Gentleman's Agreement to Jim Crow Laws to Getting Even With Whitey: Which is More Ignorant?

There is no hypocrisy like major league baseball hypocrisy. For the best and most current example look at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

The Gentleman's Agreement The 'old gentleman's agreement' was an agreement between Major League baseball owners not to sign African-American ballplayers to their team. This agreement helped keep blacks out of the Major Leagues and helped continue segregation not only in baseball but in life.

Jim Crow Laws- a term describing the Americans racist culture against blacks, it originated as a derogatory way of depicting black people in the minstrel shows of early 19th century America. By the 1890s, the term had come to mean the separation of blacks from whites and the general customs and laws that subordinated blacks as an inferior people. Historians have used the term in reference to the process of segregation or setting the races apart- sometimes meaning customary or informal segregation and sometimes meaning legal or codified segregation.

Whenever I read the aforementioned I get a knot in my stomach. How can you treat anyone, regardless of race as if they were inferior to you? What about the do unto others, Matthew 7:12? I just don't get how this ever originated. And I'm disgusted that one race (Caucasian) can be so separate from another (African-American). But I also didn't have anything to do with the aforementioned.

Why do I mention such a thing? Because now I am the recipient of African-Americans who just happen to sit behind the wheel of a Muni vehicle who get the greatest joy out of giving me a transfer that is less than two hours. Meanwhile, they let their own ethnicity enter through the backdoor for free.

How does this make up for whomever created the Jim Crow laws? As I said, I am sickened by such degrading treatment of another human being. And yet I am the recipient of "getting back at whitey."

Which is more ignorant? I'd really like to know. Somebody please respond to this outcry for help in this matter. I just don't get it.

Let's delve more into Jim Crow.Good information can be received on http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/home.htm

You know how when you went to school and learned certain historical facts only to discover later on in life that this was incorrect? And to think your right answer may have been marked wrong. Oh the sleepless nights.

The election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 heralded one of the first Presidential administrations openly opposed to civil rights and suffrage for blacks. Roosevelt is remembered for inviting the black leader and entrepreneur,Booker T. Washington, to the White House for dinner, the first instance of such an invitation for a black person. Southern Democrats were offended, and were vocal in their disapproval. Though Washington's visit was distinctive in its novelty, Roosevelt invited Washington not to improve the situation of blacks, but because they agreed that blacks should not strive for political and social equality. Washington privately used his wealth and influence to challenge Jim Crow, despite his public declarations of the opposite, while Roosevelt's administration was not supportive of civil rights for blacks.

President Taft, a Republican elected in 1908, publicly endorsed the idea that blacks should not participate in politics, and perpetuated the racist party line of his predecessor.

Virginia Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won both the 1912 and 1916 presidential elections.
Wilson pushed for segregation of federal workers, systematically demoted black civil servants, and claimed nothing could be done to improve the situation for blacks in the country. He refused to meet with black leaders, to appear at black conferences on race issues, or to publicly denounce lynching. President Wilson's wartime administration relegated black Army soldiers to non-combat labor billets, claiming that blacks were unable to fight courageously. Under Wilson, the Navy only allowed blacks to serve as messboys, and the Marines did not accept blacks at all.

For a guy who never met with the black leaders or chose not to appear at black conferences, places where the cream of the crop of African-Americans may have been a part of, how in God's name can he say they 'were unable to fight courageously'?

What proof of this does he have and because he chose to do exactly what Kenesaw Mountain Landis did as commissioner of major league baseball, which was to tap dance around their obvious unwillingness to treat the African-American/Negro fairly. In other words, the only people speaking jive back in the day of Kenesaw and Woodrow were the President of the United States (Woodrow) and the Commissioner of major league baseball (Kenesaw).


Kevin J. Marquez