Tag Archive

Tavis Smiley

White moderates and the persistence of a Jim Crow world

When I read about white moderates (i.e. those who denounced lynching and racism, but did not actively do anything to fight them, and came particularly from the North or West) in the Jim Crow world, I often think about the connections and similarities to the way that some whites talk in today’s world. I have an article I’m shopping around about Mabel Byrd’s interactions with the New Deal cabinet. Part of my argument is that the way the white New Dealers discussed race was functional and programmatic and discriminatory in a similar way that some white politicians discuss race and Read more