1866 Civil Rights Act A descriptive point & somewordsabouttheelephant in ...

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

That's rather an overstatement.  Blacks set up "discriminatory"  all-black 
churches, mutual aid societies, hospitals, sports teams, and so forth  and so 
on.  Of course, this was easy enough because whites didn't want to  join these 
organizations.  But let's say a southern jurisdiction had wanted  to wipe out 
African American civil society to prevent them from organizing for  voting 
rights, against segregation, and whatnot.  Antidiscrimination laws,  selectively 
applied, would have been a powerful too.  
 
And it goes beyond race discrimination, as such. Want to wipe out the NAACP  
in Alabama in 1950?  Pass a law requiring the NAACP not to "discriminate"  in 
its membership policies (not just on race, but on ideological views, etc, see  
eg Dale v. Boy Scouts), and then flood the organization with hostile  whites. 
 Under modern views of antidiscrimination law, the state could have  just 
said that the NAACP is a "place of public  accommodation" or a  "business 
establishment" and thus has to be open to everyone.
 
 
In a message dated 6/11/2007 1:08:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
blandsberg at pacific.edu writes:

Blacks  had little practical liberty to discriminate.  


 
 
David E.  Bernstein
Professor
George Mason University School of  Law
http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste



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