Oct 13, 2023 11:43 AM
(This post was last modified: Oct 13, 2023 11:59 AM by C C.)
PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT (scivillage): How white Southern redneck culture lagged behind Northerners in education
THOMAS SOWELL
https://youtu.be/xZHESkRTupI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: As of the early 19th century residential segregation was just one of a number of restrictions placed on free Blacks in both the North and the South.
However, by the last decade of the 19th century such residential restrictions had eroded in Northern cities to the point where W.E.B Du Bois could write in the 1890s of a growing liberal Spirit toward the Negro in Philadelphia. [...] Nor was Philadelphia unique. There were similar developments in New York, Detroit, Washington, and other Northern cities.
[...] The Black upper class in Detroit at that time had regular social interactions with whites, and their children attended high schools and colleges with whites in Illinois. During the same era legal restrictions on access to public accommodations for blacks were removed from the law, even though there were not enough black voters at the time to influence public policy. So that this represented changes in white public opinion.
In New York City by the 1890s most Blacks did not work as unskilled laborers, but held modest but respectable jobs. ... Historian Oscar Hanlon characterized Blacks in New York at that time as being better off than the mass of recent white immigrants.
[...] As late as 1910 more than two-thirds of the city's black residents lived in neighborhoods that were predominantly white. To maintain that residential and other racial restrictions on Blacks were simply a matter of the predispositions of the white racism, immediately raises the question of why such predispositions should have changed so much during the course of the 19th century. And then changed back again drastically, and within a very few years during the early 20th century.
[...] A causal analysis of the major changes that occurred in residential and other restrictions on blacks cannot explain such changes by simply saying racism. Turning from the white population to the Black population we find developments that make the changing residential patterns explicable without resorting to inexplicable changes inside the heads of white people.
[...There were...] marked differences between the white populations of the North and South that many observers noted during the antebellum era. This meant that those Blacks who came out of the South to live in northern cities would be very different in many ways from the white populations of those cities.
The visible racial differences made Blacks easy to identify and restrict during the course of the 19th century. However, over a period of generations Northern Blacks tended to acquire more of the culture of the surrounding white urban population of the north. Just as other groups often have when living surrounded by a vastly larger population with a different culture and a higher socioeconomic level.
By the end of the 19th century this cultural assimilation had reached the point where racial barriers eased considerably in the northern cities. Where the Black populations of these cities were now predominantly native-born residents rather than migrants from the South.
This situation changed drastically, however, and within a relatively few years with the mass migrations of millions of blacks out of the South beginning in the early 20th century.
[...] The newcomers were seen by both the pre-existing Black populations and the white populations of these cities as creating greatly increased social problems such as crime, violence, and offensive behavior in general.
If these were mere prejudices, perceptions, or stereotypes in the minds of white people as so many adverse judgments have been automatically characterized -- why did the very same views appear among Northern-born blacks at the same time?
Where hard data are available these data substantiate the pattern of behavioral differences between the pre-existing Northern Black populations and the newcomers from the South.
In early 20th century Pennsylvania, for example, the rate of violent crimes among Blacks from the South was nearly five times that among Blacks born in Pennsylvania. In Washington DC, where the influx from the south occurred decades earlier, the effect of the Southerners' arrival could be seen decades earlier. For example out of wedlock births were just under 10 percent of all births among blacks in Washington in 1878, but this more than doubled by 1881.
[...] The new majorities of Southern Blacks in the Northern Black urban communities were sufficiently large, and their culture sufficiently reinforced by continuing new arrivals from the South, that their rate of assimilation to the cultural norms of the surrounding white society was neither as rapid nor as complete as that of the much smaller numbers of blacks who had preceded them in these cities in the 19th century.
[...] Many Northern-born blacks condemned the Southern newcomers and saw in them a danger that the white population would put up new barriers against all Blacks. Which is in fact what happened.
[...] Blacks were prevented from living in white neighborhoods by methods ranging from legal prohibitions and restrictive covenants to outright violence. All this happened within a very few years of the mass migrations of Southern Blacks to Northern cities.
The massive black ghettos which became common in the 20th century were just one aspect of a more general retrogression in race relations in which various public accommodations once opened to Blacks were now closed to them. And Black children who had once gone to schools with white children in Northern cities were now segregated into different schools.
The conclusion that this change was a reaction to a mass migration of less acculturated Blacks from the South is reinforced by the history of cities on the West Coast where this mass in migration from the South took place decades later. [...] And was likewise followed by retrogressions in race relations.
... A similar pattern had already unfolded among Jews in the United States in the late 19th century. When the highly acculturated German Jews lost much of the social acceptance which they had already achieved after larger masses of much less acculturated Jews from Eastern Europe arrived. Followed by new barriers against Jews in general.
To say that this retrogression was caused by anti-Semitism would likewise be to transform a characterization into a causal explanation. Implicitly treating those adversely affected as abstract people whose problems originated solely in other people's minds.
Whether among Blacks, Jews or others, leaders within these groups themselves saw behavioral problems among some of their own people as creating backlashes in the larger society around them. From which the entire group suffered as a result.
Organized social uplift groups both secular and religious arose within the Black community, the Jewish Community, as well as within other communities, aimed at changing the behavior of members of their own respective groups in order to facilitate the advancement of these groups as a whole.
[...] a Black newspaper named the Urban League offered such published advice as don't use vile language in public places, don't throw garbage in the backyard or alley or keep dirty front yards, do not carry
on loud conversations in streetcars and public places.
Although these efforts produced positive results over the years, whether among Blacks, Jews, or others -- that whole approach was antithetical to a new social philosophy that emerged in the late 20th century: Multiculturalism....
The rise and fall of the Black community in the United States
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xZHESkRTupI
THOMAS SOWELL
https://youtu.be/xZHESkRTupI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: As of the early 19th century residential segregation was just one of a number of restrictions placed on free Blacks in both the North and the South.
However, by the last decade of the 19th century such residential restrictions had eroded in Northern cities to the point where W.E.B Du Bois could write in the 1890s of a growing liberal Spirit toward the Negro in Philadelphia. [...] Nor was Philadelphia unique. There were similar developments in New York, Detroit, Washington, and other Northern cities.
[...] The Black upper class in Detroit at that time had regular social interactions with whites, and their children attended high schools and colleges with whites in Illinois. During the same era legal restrictions on access to public accommodations for blacks were removed from the law, even though there were not enough black voters at the time to influence public policy. So that this represented changes in white public opinion.
In New York City by the 1890s most Blacks did not work as unskilled laborers, but held modest but respectable jobs. ... Historian Oscar Hanlon characterized Blacks in New York at that time as being better off than the mass of recent white immigrants.
[...] As late as 1910 more than two-thirds of the city's black residents lived in neighborhoods that were predominantly white. To maintain that residential and other racial restrictions on Blacks were simply a matter of the predispositions of the white racism, immediately raises the question of why such predispositions should have changed so much during the course of the 19th century. And then changed back again drastically, and within a very few years during the early 20th century.
[...] A causal analysis of the major changes that occurred in residential and other restrictions on blacks cannot explain such changes by simply saying racism. Turning from the white population to the Black population we find developments that make the changing residential patterns explicable without resorting to inexplicable changes inside the heads of white people.
[...There were...] marked differences between the white populations of the North and South that many observers noted during the antebellum era. This meant that those Blacks who came out of the South to live in northern cities would be very different in many ways from the white populations of those cities.
The visible racial differences made Blacks easy to identify and restrict during the course of the 19th century. However, over a period of generations Northern Blacks tended to acquire more of the culture of the surrounding white urban population of the north. Just as other groups often have when living surrounded by a vastly larger population with a different culture and a higher socioeconomic level.
By the end of the 19th century this cultural assimilation had reached the point where racial barriers eased considerably in the northern cities. Where the Black populations of these cities were now predominantly native-born residents rather than migrants from the South.
This situation changed drastically, however, and within a relatively few years with the mass migrations of millions of blacks out of the South beginning in the early 20th century.
[...] The newcomers were seen by both the pre-existing Black populations and the white populations of these cities as creating greatly increased social problems such as crime, violence, and offensive behavior in general.
If these were mere prejudices, perceptions, or stereotypes in the minds of white people as so many adverse judgments have been automatically characterized -- why did the very same views appear among Northern-born blacks at the same time?
Where hard data are available these data substantiate the pattern of behavioral differences between the pre-existing Northern Black populations and the newcomers from the South.
In early 20th century Pennsylvania, for example, the rate of violent crimes among Blacks from the South was nearly five times that among Blacks born in Pennsylvania. In Washington DC, where the influx from the south occurred decades earlier, the effect of the Southerners' arrival could be seen decades earlier. For example out of wedlock births were just under 10 percent of all births among blacks in Washington in 1878, but this more than doubled by 1881.
[...] The new majorities of Southern Blacks in the Northern Black urban communities were sufficiently large, and their culture sufficiently reinforced by continuing new arrivals from the South, that their rate of assimilation to the cultural norms of the surrounding white society was neither as rapid nor as complete as that of the much smaller numbers of blacks who had preceded them in these cities in the 19th century.
[...] Many Northern-born blacks condemned the Southern newcomers and saw in them a danger that the white population would put up new barriers against all Blacks. Which is in fact what happened.
[...] Blacks were prevented from living in white neighborhoods by methods ranging from legal prohibitions and restrictive covenants to outright violence. All this happened within a very few years of the mass migrations of Southern Blacks to Northern cities.
The massive black ghettos which became common in the 20th century were just one aspect of a more general retrogression in race relations in which various public accommodations once opened to Blacks were now closed to them. And Black children who had once gone to schools with white children in Northern cities were now segregated into different schools.
The conclusion that this change was a reaction to a mass migration of less acculturated Blacks from the South is reinforced by the history of cities on the West Coast where this mass in migration from the South took place decades later. [...] And was likewise followed by retrogressions in race relations.
... A similar pattern had already unfolded among Jews in the United States in the late 19th century. When the highly acculturated German Jews lost much of the social acceptance which they had already achieved after larger masses of much less acculturated Jews from Eastern Europe arrived. Followed by new barriers against Jews in general.
To say that this retrogression was caused by anti-Semitism would likewise be to transform a characterization into a causal explanation. Implicitly treating those adversely affected as abstract people whose problems originated solely in other people's minds.
Whether among Blacks, Jews or others, leaders within these groups themselves saw behavioral problems among some of their own people as creating backlashes in the larger society around them. From which the entire group suffered as a result.
Organized social uplift groups both secular and religious arose within the Black community, the Jewish Community, as well as within other communities, aimed at changing the behavior of members of their own respective groups in order to facilitate the advancement of these groups as a whole.
[...] a Black newspaper named the Urban League offered such published advice as don't use vile language in public places, don't throw garbage in the backyard or alley or keep dirty front yards, do not carry
on loud conversations in streetcars and public places.
Although these efforts produced positive results over the years, whether among Blacks, Jews, or others -- that whole approach was antithetical to a new social philosophy that emerged in the late 20th century: Multiculturalism....
The rise and fall of the Black community in the United States