Water for thought

February is Black History Month.

I'm about to make some comments about that and some may read them as flippant or disrespectful, but I promise you that's not the spirit in which they're offered.

My remarks are prompted by several pictures I saw online last week, all of which I'd seen before.

The photos were meant to depict life for black people in the Jim Crow South, a period of time spanning around ninety years in which racial segregation was enforced by actual law.

First let me assure you, I have no doubt blacks were discriminated against in the South, and in other places too. I'm not here to argue that or to assert that treatment of black people has always been fair or right.

In fact I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who has ever been or is ever -- at any point in American history, including now -- discriminated against because of their skin color.

What I would like to show you is one of the pictures I looked at last week, and ask you to consider one small aspect of racial segregation.

 I love pictures as you know, and like most people I enjoy studying photographs that offer a window on the past. Even yesterday.

Web sites like Shorpy and Retronaut make much of our fascination with chronicling the human experience in still photography, which is why I and tens of thousands of others visit them often.

So I was surprised when, while scrutinizing this picture, something occurred to me for the first time: Who exactly is being discriminated against here?

Naturally I understand we are to believe that white people made the laws that effectively segregated them from blacks -- and blacks from them -- in daily life.

But the thing is, in the above picture, clearly whites are being discriminated against as much as blacks -- if not more.

Think about it. Today in the United States of America, approximately thirteen percent of the population is black. Pre-1965 I'm not sure what it was, but it certainly was less.

Even if in the town pictured, the percentage of blacks was higher, it wasn't much higher.

And yet that small percentage of folks got their own water fountain so that they didn't have to drink after the whites.

I assume if a thirsty white person approached these two water fountains and found the White Only one out of order, he or she was barred by law from drinking from the Colored Only one less than two feet away, as much as the opposite was true.

Said thirsty white people had to keep walking until they found a working Whites Only fountain.

Much is made of the fact that the black folks had their own separate entrances to places such as movie theaters, and that they had to sit in the balcony.

What is so wrong with having your own special entrance? And what if white folks liked balcony seats, but couldn't sit in them because they were reserved for blacks?

I like sitting in the balcony. You can see better. You know, up high?

When I was a kid I loved sitting in the back of the bus. My friends and I always chose them when riding to school. But in the Jim Crow South, those extra-fun seats were set aside, meant only for the few black riders.

Have we well and truly held the black man down? Consider this bit of black history, courtesy of the Congressional Research Service:

The number of African American Members has steadily increased since the first African Americans entered Congress in 1870. There were fewer than 10 Members until the 91st Congress (1969-1971). In the 98th Congress (1983-1985), the number surpassed 20 for the first time and then jumped to 40 in the 103rd Congress (1993-1995). Since the 106thCongress (1999-2001), the number has remained between 39 and 44 serving at any one time.

The first African American Member of Congress was Hiram Rhodes Revels (R-MS), who served in the Senate in the 41st Congress (served 1870-1871). The first African American Member of the House was Joseph H. Rainey (R-SC), who also served in the 41st Congress.

Notice the first blacks to serve in Congress and the House were Republicans. From Southern states.

Notice too in the picture how beautifully dressed, how feminine and modest, the black ladies are. Notice the chivalry of the black gentleman helping the children get a drink.

Decades after affirmative action -- a diabolically discriminatory policy that to this day defeats its own purpose -- was made the law of the land, and decades after the Civil Rights movement enlightened us all, you don't see much in the way of modesty or chivalry anymore.

Amongst whites or blacks. And everyone is hurt by it.

Segregation is still in full force, usually accomplished by money. Tickets to the Super Bowl last Sunday were over fifteen hundred dollars. To watch black millionaires throw a football around.

I couldn't have afforded that, even if I had wanted to go, which most strenuously I did not. And I didn't watch it on television either.

When TG and I lived in the Chicagoland area, he loved to take me to Chicago Bulls games. We could only afford seats at such a high altitude, Michael Jordan and his teammates -- the black millionaires -- were about an inch high, running back and forth with an orange crumb.

If I put up my little finger in front of my eyes I could block them all out. They couldn't see me either.

White people are vigorously discriminated against in America today. 

It's how the Demoncrats like it; their voter base is made up of bleeding heart white liberals who don't know the facts, and reparation-minded blacks who have been bred to vote for the handout, thinking whites owe them something.

During Black History Month, as in all other months, I plan to do what I always do: Be considerate of everybody, regardless of their color, until they give me a reason not to.

Comments

[Mari]

I think the pendulum has definitely swung. (And way too far) Discrimination is yelled for the most inane things. And yet there is a black college fund, black colleges, black magazines... So, who exactly is being discriminated against?

[Audrey]

I can't say Amen enough.

[Glenda]

Me too...Amen
G.

[Erica]

Let's not forget that there is no white history month!