Remember the riots over school bussing in Boston? Racism in the North and Midwest was clearly visible when I lived there in the 70s and 80s. These days, the Justice Department has intervened in North Carolina to prevent a majority-black city from changing its municipal elections, in a vote in which the majority of the voters were black, and to require re-districting to pack black voters more compactly into majority-black Congressional districts. After that latter effort, Democrats are suing because they say the districts favor Republicans statewide. Which way do they want it? Forty-seven years of federal oversight are enough. Contrary to Democratic propaganda, deliberate suppression of black voting in the South is gone with the wind.

I very much agree, Katherine. The Voting Rights Act was nothing more than a way to bring back Reconstruction to the South. It is long past time for it to be over and done with.

But I will admit that the dunder-headed Democrats who controlled most Southern legislatures were asking for it.

Gander, meet sauce!

Whoa, whoa, whoa hold it, Katherine! At the heart of the busing issue was the fact that the black students from Roxbury were almost all being bused into South Boston. Opponents argued that maybe some of the students should have been bused to, say, Wellesley, where Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. lived. They also could have been bused into Milton (much closer to Roxie) or Brookline (also very close.) Up until the forced “desegregation” of Boston Public Schools, blacks had freely used the amenities of Southie, such as Carson beach, Old Harbor beach, the fishing pier out at Castle Island, etc.

The forced busing wasn’t very popular with most black neighborhood leaders because they didn’t want their children stuck on buses for an hour or more twice a day. Additionally, South Boston High School was one of the poorest schools (academically) in Boston. Many of the neighborhood leaders, black and white, saw the busing for what it was – a strategy designed to keep the “poor” in their places and to exacerbate racial tensions.

Interestingly, until the “Great Society” was thrust upon us, the city of Medford had an emerging black middle class that was thriving. It was destroyed by the entitlement mentality and now “Meffa” has its own drug-riddled ghetto. It wasn’t the populace of Massachusetts, or even the white Irish-Catholics of Southie that were racist. It was the Democrat politicians that control most of the state-wide politics and have a stranglehold on the entire eastern part of the state.

Read All Souls – A Family Story from Southie by Michael Mac Donald.

A southern shipmate told me once that a southern racist doesn’t mind black people being around as long as they don’t get uppity; a northern racist doesn’t mind if they’re uppity as long as they aren’t around.

TLM, most busing for racial integration in most places has involved moving mostly black kids LONG distances. I’ll grant you that. It’s the same in Raleigh, NC. I’d have a hard time believing that racism wasn’t in Boston, though. It was in New England, Chicago, and Milwaukee, and in CT when I was there. If Boston were immune I would be stunned.

I’ve heard that, Ed. Here in the South neighborhoods are beginning to integrate without any trouble. People are over it, except for the ill-educated underclasses, and that’s where the real problems lie, in education and culture.

Ed the Roman
March 5, 2013
A southern shipmate told me once that a southern racist doesn’t mind black people being around as long as they don’t get uppity; a northern racist doesn’t mind if they’re uppity as long as they aren’t around.

I remember reading something similar: “Southern whites dislike blacks as a group but will like them as individuals, whereas northern whites like blacks as a group but dislike them as individuals.”

This explains the housing patterns in northern communities, even as practiced by whites who have so-called progressive political views.

Interesting comments on Northern white racism, @Ed and @Dale.

FYI, the history of the state of Oregon also has a huge racist streak. We came into the union in 1859, when states were entering as either ‘slave’ or ‘free’ states. Though we came in as an ostensibly ‘free’ state, the reason for this was that our state Constitution was written _to exclude all black people from living here_, free or slave. “They’ll stir up the Indians” was the reason given. No joke. To this day, the city of Portland is so lily-white (well, aside from the Asian and Hispanic folks) that the population of people identifying as African-American is only 6%.

Also, the Klan was huge here in the ’20s. They were so powerful they were able to use the referendum system to successfully pass laws abolishing/prohibiting Catholic schools, since they didn’t have any black folk to oppress. The Catholic Truth Society (which later became Oregon Catholic Press – yeah, I know…) was founded to help get the KKK off our backs.

It mystifies me as to why Oregon is not on this list. We’re just below the radar, I guess.

Chief Justice Roberts: “The most efficient way to avoid discrimination is not to discriminate” Positive discrimination is discrimination as much as negative discrimination.

That was the South’s contention all along, but the bullies of the North like to sterotype Southerners as racist bigots. It makes them feel better.

As I said, it was just another way to re-institute Reconstruction. Why the Republican party goes along, I will never know.

Well, Allen, in the first decade or two after desegregation, there was the recent history of poll taxes, tests, and other methods which did in fact prevent blacks from voting in the Southern states. What’s unreasonable now is that those policies are long gone, and, as Kathleen Lindquist points out, the former Confederate states are now no worse than others, if not better. The federal supervision has long outlived its usefulness.

Ah, yes – Oregon and the SWPL hipster “get out of racism free!” card.

As outlined here: Keep Portland White

Liberal “we-can’t-be-racists-because-only-conservatives-are-racist” racism is in the running for the most smugly hypocritical thing on the planet.

God have mercy.

As I recall, Malcolm X had quite a lot to say about Massachussets racism… he was asked once why he never specifically criticized Jim Crow and other features of the racist South.

His answer was that he had never lived in the South and never experienced it, so that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. And besides, he was sick and tired of Northern whites getting all pretentious about how they weren’t racists at all, not like those awful Southerners.

No wonder he stirred things up. God have mercy on his soul.

Well, Allen, in the first decade or two after desegregation, there was the recent history of poll taxes, tests, and other methods which did in fact prevent blacks from voting in the Southern states.

Bingo. Let’s not let short memories obscure both post-Brown obstructionism, nor the legal apartheid which followed the United States turning its back on the freedmen.

The Voting Rights Act was written the way it was in response to legalistic chicanery.

@Zach – Amen, and amen.

The Voting Rights Act has about as much relevance to the world today as the banning of books in Massachusetts did in earlier times.

Unfortunately for all the liberals and communists, there are no KKK members guarding polling places anymore. No blacks are being lynched outside of polling places on election days.

Most racial bias occurred, and continues to occur, in the North rather than the South.

And…if you want to see the results of black majority voters, check out Detroit, Newark, Gary, St. Louis, south-central LA, New Orleans, etc.

There were more KKK members in Indiana than in Mississippi and Alabama combined in the 1920′s.