Re: Cowards

Janice/Burgy/List:

This is off-topic for this list. The appropriate response here would
have been to send this privately to Burgy.

Let's keep things in the faith-science area.

TG

On Jan 2, 2006, at 3:24 PM, Janice Matchett wrote:

>
> On Mon, 2 Jan 2006 11:39:17 -0700 John Burgeson wrote, in part:
>
> "...My "fights", Janice, were in the civil rights movement of the
> 60s. .."
>
> ### One of those people who used to fight in that movement now has
> a web site: http://www.discoverthenetwork.org
>
> ". my last article .. was on one of America's great hero, Rosa
> Parks. ...In all these encounters, respect for one's opposer (not
> his or her views) was paramount. I must reject your views (above)
> as misguided caricature." ~ Burgy
>
> ### Thomas Sowell also wrote an article about Rosa Parks. You
> might find it of interest:
>
> Thomas Sowell: Rosa Parks and History
> http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/
> 2005/10/27/173033.html ^
> Posted on 10/27/2005 1:55:50 PM EDT by Shade2
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1510371/posts
>
> The death of Rosa Parks has reminded us of her place in history, as
> the black woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a
> white man, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of Alabama, became
> the spark that ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and
> 1960s.
>
> Most people do not know the rest of the story, however. Why was
> there racially segregated seating on public transportation in the
> first place? "Racism" some will say -- and there was certainly
> plenty of racism in the South, going back for centuries. But
> racially segregated seating on streetcars and buses in the South
> did not go back for centuries.
>
> Far from existing from time immemorial, as many have assumed,
> racially segregated seating in public transportation began in the
> South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
>
> Those who see government as the solution to social problems may be
> surprised to learn that it was government which created this
> problem. Many, if not most, municipal transit systems were
> privately owned in the 19th century and the private owners of these
> systems had no incentive to segregate the races.
>
> These owners may have been racists themselves but they were in
> business to make a profit -- and you don't make a profit by
> alienating a lot of your customers. There was not enough market
> demand for Jim Crow seating on municipal transit to bring it about.
>
> It was politics that segregated the races because the incentives of
> the political process are different from the incentives of the
> economic process. Both blacks and whites spent money to ride the
> buses but, after the disenfranchisement of black voters in the late
> 19th and early 20th century, only whites counted in the political
> process.
>
> It was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of the white
> voters to demand racial segregation. If some did and the others
> didn't care, that was sufficient politically, because what blacks
> wanted did not count politically after they lost the vote.
>
> The incentives of the economic system and the incentives of the
> political system were not only different, they clashed. Private
> owners of streetcar, bus, and railroad companies in the South
> lobbied against the Jim Crow laws while these laws were being
> written, challenged them in the courts after the laws were passed,
> and then dragged their feet in enforcing those laws after they were
> upheld by the courts.
>
> These tactics delayed the enforcement of Jim Crow seating laws for
> years in some places. Then company employees began to be arrested
> for not enforcing such laws and at least one president of a
> streetcar company was threatened with jail if he didn't comply.
>
> None of this resistance was based on a desire for civil rights for
> blacks. It was based on a fear of losing money if racial
> segregation caused black customers to use public transportation
> less often than they would have in the absence of this affront.
>
> Just as it was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of whites
> to demand racial segregation through the political system to bring
> it about, so it was not necessary for an overwhelming majority of
> blacks to stop riding the streetcars, buses and trains in order to
> provide incentives for the owners of these transportation systems
> to feel the loss of money if some blacks used public transportation
> less than they would have otherwise.
>
> People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to
> make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are
> saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what
> you want.
>
> Black people's money was just as good as white people's money, even
> though that was not the case when it came to votes.
>
> Initially, segregation meant that whites could not sit in the black
> section of a bus any more than blacks could sit in the white
> section. But whites who were forced to stand when there were still
> empty seats in the black section objected. That's when the rule was
> imposed that blacks had to give up their seats to whites.
>
> Legal sophistries by judges "interpreted" the 14th Amendment's
> requirement of equal treatment out of existence. Judicial activism
> can go in any direction.
>
> That's when Rosa Parks came in, after more than half a century of
> political chicanery and judicial fraud.
>
> ~ janice
>

________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D.
Computer Support Scientist
Chemistry Department
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523
(o) 970-491-7003 (f) 970-491-1801
Received on Mon Jan 2 22:11:45 2006