“Whites Only” and “Colored” Signs Represented a System Created to Humiliate Black Americans and Restrict Their Freedom
The claim that Black people were better off during racist segregation is a flat lie because it ignores economic exploitation, violence, and extreme inequality. Segregation was legally justified in law, but its actual purpose was to enforce a systemic sense of inferiority and maintain social, economic, and political inequality.
When you survive at the expense of losing your dignity and self-worth, you protect your physical life, but damage your emotional and psychological life. Surviving keeps your body alive, but dignity and self-worth are the ingredients that make a life feel worth living.
The Psychological Cost of Survival
To cope with the pain of losing your dignity in segregation, your mind might tune out the evils. This protects you from sadness, but it also stops you from feeling happiness. It may also produce self-hate in which your survival depended on doing the will of white supremacists. There is no way in hell that segregation was a good thing and many felt that rather than surrender to the ways of white supremacists it was better to stand up and die on your feet then to die on your knees. The is why W.E.B. DuBois saw Booker T. Washington as a sellout.
Segregation Replaced Slavery
If you lose your dignity in order to physically survive, you only saved your body, but your mind was severely damaged. What the slave owners could not win on the battlefield they won with the rope, historical lies, using people sellouts to go along with segregation, and providing limited access to any real citizenship… and now they still have Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott to name just two.
Segregation meant that people of color would never be recognized as human beings for segregation was the replacement for slavery so that racists would still control the clock. Racial segregation and Jim Crow law enforced a brutal regime of inequality, political and social disenfranchisement, false imprisonment, murder, brutality, and terror across the United States for a long time.
Separate Was Never Equal
Because Black and Brown people learned how to survive this horrible system is no reason to believe that people of color were better off being treated like animals and second-class citizens! Racists believed that we were better controlled by putting us into areas that were little more than reservations and away from any chance to get the benefits of society.
They passed laws which mandated complete separation in schools, restaurants, hospitals, transport, and even cemeteries, and made sure that public areas which were designated for Black individuals were systemically neglected and underfunded. Daily humiliation was accomplished with signs that said, “Whites Only” and “Colored” which dictated public access and movement. There was nothing good about that! From this, Black children learned to like “White” dolls rather than Black ones.
Terror Was Used to Maintain Control
They used intimidation to strip Black citizens of political power during segregation and expected Black folks to accept that, and some did and still do. They burned Tulsa Oklahoma to the ground because of segregation. Acts of mob terrorism and lynchings by white supremacists was frequent in Black neighborhoods, and most times there was little or no legal consequence for racist violence. We might have felt ourselves “better off” living apart from Whites, but that was their way to control the Black community.
In short, they established a system that was a horror story to make Blacks think they were better off in their own neighborhood. Racists often said, “the animals will never be allowed to be our equals.” We were tricked into thinking things were better when they could at any time murder our children and burn our neighborhood down.
