Week 5 Reading Notes and Disc.

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Feb 20, 2024

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Week 5 Reading Notes and Disc. Beth Lew-Williams, “Intimacy, Exclusion, and a Search for California’s Color Line” (2017): 1. What is the difference between internalizing and externalizing forces of segregation, in Lew-Williams’ argument? The difference between internalizing and externalizing forces of segregation: - Externalizing forces: forming national borders, dividing the citizens and alienating the other - Internalizing forces: drawing the color lines intrapersonally, ie. ranking oneself higher than another race in respect to superiority 2. What is Lew-Williams’ scholarly intervention about anti-immigration laws and the importance of what’s happening in California to the era of legal exclusion? The scholarly intervention about anti-immigration laws: - In California, anti-immigration laws and miscegenation laws sexually excluded Chinese people (specifically men) from marriage with women; it was challenging for women to migrate out of China, so the population of men and women in America at that time was 1:19, and there were laws set in place to prevent inter- racial marriage. - There were strict immigration and border laws, however, within state lines, there was little regulation or policing of the color line, and there is little known about the interracial social dynamics between the Chinese. The color line was used to prevent the Chinese from entering establishments, local exclusions, or hypersegregation. 3. What is her major argument, and what evidence best supports this argument? The major argument is that there were two lines, the external and internal, that facilitated exclusion, and it’s influence on the color line throughout the US. “Birth of a Nation and Birth of the NAACP” (primary source packet): 1. What does the advice sheet, the newspaper clippings, and the excerpt from Crisis Magazine tell you about the broader, harmful effect of Birth of A Nation against African American communities, and its subsequent galvanizing effect? - The advice sheet shows that black people were not permitted to watch “The Birth of a Nation” - The newspaper clipping highlights the Klan’s pervasiveness in the South, with rising interest in investigating their crimes. One local black church leader spoke out that the Klan are not looking for social harmony or equity with black people, and are seeking out to break down morale through terror, threats, and encitement of murder.

- The excerpt from Crisis magazine throws criticism towards The Birth of a Nation’s partisan portrayals of America, and depicting the exaltations of race-war in the country, depicting the Reconstruction era as a wicked and evil chapter in history that was thrown in the faces of Southerners and a way to punish and humiliate white people. They even claim that the title itself is an insult to Washington and a cemented union that America was founded upon. 2. What do they tell you about the rising tide of white supremacy and Jim Crow in the Progressive Era? This tells us about the rising tide of white supremacy linked to acts of murder and bloodshed against black people; mass congregations throughout the South rallying against black people in order to maintain social/economic power, and Jim Crow’s ability to prohibit black people from making social advances. 3. Jane Addams, a famous social reformer and board member for the NAACP, makes several inaccurate statements about African American history in her argument against the screening of the film. What does this tell us about how the conflict over racist depictions of American history shaped public discourse? What this tells us about the conflict over racial depictions is that Addam’s claims that the movie has some historical bearing, and that certain elements of the movie were indeed true and historically accurate…the historical accuracy in question is attached to a pro-Southern ideology and fiction proliferated and dominant in popular media/understanding. 4. In the excerpt from her pamphlet Southern Horrors, Ida B. Wells makes a strong and moving case on how to galvanize Black organizers to fight the rise of lynchings. What are her major arguments regarding how to resist and eradicate lynching? - Her major arguments on how to resist and eradicate lynching are through: - keeping a rifle upon a person in their home in order to protect themselves when the law refuses to step in - A powerful line; “When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs a great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life”. - To raise awareness among black people of these lynchings and the facts, and get to these facts before the public does - Afro-American papers, the only ones that print the truth, need people to support their journals so they can actually investigate and spread word - The press dominated with white people are not suitable to actually investigate and get to the truth of lynchings and acts of violence against black people Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and W.E.B. DuBois on school segregation For Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): How did the court majority (led by Justice Brown) rule and upon what basis? How did the court minority rule and upon what basis? How is W.E.B. DuBois’s in conversation with Plessy v. Ferguson, and how does he answer the question posed in his essay’s title?

1. The court majority in Plessy v. Ferguson ruled in favor of the law and upheld its constitutionality, on the basis of preserving public peace and order, and that the treatment of black people compared to white people has no bearings on the Fourteenth Amendment, of which solely protects the legal equality of all American citizens. The dissenting opinion ruled that the two races will be forever linked in posterity, and to regulate the separation of these two races will proliferate more hate, and that this separation cannot be justified upon any legal grounds. W.E.B. DuBois's perspective on the Plessy v. Ferguson case is that segregation breeds segregation; to separate between races and prevent social advancement for black people, it only promotes hatred and resentment among black and white people. The question he poses in his journal is "Do black individuals need separate schools?", and to this he answers that they need neither segregated or integrated schools, what they need is Education: he raises the fact that if both schools have poor conditions for teaching, neither are beneficial/superior to the other. However, he does highlight that integrated schools that fulfill suitable teaching conditions are a more natural learning environment. Discussion Why is Plessy v. Ferguson important? - Notion of separate but equal - Civil liberty and autonomy - Tension of personal liberty and how much authority the state has to regulate it Browns argument of inequality is partially in nature and society, and the law cannot make that a non-reality - Plessy v. Ferguson highlights the ambiguities of Amendments and the Constitution - The law is not mandating that black people have to ride in a decrepit, run down railway car, it is only stating that black and white people have to be separate. - Separation does not make one group or race inferior Harlan - 13th Amendment: positive immunity - You have protections explicitly - Constitution is “colorblind” - Cannot be separate classes of citizens on the basis of race - The separation of railway cars will eventually spread to other institutions/features of everyday life, and will lead to inferiority of people that society already discriminates - Black americans will be subjected to inferior services perpetually - It doesn’t matter that legally speaking Brown is within the letter of the law, the law is unconstitutional as it will spread inferiority — it is the outcome of the law that makes it unconstitutional - Will make discrimination legal without it being anywhere in the law - This is the first time an argument like Plessy v. Ferguson had been dissected by SCOTUS

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Poll tax: need x dollars to vote - Many black sharecroppers took out loans/credit, making them cash-poor and unable to pay the tax Literacy Test: need to be able to read x passage to vote - Many were illiterate - Illiterate whites given easier passages than black people Grandfather clause: grandfather had to have franchise for you to vote - Targets black americans because many of their grandfather’s were enslaved W.E.B. DuBois - Forced desegregation is a hostile environment - Potential bias from teachers and students leading to abusiveness - What is necessary to desegregate schools? - If segregated schools were used to uplift black schools, then it would be possible to integrate - Segregated schools can’t do this because they lack resources - Argues for RESTORATIVE JUSTICE - Segregated schools need resources, support to not only educate black americans and prevent hostility if they do integrate - Cannot have effective desegregation without providing black communities with resources and support to combat volatility of desegregated schools - Cannot deal with the problem of separate but equal without simultaneously giving black americans support to educate their children - There were a lot of arguments for desegregation that to sit white and black kids together and be educated equally, racism will fix itself - DeBois says NO to this. - DuBois argues that desegregated schools aren’t working, and if segregated schools got resources and funding, it could work because it then makes sure students are safe Birth of a Nation: What does the source say about the relationship between popular culture and racism/racial justice and equity: - Proliferation of certain ideology that reconstruction era as a wicked and evil chapter in history that was thrown in the faces of southerners -

Week 5 Reading Notes and Disc.

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