4 ms·
> If the act was effective we could argue systemic racism has been overcome. We could declare victory. It's a game of cat and mouse. Like in the Lee Atwater vi
by softcactus 4y ago
> If the act was effective we could argue systemic racism has been overcome. We could declare victory.
It's a game of cat and mouse. Like in the Lee Atwater video I linked, the arguments for racism have become so abstract that it requires intimate knowledge of reactionary talking points to call them out. Red-lining, means-testing, austerity, and voter ID laws come to mind. These policies seem innocuous at first but they are an extension of Jim Crow into the modern day. My frustration with you in the other thread has been trying to point out that these tools are often defended under the guise of "election security" and "states rights" but are just tools to continue suppressing minorities.
Furthermore, segregation wasn't ended until a full decade later when the federal government started withholding funding for schools in the South.
> If it was a success this wouldn’t be a discussion. You can’t legislate things better. What we can say is since the 60s, there are more drugs, more single parents, reduced cultural strength, and supposedly still lots of racism. It doesn’t seem better.
Non-sequitur. How is a law from 1964 to combat Jim Crow supposed to account for a concerted effort by the US government to ship drugs into the US during the cold war, and then hardest criminalize the drugs used by minorities, then pass the crime bill under the Clinton administration and militarize the police and expand prisons massively?
I must repeat myself, your desire to play "devil's advocate" or whatever is happening, causes you to appear naive or willingly ignorant. Saying that the Civil Rights Act was the cause for African American drug use and incarceration is laughable and ignores the drug war started under Nixon, ramped up under Reagan, and given sharper teeth by Clinton. How is that argument supposed to be taken seriously?
Did the CRA usher in a post-racial utopia? No. To claim that it was ineffective because other factions in the government continued to undermine it is silly.