Hi back. It’s been a while since we’ve met in person….

This isn’t a matter of taking my word, since the details of history and politics aren’t my strong points– all I did was spend a little time going over a wikipedia page.

I was hoping that someone would check my work.

I’ll take your word for it. I’ve known you for some years (Hi, Button Lady). I still think there’s a disturbing unity of policy between the old KKK Democrats (who wanted people treated differently according to the color of their skins) and the current crop (who still want people etc. etc.). I also, frankly, see far too much “they’re poor inner city blacks, we can’t expect much from them” from all sides.

And I think this idiocy in Meridian arises from that (racist) lack of expectation.

Both the northern Rs and Ds were strongly in favor, with the percentage of Ds being higher. Southern Rs and Ds were against, but had some Ds (just a few, but there were no Rs at all) in favor.

It looks to me as though rather little about the character of the parties at the time can be deduced from this.

However, I’m not seeing where you get that more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act– it looks to me as though the Democrats come out ahead for everything for the cloture vote.

More Republicans than Democrats, and a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats, voted for the Civil Rights act of 1964. I won’t deny that there have been some genuinely egalitarian Democrats, but the Party was for Racial discrimination a la Jim Crow pretty much up to the very moment that it became for Racial discrimination a la the likes of Al Sharpton.

The Democrats’ claim to be the defenders of the underprivileged is an act of such massive hubris that it takes my breath away. They are elitists. They believe that the better sorts of people should run things, and that the masses should do what they are told. It is apparent from how they treat people as categories rather than individuals. It is apparent in the way they have contempt for laws, rules, and common decency as such might apply to them.

There is a much cleaner and more honest populist side to the Democrat Party, but that side has not had a decisive say since Harry Truman. I keep hoping that the populists will get sick of being duped by the Political Class Twits, and make a real fight for the soul of the party, just as I hope that the small government conservatives will get some fire in their bellies and fight the RINOs. I hope to live to see the day that there is an actual faction fight on the floor of a national convention again.

I also hope that one day the African-Americans that he has lived off of for decades will realize what a parasite Al Sharpton is. I probably shouldn’t hope that they use him like a wishbone, but I do.

Ah yes, that’d be devolving the system locally to schools, who make their own decisions on this. Rather than having a sensible set of rules to follow.

And I see, you’re a Fachist then, given your unconditional support for companies over people (and hence propping up the corporate capitalist system)? Well, there we go!

Also, southern Democrats installed Jim Crow, and other Democrats (mostly northern, I think) overthrew it. Parties don’t have eternal natures, and it probably isn’t worth going back too far if you want to understand what’s going on with a party now.

As for racial attitudes, Jim Crow and Progressives, even the Progressives from the North were extremely racist in their views. Read Margaret Sanger and you will see what I mean. Her racial views have been whitewashed, to say the least.

It is true, however, that Southern Progressives were the worst offenders. C. Vann Woodward goes out of his way to praise the economic views of people like South Carolina U.S. Sen. Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman even as he is puzzled that someone who was (in his opinion) so economically enlightened could be such a vicious racist.

Both parties are guilty of being “tough on crime” when they need to pander. “Lawr ‘n Owda” is what’s left of the Rule of Law when the Political Class (which naturally hates the idea that the :aw applied to THEM) gets done with it. And the Political Class has at the very least a major foothold in both parties.

As for “Jim Crow”; that was an artifact of the ruling party of the South from post reconstruction to the Civil Rights era. Which is to say, the Democrat Party. Democrats were the backbone of the second KKK, as they had been of the first and of the confederacy. I’m not saying that the Republican Party consists, or ever consisted, of racially enlightened Cherubs. But the selling of the Democrat Party as the Party of Equality and Racial Enlightenment belongs in the PR bullsh*t hall of fame. The Democrat Party has pursued a policy of differentiating between people according to the color of their skins since its modern founding in 1828.

I’m not sure which party is more responsible for the condition of the schools, or for black children (especially black boys, I think) being treated as disposable.

From the article: “About 62 percent of Meridian’s population is African American, and the Justice Department alleges that mostly African American children and children with disabilities are impacted by the unconstitutional policies.”

So, not all the children being jailed are black.

I think that there is a substrata of racism in this mess, just not as simple as Al “The Democrat Party’s Lawn Jockey” Sharpton would like you to think.

The public schools of this nation have, for decades, been run according to reliable Leftwing PC principles. And if you take a good long look at said principles, you will (I think) come to the uneasy realization that the Liberal Elite consider the great majority of people stupid, ignorant, education-proof trolls, and that they think of dark-hued persons as all that and twice on Thursdays. They will acknowledge some rare exceptions, provided that said exceptions agree with them on any subject of substance. But they think most people are, at best, one step above the Apes. And they think that dark people are mostly a half-step back of the majority. They may not come out and say any of this, but that is how they act.

This policy was put in place because the policy makers, and the people the policy makers desire to impress, think of Black children as the larval form of criminals. They were treated like criminals because in the eyes of the political class they are criminal until proven to be exceptions.

The Democrats have consistently treated Blacks as lesser, from the time of the Civil War onwards. The Republicans are frequently not a lot better, but they are better more often than the supposed champions of civil rights.

croaker, I’d be grateful for any details you want to post.

You should NEVER let your lack of knowledge of a situation allow you to keep yourself from making racism charges. That’s . . . racism. Especially when it’s those dirty, inbred, uneducated, tea bagging, rat fucker southerners we’re talking about.

Or something.

Wow….Overstate much?

It’s all a matter of proper training. Take a dumb slug like George W. Bush and send him to Phillips Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School, and you end up with President of the United States, although not necessarily a standout.

Take some half-way gifted kid from a shithole like Meridian, Mississippi, stick him in jail, get him raped a little bit and before long you have got a real sociopath on your hands.

Depends on the end-product you’re looking for.

Whether this outrage stems from state repression or the unholy alliance between government and private “correctional” corporations it is disgusting. With that being said, this issue in Meriden sounds a hell of a lot like the Pennsylvania case that another commenter referred to. When the priorities of courts become intertwined with the interests of private corporations, we should call this arrangement by its proper name: fascism.