American Jim Crow System
A American Jim Crow System is a U.S. socio-political system that enforces racial segregation.
- Context:
- It can (typically) be associated with an American Jim Crow Body of Law (body of law).
- …
- Example(s):
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Voting Rights Act of 1965, Reconstruction Era of The United States, Separate But Equal, African American, Florida Constitution of 1885.
References
2017
- (Rothstein, 2017) ⇒ Richard Rothstein. (2017). “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Liveright Publishing Corporation.
- NOTE: On Jim Crow, the book outlines how de jure segregation was systematized in the American South through Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation in all public facilities and established a legal framework that enforced a racial hierarchy, deeply influencing housing policies even outside the South by embedding segregation into the economic and social systems of cities across the United States.
2016
- (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws Retrieved:2016-12-10.
- Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a “separate but equal” status for African Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern states, while Northern segregation was generally de facto — patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.
Jim Crow laws — sometimes, as in Florida, part of state constitutions — mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson. By requiring candidates to submit photos, his administration practiced racial discrimination in hiring.
These Jim Crow laws followed the 1800–1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Segregation of public (state-sponsored) schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, although in some cases it took years for this decision to be acted on. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but years of action and court challenges were needed to unravel numerous means of institutional discrimination.
- Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a “separate but equal” status for African Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern states, while Northern segregation was generally de facto — patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.
2010
- (Alexander, 2010) ⇒ Michelle Alexander. (2010). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” The New Press. ISBN:1595586431
- QUOTE: … Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black. …