| Why are Americans surprised when they find out Jim Crow is still alive and well in many parts of the South?
I lived in New Orleans two years when I was in college; those schools are segregated - white/black - by a combination of economic discrimination and a clever property tax law.
To calculate your property tax, a homeowner first reduces $100,000 from the actual value of his home. Taxes are paid on THAT estimation of value.
The result is that homeowners get a significant tax break, which saves them enough so they can send their kids to white-only private schools.
Blacks, who either can't afford to buy, have bad credit, or own very cheap homes, don't get the same benefit from the law. They're forced to send their kids to public schools, which - thanks to the reduction in accrued property taxes - are so woefully funded that they can't even afford books. Teachers have to make copies for the students from workbooks they buy themselves - at their OWN unreimbursed EXPENSE.
Take one look at the marching bands at Mardi Gras. All of them are either all-black or all-white. No racial integration whatsoever.
"What truth endures beneath the flaming stream?"
-- A Volcano, Bartolome de Las Casas, Inferno de Marsaya, 1536 |