History

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Were southern business owners supportive of getting rid of Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s, as conservatives of today claim they were? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago by join_the_iww@hexbear.net to c/history@hexbear.net

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I can’t really find an example right now, but I’ve seen conservative tellings of the civil rights era that were along the lines of the following:

“Restaurant owners and other business owners in the southern states wanted to be able to accept black patrons (because they were businessmen after all, and the only color they cared about was green), but because of Democrat Big Government, they weren’t allowed to”

The way I recall it is that this premise was then used in support of an equivalency between Jim Crow laws and Civil Rights laws, i.e. “First they were prohibited from taking customers that they wanted, and now they’re being forced to take all customers, even ones that they don’t want”.

I’m sure this is bullshit, but honestly I don’t know enough about that part of American history to refute it, and it kind of does make intuitive sense that a restaurant owner would want as many patrons as possible. So can one of you more knowledgeable folks here debunk it?

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[–] join_the_iww@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would also bet that they did a business calculation of “well white customers have more money, and most white customers are racist and don’t want to eat/shop in proximity with black people, so therefore if I open up to black customers I would lose an amount of white patronage so large that it would either cancel it out or even become a net loss, so it’s not worth it.”

[–] BurgerPunk@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They could have, and that calculation makes sense, but, i doubt most did. I think for them rascism was its own reward

[–] RamrodBaguette@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah. It's a mistake to think :porky-happy: doesn't consume some of his own ideology.