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Interesting column today from Thomas Sowell, could be a supporting
story for your book / workshop in December.<br>
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2005/10/27/173033.html">http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2005/10/27/173033.html</a><br>
<h1>Rosa Parks and history</h1>
<p>By Thomas Sowell</p>
<p>Oct 27, 2005</p>
<p>Syndicated columnist </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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. </p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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. </p>
<p> Legal sophistries by judges
"interpreted" the 14th Amendment's requirement of equal treatment out
of existence. Judicial activism can go in any direction.</p>
<p> That's when Rosa Parks came in, after more than half a century of
political chicanery and judicial fraud.</p>
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