Sublime

A very simple illustration is the operation of Jim Crow travel in trains in the southern part of the United States. On such a train the porter, when he is not in line of duty, may ride only in the Jim Crow coach—for the train porter is a Negro. But the members of the train crew who are not Negroes—the conductor, brakeman, baggageman—when they are n

The same goes, of course, for human beings. The distancing effect of language facilitates exploitation, cruelty, murder, and genocide. When the other party to a relationship is a mere member of a generic category, be it “customer,” “terrorist,” or “employee,” exploitation or murder comes much more easily. Racial epithets serve the same purpose: we

In John Steinbeck’s book Travels with Charley, he moves across the country with a black dog. And the repeated joke he depicts, and it is nauseating, is that when he stopped for gas in the South, people kept saying, “I thought that was a nigger in your car.” The joke was a warning. Charley could not, after all, be in the front sitting alongside a Wh

He believes in that great false wisdom taught slaves and pragmatists alike, that white is right.

“The Jim Crow era had begun.” It spread rapidly, particularly after the Supreme Court in its remarkable 1896 verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended” to give the Negro equality in social situations but only “before the law”—and that racially separate facilities were therefore legal so long as

Hawai‘i, well-known for its mixing of Native, Asian, and European strains, seemed particularly threatening. “We do not want those people to help govern the country,” a Massachusetts newspaper put it baldly. “When future issues arise in the United States Senate, we do not want a situation where vital decisions may depend upon two half-breed senators