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Lifer
- Jun 3, 2002
- 10,518
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You still posit that the passage of two Constitutional Amendments ended racial hatred and ignorance in the United States, ignoring another century of the institutional and cultural oppression of blacks?
I said no such thing. I said they can regulate, not eliminate.
The passage of those amendments was admirable, but would have served the former slaves far better had the federal government not ceded the former slaves to the gentle ministrations of the Klan as soon as it was politically expedient to withdraw Union troops from the not-quite-Reconstructed South.
It took the efforts of millions of black Americans with the support of the now-maligned Liberals of the '60s to complete the liberation begun by the Lincoln administration but almost immediately abandoned by his successors.
Huh? How does this refute anything I've said about the 13th and 14th amendments being able to successfully regulate ignorance and hatred? (nowhere near perfect but still far more viable than the alternative of doing nothing).
I'm guessing from the naivete of your postings in this thread that you did not experience the unenlightened Dixie of the 50s and 60s; as a resident of "Bombingham" during the reign of Governor Wallace and the glory days of Bull Connor, I have a rather more immediate perspective on the subject.
And again, what do the 1950's and 1960's have to do with the success of the 13th and 14th amendments that were passed nearly 100 years earlier from that date? I already ceded the lack of success in rooting out racial prejudice after the amendments. Of course, no one here argued you could root out racial prejudice, ignorance and/or hatred with laws. You can indeed regulate them and improve things tremendously, of course, and that's exactly what they did.