Jim Crow was a song performed by a white man in blackface, denigrating black people. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation, but were declared unconstitutional in 1964. Informal Jim Crow laws still exist, including discrimination and poor education in urban areas. Tolerance and equitable education are necessary for progress towards social equality.
Jim Crow is not actually a person, but the subject of a song performed by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice. Rice was a white man who performed in blackface, and like most blackface artists, he denigrated black people through his music, formulaic behavior, and rude jokes. Most people are familiar with the name because it was given to a group of laws enacted after the American Civil War designed to keep blacks and whites apart. Some expressly forbid inter-race marriage or sexual contact, while others, such as the famously violated by Rosa Parks, separate public services such as on buses where blacks had to ride behind.
Jump Jim Crow is a long song that was a hit among white Americans in the early 19th century, and the lyrics express a variety of racist sentiments. The subject of the song is a slave, and he is satisfied with his lot. He is also sexually promiscuous and ignorant, and the song is usually sung in the “supposed” slave dialect.
The Southern conception of “separate but equal” was essentially the elaboration of Jim Crow laws. Such laws were made to keep whites and blacks apart, satisfying segregationists while pacifying more liberal thinkers. However, they often missed the mark, because they were built on the premise that whites were superior to blacks and therefore deserved better services.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared most of these laws unconstitutional, though it would take many more years of persistent law enforcement to rid the Southern United States of the “separate but equal” mentality. Although most of the segregation laws have been overturned, there are still many people in the South – and in the North for that matter – who persist in discriminating against blacks by all means possible.
Today, some groups still believe their racism is justified. What these critiques fail to address is the concept of informal, out-of-the-books Jim Crow laws. For example, many people believe that African Americans do not always get equal justice before the law and that past and current discrimination has led to higher rates of poverty and unemployment among the population.
Furthermore, ignorance may be linked to the poor state of the school system in many congested urban areas in the United States. Tours of schools in areas like Harlem and Washington DC, with majority black students, tend to show buildings that are barely habitable, students that have little access to supplies or books, and schools that have extreme difficulty retaining teachers. This is not the fault of the people who live in and use these facilities, but of inadequate funding and/or leadership available to these schools.
As a result, Jim Crow dances mournfully through the present until everyone is willing to share the responsibility to become more tolerant and to uphold every student’s rights to a truly equitable education. Furthermore, continuing to stereotype black people does the nation a great disservice and contributes to slowing progress in achieving total social equality.
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