5 ms·
Minor nitpick, though with this caveat the article is great: > At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. Not so much America
by mjn 12y ago
Minor nitpick, though with this caveat the article is great:
> At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white.
Not so much America as specifically the south, where white vs. black was the dividing line, and anyone nonblack was "close enough" to white, at least for the purposes of politics and segregation. In the north, where the white-vs.-black line wasn't as front-and-center, dynamics were different, and there was a higher bar for just how white you had to be to really be white. During some parts of the 20th century, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Indians, etc. wouldn't be allowed entry to "whites-only" establishments in New York, even though they were white enough for a "whites-only" restaurant in Atlanta.
edit: Although now that I think of it, this would probably be true for some things even in the north. For example the "no selling to negroes" deed restrictions in Chicago, as far as I can find, really meant you could sell to anyone except a black person, including some people with quite dark skin. Race is complex, I guess.
- pessimizer 12y agoYou exaggerate the difference between the north and south in regards to race. You overestimate the tolerance of the south to Jews, or people with foreign accents, and you underestimate the discrimination against blacks in the north. Restrictions against selling to blacks were not unique to Chicago, they were largely universal. The NAR regarded introducing new ethnicities into a neighborhood as an ethics violation until 1968. http://www.inman.com/2014/04/17/realtor-code-of-ethics-once-required-discrimination/ http://www.inman.com/2014/04/17/realtor-code-of-ethics-once-... published in New York: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book
- nightpool 12y agoI get how he might underestimate the intolerance in the South, but I didn't get the sense he was doing so in the North? In fact, he seemed to be saying the North was MORE intolerant, in a lot of ways, then the South could be sometimes.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- cafard 12y agoAs a boomer I have to say that it pretty much was black and white in the Midwest. One of my junior high classmates had what I realize now was an Arabic last name (probably Lebanese), and nobody perceived him as in any way different; a kid in the grade above me was named Garcia, which I didn't really know was Spanish; there was a Greek family on the next street, etc. Indians (as in subcontinental) were barely starting to immigrate.