Jim Crow America | The Indypendent

15.9.12

Jim Crow America | The Indypendent: Jim Crow — the name calls up antiquated imagery of “whites only” signs, “colored” waiting rooms and, at worst, a grinning white mob gloating over the charred body of a Black man. These images disgust and horrify us, but it also comforts us to view them as evidence of a past that has receded in the rearview mirror of history. Ahead of us, the rising sun logo of the Obama campaign welcomes us to a post-racial America.

“We’re sort of in that la-la land of believing we’re in this post-racial place. It’s not just a modern phenomenon,” anti-racism scholar Tim Wise said in a 2009 interview with the Open Society Institute. “White folks, going back 40 to 50 years, did not, even in the early ’60s, think that racism was really a big deal worth focusing very much attention on. A small minority did realize that, but the vast majority said at that time that people of color had equal opportunity with white folks.”