The Legacy of Jim Crowe

Throughout history, racial segregation has existed in many ways. For instance, Jim Crow segregation blended a system of anti-black legislation with racially discriminatory cultural norms to create a lifestyle. Jim Crow laws were established to impose racial discrimination throughout the South (Goldstein Hode and Meisenbach). African Americans feared arrest or deadly retaliation if they ventured to protest segregation. In the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling from 1896, the Supreme Court upheld Jim Crow discrimination as legitimate (Goldstein Hode and Meisenbach). The Supreme Court declared that African Americans were entitled to "separate but equal" services under the Law. The Proclamation Of emancipation declared an end to slavery in America, but it did nothing to combat the prejudice that persisted. If left unregulated, racism extended from the white southern populace to the municipal and state levels, infiltrating nearly every aspect of American society. Jim Crow laws allowed individuals who yearned for the time before the Civil War legal support and loopholes that avoided the essence of the Emancipation Proclamation (Goldstein Hode and Meisenbach). Jim Crow's nature readily transformed prejudice and discrimination from despicable vices to admired virtues.

Affirmative action is another situation when racial discrimination comes under scrutiny. Even now, more than when it was first implemented, affirmative action legislation distributing socially important resources is polarizing and unsettling (“Regents of the University of California V. Bakke (1978)”). Since 1970, the setting for affirmative action policies has undergone a significant transformation, and an adjustment is lawful. Affirmative action strategies are finding it more and harder to pass constitutional scrutiny since the Supreme Court's Bakke ruling in 1978 unless they are properly crafted to address particular historical instances of discrimination (“Regents of the University of California V. Bakke (1978)”). The United States Supreme Court issued a precedent-setting judgment in the case, and it supported affirmative action and made race one of the numerous criteria used in college admissions. For instance, the University of California, Davis School of Medicine reserved 16 out of 100 places for minority students, but the court concluded such limits were unlawful (“Regents of the University of California V. Bakke (1978)”).

Work Cited

Goldstein Hode, Marlo, and Rebecca J. Meisenbach. “Reproducing whiteness through diversity: A critical discourse analysis of the pro-affirmative action amicus briefs in the fisher case.” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, vol. 10, no. 2, American Psychological Association (APA), 2017, pp. 162–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000014.

“Regents of the University of California V. Bakke (1978).” LII / Legal Information Institute, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke_(1978).