Jim Crow laws

And there's too much of a tendency not to think historically about the relation between past and present, right? And like this shows up in the bizarre constructs like Afro-pessimism and all that kind of stuff.

So for instance, I mean, after Hurricane Katrina, black politicians and anti-racist pundits and academics, for that matter, were anxious that a non-black majority population in the city of New Orleans or a non-black majority electorate would ensue in going back to Jim Crow, right? If black officialdom lost control of the city, which is crazy, right? Because there was not, but that's an illustration of what I mean about not taking into account the dynamism of political history, basically.

But that's certainly what the bargain came down to.

But that means a different way of thinking about injustice and inequality.

I'm going to get, I get emails and DMs from curators about this, so I'm definitely going to get a few from

that one.

Your book, The South, you write about the living memory of Jim Crow.

And you are of the last generation, which we'll have experienced growing up in that environment.

South Africa was never anything like this.

Jim Crow in the South of the US was never like this.

You know, you never had something like Gaza.

in Alabama, you know, where they carpet bombed an entire city of millions of people.

I'm glad you read it because this is so... boilerplate in reformed synagogues and had been for a hundred years.

And one of the things in this smear campaign that ensues, the last phrase, which says our race is Caucasian, the Zionist critics, they really focused on that and they compared them to the Ku Klux Klan.

They compared them to Jim Crow.

And so the Zionists are saying this and these people, you know, the lady who owns the dress shop in Houston, Texas, That's offensive to her because her son is probably off fighting the Germans in the American army.

How do you respond?

Yeah, I mean, just as if, say, you're a passionate supporter of Jim Crow.

Right, exactly.

In the 50s and 60s, you might have seen the civil rights movement as a threat to your identity.

And I was.

Oh, my God.

I mean, listen, like, sure, Bernie, but honestly, I'm so tired of hearing like the fact this even has to be said, you know, like it's like I imagine someone saying that, like, you know, opposing Jim Crow is not anti whiteness.

Like, do we need to say that out loud? Like, how long is it to go on for?

Two years ago.

Byron Donalds told a crowd in Philadelphia, quote, during Jim Crow, the black family was together.

During Jim Crow, more black people were not just conservative, but more black people voted conservatively.

No, they voted for Republicans.

They didn't vote conservatively.

Right.

That's the way Jim Crow operated.

Right.

And why it was it could sustain itself for almost a century because it was able to prevent actual electoral competition that threatened their inset of interests.

We're still coming, you know, this is 1987.

We're still coming out of Jim Crow period, the Jim Crow era.

We're not even a full two decades out from when the last major civil rights legislation came through, and that was in 68.

So we're not even full 20 years yet.

But basically, they dismantled the part of the Voting Rights Act that allowed for what the law refers to as opportunity districts, but what anyone who's in the law, myself included, would colloquially call minority majority districts.

And this basically means that you in places, this is a dealing with vestiges of Jim Crow.

So it's, you know, in the South, mostly Southeast, North Carolina over to Texas and down.

You have these districts that have large swaths of Black voters.

I genuinely believe that.

And as I've said before, after genocide of natives, slavery and Jim Crow, I put reelecting Donald Trump.

as the last on the Mount Rushmore of shameful things we've done.

The candidates I'm excited for, and for all your Florida listeners, I'm sure they've already voted.

So he organized, helping other people register.

Just after midnight on June 12, 1963, he pulled into here with an armful of T-shirts that said, Jim Crow must go.

A man hiding across the street shot him in the back.

Two juries let that man walk.