The Final Solution: Separate But Equal

Here is a brilliant aside from de Tocqueville quoted by Louis Menand in his New Yorker piece on Plessy v. Fergusson (“In the Eye of the Law,” 2/4/19) where Menand also cites C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow. “The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.” For example, minorities facing similar forms of discrimination often find themselves at war against each other--a propensity which is often hidden under the veneer of good intentions. On the other side of the fence, the old South was feudal. Repression was a form of definition. A slave was going to be less a threat to a plantation owner than someone from the underclass, who had rights and privileges, along with a certain ingenuity or entrepreneurial talent that would challenge the status quo. Racism and prejudice are multidimensional, but in some ways economic inequality plays a central role in the perpetuation of these forms of discrimination. A wealthy liberal is less threatened by a minority than another worker struggling to make ends meet, who's competing for the same job, for which say and immigrant might be willing to take less pay. It's like children in one of those large families who fight with each other over two scarce commodities: love and scraps. Trump appeals to his base with this very message. It’s not that caravans from Central America are murderers and drug lords, it’s that they will undercut the market and accept a lower wage.