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How does your theory explain private prisons in northern states? The infamous Kids for Cash scandal you mentioned was in Pennsylvania, not a Southern state th

How does your theory explain private prisons in northern states? The infamous Kids for Cash scandal you mentioned was in Pennsylvania, not a Southern state that rebuilt "many of the same [prewar] power structures".

acdha 4y ago
Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality - many of the northern states were, for example, perfectly happy to profit from the raw materials produced by slaves and when black people started fleeing the south after the war, a lot of northern states had strong negative reactions. For example, one of the things which helped Irish immigrants like my ancestors get accepted into the white club was their value as cheap labor to lower black negotiating power and a lot of them were recruited into rapidly expanded police forces for the same reasons. A TON of money was poured into exploiting racial factions in the nascent labor movement since business owners saw how much less profitable things would be if there was a unified front, and that did not stop at the Mason-Dixon line.
- tjs8rj 4y ago
  Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews)[0]. Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed. The book the myth is based on “How the Irish Became White” defines white basically as “didn’t face discrimination”, which Irish people certainly did, but never because they “weren’t white”. Obviously these are different things, and this (I think deliberately) confusing framing leads to the myth. This is just a piece of the reason why defining “whiteness” as anything other than the skin color is racist and inaccurate, and it throws a wrench into the idea that American history is just “white = free, nonwhite = all discrimination”, which is a convenient narrative but completely fabricated. This doesn’t at all diminish the discrimination other groups suffered, but Irish people were considered white and STILL received significant discrimination (Italians and Jews too, Catholics as a religious example as well). [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
  - acdha 4y ago
    > Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews). Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed. It's a shorthand but it's not a myth. Yes, they weren't discriminated against as badly. No, they did not have the full access to and support of society which that term is shorthand for. (And, no, this did not start with a book which came out in 1995)
    - tjs8rj 4y ago
      Sorry updated to reflect the source, here it it’s again: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... Yes, it’s a myth. 100%. There’s only 2 ways of reading “Irish people weren’t considered white”. The first is that people didn’t consider them white in the consensus definition of the word: white skin/being of white stock/white-classed ethnicity - which Irish were considered to fit this (thus the claim is a myth). The other way of interpreting this statement is that white has any definition other than the commonly accepted one. In this case, not only has it led to so much misinformation (people genuinely think Irish people weren’t considered white people), but in this particular definition of “white” it is racist and assumes white supremacy by definition by just putting anyone discriminated against in any way as “definitely not white”, an entirely politically motivated definition, and so should be entirely disregarded. “Irish people weren’t considered white” is a myth, it’s completely wrong. If you are trying to say something like “Irish people received more discrimination than anglo-Saxons”, then just say that rather than appropriating the term white for political purposes.
      - andrei_says_ 4y ago
        I am not the OP but believe they used the term “white” in historical context and did not “appropriate it for political purposes” in contemporary context.
      - 4y ago
- soheil 4y ago
  I'd like to just point out that you start finger pointing when the cause is probably much more complex than hey they did it down there and has nothing to do with us civilized folks up here. You live here and slavery hasn't been a thing for 160 years and yet this is still the state of the country's prisons.
  - acdha 4y ago
    It sounds like you’re reading something into that which I didn’t intend. My point was simply that the north wasn’t innocent and since we never fully dealt with discrimination it’s unsurprising that the problems were reduced but not fully resolved.
    - soheil 4y ago
      How did this become an issue with discrimination? My point is that the legacy of slavery could be a contributing factor, but if you keep dueling on that you miss many other insane factors that are very much at play at this very moment. The state of prisons in the US is abhorrent and not what one would expect from a modern democratic nation, which coincidentally also claims to be the champion of freedom.
      - acdha 4y ago
        See my original comment: the 13th amendment allows involuntary servitude as a legal penalty. The problem with that is when the entire legal system has a particular bias, it's really easy to start rounding up low-status people for dubious or minor offenses when a fellow high-status peer needs cheap labor.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality I never claimed it did. Your previous post suggested we got to this point by "allowing the South to rebuild many of the same power structures". Even if that were the whole story in the South, it does nothing to explain the situation in the North.
danaris 4y ago
I live in upstate NY. Rural upstate NY. People fly Confederate flags here all the time. There's one in the window of a house just down the street. Just because the actual seceding states were in the South doesn't mean the racism stopped there. The power structures the South rebuilt, they then exported ideologically. The ideals of equality the North held, they also exported ideologically. It's very, very important to remember that there are many very right-wing people in "blue" states—just as there are many very left-wing people in "red" states. In fact, every state in the nation is some shade of "purple", with the strongest concentrations of one end of the political spectrum being around 60-70%.
- User23 4y ago
  > It's very, very important to remember that there are many very right-wing people in "blue" states—just as there are many very left-wing people in "red" states. In fact, every state in the nation is some shade of "purple", with the strongest concentrations of one end of the political spectrum being around 60-70%. It's mostly an urban versus rural divide. The states with the really big and politically influential cities all reliably have their elections won by Democrats and the states without big cities, or at least without politically powerful ones, all reliably have their elections won by republicans. Needless to say, the toss-up states have something of a balance of political power. I presume the effect is largely due to self-selection. The arrow of causality is almost certainly political orientation causing choice of where to reside. In my experience Democrat voters who move to a rural area don't become Republican voters, they become miserable and go on and on, mostly online, about just how awful everyone else around them is. One sees a similar, but less noticeable, effect with Republicans in cities.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Lest anyone believe that only Republicans do this, you should know that the two judges in the Kids for Cash scandal (Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella) were Democrats. And several blue states (Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, Colorado ) hold many prisoners in private prisons. Others used to. There's more involved here than "Republicans are bad people".
lokar 4y ago
It's a common misunderstanding / idealization that the north wanted equality for black slaves. A very tiny minority wanted that. To the extent that northerners were against slavery (and by far not all were) that was mostly the limit of it. They did not see blacks as equal. The same pattern applied the 60s "civil rights era", some northern liberals were against jim crow, but certainly did not want blacks moving in next door to them.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Yup. And is anyone wants further proof of the statement that the union faction wasn't exactly for complete equality, just read Lincoln's statements during his famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. While he was against slavery, he still expressed that white people were superior and would still in some fashion, rule over blacks. And that black people could not govern. He was morally against slavery, but that does not mean he thought the people who were slaves were equal.

acdha 4y ago

Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality - many of the northern states were, for example, perfectly happy to profit from the raw materials produced by slaves and when black people started fleeing the south after the war, a lot of northern states had strong negative reactions. For example, one of the things which helped Irish immigrants like my ancestors get accepted into the white club was their value as cheap labor to lower black negotiating power and a lot of them were recruited into rapidly expanded police forces for the same reasons. A TON of money was poured into exploiting racial factions in the nascent labor movement since business owners saw how much less profitable things would be if there was a unified front, and that did not stop at the Mason-Dixon line.

tjs8rj 4y ago
Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews)[0]. Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed. The book the myth is based on “How the Irish Became White” defines white basically as “didn’t face discrimination”, which Irish people certainly did, but never because they “weren’t white”. Obviously these are different things, and this (I think deliberately) confusing framing leads to the myth. This is just a piece of the reason why defining “whiteness” as anything other than the skin color is racist and inaccurate, and it throws a wrench into the idea that American history is just “white = free, nonwhite = all discrimination”, which is a convenient narrative but completely fabricated. This doesn’t at all diminish the discrimination other groups suffered, but Irish people were considered white and STILL received significant discrimination (Italians and Jews too, Catholics as a religious example as well). [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
- acdha 4y ago
  > Just a side note: the idea that Irish people weren’t considered white is a myth (same with Italians and Jews). Irish people could go to white-only venues/places, could marry other white people, weren’t affected by segregation, etc in every instance in society where you were “checked for white”, Irish people passed. It's a shorthand but it's not a myth. Yes, they weren't discriminated against as badly. No, they did not have the full access to and support of society which that term is shorthand for. (And, no, this did not start with a book which came out in 1995)
  - tjs8rj 4y ago
    Sorry updated to reflect the source, here it it’s again: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... Yes, it’s a myth. 100%. There’s only 2 ways of reading “Irish people weren’t considered white”. The first is that people didn’t consider them white in the consensus definition of the word: white skin/being of white stock/white-classed ethnicity - which Irish were considered to fit this (thus the claim is a myth). The other way of interpreting this statement is that white has any definition other than the commonly accepted one. In this case, not only has it led to so much misinformation (people genuinely think Irish people weren’t considered white people), but in this particular definition of “white” it is racist and assumes white supremacy by definition by just putting anyone discriminated against in any way as “definitely not white”, an entirely politically motivated definition, and so should be entirely disregarded. “Irish people weren’t considered white” is a myth, it’s completely wrong. If you are trying to say something like “Irish people received more discrimination than anglo-Saxons”, then just say that rather than appropriating the term white for political purposes.
    - andrei_says_ 4y ago
      I am not the OP but believe they used the term “white” in historical context and did not “appropriate it for political purposes” in contemporary context.
    - 4y ago
soheil 4y ago
I'd like to just point out that you start finger pointing when the cause is probably much more complex than hey they did it down there and has nothing to do with us civilized folks up here. You live here and slavery hasn't been a thing for 160 years and yet this is still the state of the country's prisons.
- acdha 4y ago
  It sounds like you’re reading something into that which I didn’t intend. My point was simply that the north wasn’t innocent and since we never fully dealt with discrimination it’s unsurprising that the problems were reduced but not fully resolved.
  - soheil 4y ago
    How did this become an issue with discrimination? My point is that the legacy of slavery could be a contributing factor, but if you keep dueling on that you miss many other insane factors that are very much at play at this very moment. The state of prisons in the US is abhorrent and not what one would expect from a modern democratic nation, which coincidentally also claims to be the champion of freedom.
    - acdha 4y ago
      See my original comment: the 13th amendment allows involuntary servitude as a legal penalty. The problem with that is when the entire legal system has a particular bias, it's really easy to start rounding up low-status people for dubious or minor offenses when a fellow high-status peer needs cheap labor.
leereeves 4y ago
> Northern doesn't mean everything is a perfect state of equality I never claimed it did. Your previous post suggested we got to this point by "allowing the South to rebuild many of the same power structures". Even if that were the whole story in the South, it does nothing to explain the situation in the North.

danaris 4y ago

I live in upstate NY. Rural upstate NY. People fly Confederate flags here all the time. There's one in the window of a house just down the street. Just because the actual seceding states were in the South doesn't mean the racism stopped there. The power structures the South rebuilt, they then exported ideologically. The ideals of equality the North held, they also exported ideologically. It's very, very important to remember that there are many very right-wing people in "blue" states—just as there are many very left-wing people in "red" states. In fact, every state in the nation is some shade of "purple", with the strongest concentrations of one end of the political spectrum being around 60-70%.

User23 4y ago
> It's very, very important to remember that there are many very right-wing people in "blue" states—just as there are many very left-wing people in "red" states. In fact, every state in the nation is some shade of "purple", with the strongest concentrations of one end of the political spectrum being around 60-70%. It's mostly an urban versus rural divide. The states with the really big and politically influential cities all reliably have their elections won by Democrats and the states without big cities, or at least without politically powerful ones, all reliably have their elections won by republicans. Needless to say, the toss-up states have something of a balance of political power. I presume the effect is largely due to self-selection. The arrow of causality is almost certainly political orientation causing choice of where to reside. In my experience Democrat voters who move to a rural area don't become Republican voters, they become miserable and go on and on, mostly online, about just how awful everyone else around them is. One sees a similar, but less noticeable, effect with Republicans in cities.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Lest anyone believe that only Republicans do this, you should know that the two judges in the Kids for Cash scandal (Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella) were Democrats. And several blue states (Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont, Colorado ) hold many prisoners in private prisons. Others used to. There's more involved here than "Republicans are bad people".

lokar 4y ago

It's a common misunderstanding / idealization that the north wanted equality for black slaves. A very tiny minority wanted that. To the extent that northerners were against slavery (and by far not all were) that was mostly the limit of it. They did not see blacks as equal. The same pattern applied the 60s "civil rights era", some northern liberals were against jim crow, but certainly did not want blacks moving in next door to them.

tcmart14 4y ago
Yup. And is anyone wants further proof of the statement that the union faction wasn't exactly for complete equality, just read Lincoln's statements during his famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. While he was against slavery, he still expressed that white people were superior and would still in some fashion, rule over blacks. And that black people could not govern. He was morally against slavery, but that does not mean he thought the people who were slaves were equal.