that the Calvinist Protestant division of humanity into the elect - those chosen by God to be saved - and the damned, who can never find salvation, has influenced the way that many whites viewed blacks.

Protestant zeal seems an inadequate cause to me. Jim Crow did not unfold differently in Louisiana (where the overwhelming majority of both Blacks and Whites were Catholics) than it did in Georgia (where most of both were Protestants). There is no question that Christian doctrine was enlisted to support the cause of Jim Crowism by its Christian advocates. Gordon's forum has a book review of a monograph looking into this. But this phenomenon seems no different from the way that science was enlisted by Jim Crow's scientifically minded supporters, or the way that the Consitution was cited as justification by patriotic Jim Crow advocates. Anyone advocating social change tends to present supporting evidence that resonates with him or her.

That a large number of previously non-persons suddenly joining society was perceived as a threat seems to be a common theme of persuasive theories. It makes sense. But even this fails to address two questions. First, why did Jim Crow happen when it did, rather than 30 years earlier in 1865, or 30 years later in 1925? Second, why did it not happen in Jamaica or Puerto Rico when proportionately similar numbers of slaves were freed there? (That Odocoileus's franchise theory addresses the second is what makes it interesting.)

http://www.islandmix.com/backchat/showt ... ?p=2348527

Firstly, Rinababy assumes that most whites in the south owned slaves. Most did not.

Secondly, imposing s system of Jim Crow wasn't contingent on whites being in the majority. Similar systems exited in places like South Africa and Rhodesia where whites were a minority. Additionally, many parts of the south had black majorities and Jim Crow existed there as well. It may have been more virulent in those areas too.

Thirdly, aren't Jim Crow laws based on a series of restrictions imposed on free Negroes in the north before the abolition of slavery?

My own take is that white southerners, especially the majority that didn’t own slaves, feared competition from newly-freed slaves. Furthermore, there were fears that newly-freed slaves were “different” either by virtue of their servitude or by nature; they were perceived as being unprepared for freedom, hence upon being free, they would inevitably clash with a white southern society that was unable or unwilling to absorb them. Jim Crow was the means by which this population-rooted in the south but whose presence was seen as problematic-could be kept in check so to speak and prevented from undermining white southern society.

That is a damned good question. My own speculation -- and it is nothing but mere speculation -- is that by the 1890's, the former slaves had gone through the Reconstruction period, and indeed had 30 years of being able to prepare to move upward socially. Black-owned / -edited newspapers were springing up (I'm thinking of Alex Manley, amongst others), and many African Americans were by now visibly doing better and speaking out about transgressions.

Does anyone recall the PBS documentary of a few years ago on Jim Crow? I saw it, but can't recall any attempt at answering the "why" question.

My "silver bullet" cause would point toward the obvious: the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The United States is the only country that fought a war to end slavery. And the poorly way it managed Reconstruction only exasberated feelings of resentment that normally follow a bitter conflict. (Reminds me of a current reconstruction effort we botched, thereby fueling sectarian tensions )

That is the big (structural) picture.

At the psycho-cultural level, I'd look at the spread of scientific racism and how it perhaps reinforced feelings of white supremacy in the North and South.

One other observation I'd make is that, at the psycho-cultural, many whites in the North and South saw Reconstruction as punishment and black progress at the expense of the white lower working classes (and I suppose especially the white elite). As a result, Jim Crow laws were meant to "redeem" whites against a perceived injustice (Kinda like the rapist portraying himself as the victim). We also should not underestimate the role of white (male )Southern chivalry. The very notion of blacks having all that political power, so quickly, must have been unbearable psychologically. (Imagine how the Iraqi Sunnis feel about their sudden turn of fortune after controlling affairs for so long).

I consulted the Jim Crow article (written by Kate Tuttle) in Africana, by Gates and Appiah. In it, I found the following points as to why Jim Crow occurred when it did (some put forth by C. Vann Woodward), and it was mentioned that Jim Crow, although it didn't occur until the 1890's, had its roots in the immediate post-Civil-War Black Codes (which legally made African-Americans subservient and inferior to Whites) and the fact that some prewar northern railroad cars had been segregated :

• The reconciliation of warring political factions in the South by the 1890's
  
• The acquiescence of northern White liberals
  
• The U.S.'s conquests of nonwhites in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba
  
• The fact that science at that time was looking at eugenics as a potential way of controlling what were considered inferior "races"
  
• The fact that ever larger numbers of Blacks were voting, and the opinion that large numbers of "unsophisticated" Blacks had been influenced by northern "carpetbaggers" who moved south after the war

The Southern defeat was a major tramatic event for that society. How many Southern white males were killed or disabled in the Civil War? Didn't they lose a far greater percentage of their white male population than their Northern counterparts? How did this change the sex ratio between white males and females?

Was Jim Crow an extreme response to defeat and its aftermath (especially the loss of so many Southern white men) from a society where extreme responses to loss of "honor" were admired?

Here are some interesting statistics to accompany the previous post:

http://civilwargazette.wordpress.com/tag/interview/




http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/perspectives_in_biology_and_medicine/v043/43.3fisher.html




Approximately 618,000 soldiers died in the Civil War--about 40% of these Confederate, the remainder Union. American deaths in all other wars through the Korean total only 606,000. More Americans died in the Civil War than in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, the two World Wars, and Korea combined. More than ten times as many Americans died in the Civil War as the War in Vietnam. To understand the impact of these deaths, it is important to evaluate their relationship to the size of the larger population--the rate of death.

http://www.upenn.edu/nso/prp/gettysburg/Faust.html

A lower percentage of males also would mean a higher fear of being overwhelmed?

Powell, Salsassin et al,

Re: the number of white males killed

That is a very good point. I hadn't thought about it fostering paranoia but it certainly makes sense in the South. Conversely, I wonder if there were enough blacks moving North around the same time to create a similar effect there?