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

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

But you're missing the point. If hostile (or even  indifferent) whites had 
sought to join these organizations and take them  over/destroy them, the 
organizations would have just said, "you're not welcome  here" and thrown them out.  
Indeed, if such an organization had simply  suspected that a white (or for 
that matter, a black) who sought to join/attend  was a government spy, etc., they 
could have unceremoniously excluded him, for  whatever reason they wanted, 
including race.  Otherwise, civil rights  groups like the NAACP could have been 
infiltrated; black fraternities and  sororities could have had their assets 
dissipated or seized by new "members" and  so forth. 
 
In the absence of a presumption of freedom of association, how would the  
NAACP have defended itself from a law like the one I posited, that required,  
say, all organizations within the state with more than 500 members to be open to  
all who are willing to pay membership dues?
 
So, I'll grant you this: no one tried to enforce antidiscrimination laws  
against African Americans, so in practice, they never had to assert the right to  
discriminate.  But I don't buy the idea that African Americans, or minority  
groups in general, don't/can't/haven't benefit(ed) from the "liberty" to  
discriminate, because that liberty, while it can and has been used against them,  
also protects them from hostile state action.
 
In a message dated 6/11/2007 1:42:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
blandsberg at pacific.edu writes:

I am not  familiar with racially discriminatory black institutions in the 
South,  certainly not as a common phenomenon.  In my book, Free at Last to Vote,  
I tell about Ruby Tartt, a privileged white woman, who preferred to attend  
black churches in Sumter County, Alabama; she was welcomed to them.  The  NAACP 
did not exclude whites, but welcomed them.


 



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