Add me to the list of folks who would like to agree with @Timex, but think it’s unrealistic to expect market pressures to solve discrimination in many cases. Note I didn’t say “all cases” - it does work sometimes, most notably when the power of media/Internet is brought to bear to spotlight problems. But that works only as long as it generates outrage and action, and as we all know the attention span of the modern media is incredibly short. Soon enough, the next crazy thing comes around the bend and the last outrage drops off people’s radar.
Also, I’d like to second @Enidigm’s point about getting the federal government involved to enforce anti-discrimination standards, because pockets of bigotry tend to last long after the nation at large has moved forward. I feel there’s a similar argument to be made for federal involvement in areas like education and health care. You can allow states to experiment in those areas, but if you do then you’re dooming people to terrible economic prospects or poor health in the places that do it wrong. Federal-level control is anathema to many, I know, but I think it’s necessary in key areas.
On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. On December 5, a mass meeting was held at the Holt Street Baptist Church to determine if the protest would continue.[28] Given twenty minutes notice, King gave a speech[29] asking for a bus boycott and attendees enthusiastically agreed. Starting December 7, Hoover’s FBI noted the “agitation among negroes” and tried to find “derogatory information” about King.[30]
The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote “[a] miracle had taken place.” Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies at Lloyd’s of London.
Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials on December 8, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities.[31] Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery’s black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws.
Economic boycotts often work, especially at local level (See North Carolina and transgendered restrooms), but often at national level, and sometimes even at an International level (see South Africa and apartheid.)
Pressure increased across the country. The related civil suit was heard in federal district court and, on June 4, 1956, the court ruled in Browder v. Gayle (1956) that Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional.On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling, ruling that segregation on public buses and transportation was against the law.
The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, after 381 days.
This desire to claim that economic pressures and the good of humanity worked all by itself is just wishful thinking. There was more happening at the same time, and even then… this was not a refusal of service. It was subpar service in an area where the community was large enough to try and respond. Not everyone has that. And it wasn’t a life saving service, a needed drug, the only grocery store in town, it was a bus service and ultimately there were alternatives available to use for a boycott.
It is also wishful thinking that merely passing a law will change behavior. Sofware piracy, prohibition, pot smoking and the 55 MPH speed limit are all example of the futility of passing laws without widespread support.
The legal underpinning of the Montgomery bus boycott, happened before the economic boycott, with Jim Crow laws being overturned at the district court level, and Brown vs Board of Education, which sad that separate but equal service, were unconstitutional.
If you compare the speed that blacks were able to sit anywhere they wanted on a bus due to a combination of federal laws and boycotts, to say the speed of school desegregation. It is clear you want a combination.
He is downplaying the role of laws and putting too much faith on boycotts.
381 days, how many dead later… anyone who thinks reliving the Civil Rights days as an answer to today, well that is literally history repeating itself, not everyone got to live to see the success of Civil Rights, 381 days is not a short period of time, and it’s not as if on day 382 everything was fixed because of the magic of money.
Laws give you a legal means to pursue the problem… which are necessary in a system like ours. And he does think, absolutely believes, you should have the right to refuse service to other people as a private business owner. He’s said that.
I agree that generally speaking private business owners should have the right not to do business with people they don’t want to. Since prejudice against racial and ethnic minorities is fairly common. I see no problem with concept of protected classses.
Protected classes are SPECIAL. But you absolutely should be able to refuse to do business with people for reasons separate from a person’s membership in those classes.
Hell, to a large extent, that’s why we have those classes. To create specific types of refusal which are unacceptable, without completely removing an individual’s right to determine who they associate with.
I am being serious when I say that I’ve never heard that the Civil Rights Movement owed its success to economic boycotts. Your link – which was the same thing Timex already used upthread to try to make the same point! – doesn’t change that.
The Civil Rights Movement was not the free market at work. It was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people at work.
The importance of economic boycotts in the success of the civil rights movement was also highlighted in the PBS Documentary “Eyes on the Prize”. I’m not sure what else to suggest.
I’m not sure either, but it sounds like you’re not addressing anything I’ve written. So here it is for the third time: the Civil Rights Movement does not owe its success to boycotts. It’s a real stretch to suggest the history of that movement supports a claim that the free market will protect – much less further – minority rights.
I don’t get why y’all are arguing over citizen action (boycotts, sitdowns, etc) versus government involvement. Both were part of the civil rights movement. Both were important components. It’s likely that things would have turned out much differently if either were missing. Why do we have to choose one or the other? Just because you have citizen action doesn’t mean that government action isn’t necessary, and vice versa.
And that’s fine, if they become constitutionally recognized as such.
My concern is that instead of that, folks are pushing for the mistaken idea that “you should be forced to do business with anyone”, which is terrible.
But to be clear, since I have you the wrong impression, when I said this:
Sorry, I don’t. I’m pretty sure that virtually everyone is gonna avoid going to “the racist restaurant”. Like literally every single person I know would avoid it, because no one would want to be the guy supporting it.
I still think that a boycott of that restaurant is going to be more effective than a law, because even if that guy is forced to serve you, you aren’t going to want to give him money and have him spit in your food.
And if some restaurant treats minorities badly, I won’t go there. Just because they don’t treat me badly doesn’t mean I’ll support them being dicks.
Me neither. I’m not going to claim that I’m expert on the history of the civil rights movement. So I guess I’ll just accept Tom asseration. “the Civil Rights Movement does not owe its success to boycotts” as the gospel trunth and move on, from discussing black lives
