The Jim Crow laws put the authority of the state or the city in the voice of the street-  car conductor, the railway brakeman, the bus driver, the theatre usher, and also the  voice of the hoodlum… they gave free rein… to mass aggression that might have been  curbed, blunted of deflected. The Jim Crow laws, unlike Federal laws, did not assign the subordinate group a fixed status in society. They were constantly pushing the  Negroes farther down. (Woodward 1966, p. 107-108)

As a result, white bullies were encouraged and ‘nigger baiting’ was a safe game. Blacks were isolated from the community and discrimination was openly practiced from comfort rooms, public schools, to transportation vehicles. Around the end of the nineteenth century, there was a flood of laws that segregated railways and streetcars. In1906. For instance, Montgomery became the first city in the U.S. to require separate streetcars for whites and blacks (Broom et al, p 268-269). The scenario evidently showed the fear of the white community from the blacks. The once oppressed people were now feared to be the potential oppressors of the white. Conversely, the black community, in their desire to survive among the white-dominated community responded with similar antagonism against the white race, although their response was not to oppress but to establish their racial identity. Prior to World War II the African Americans adopted the term “Negro” as a racial designation in preference to the more logical yet less familiar expression “African American.” Years later, it became unacceptable to them because it tends to preserve the memories of an earlier inferior status in the country. Therefore, the term “black” was more accepted because of its popularization by mass media and their growing self-awareness and self-confidence. Broom, Selznick and Darroch (1981) write, “Black implies greater separation between the races, at least for the time being, but it also implies a sense of identity and pride in self” (Broom et al, 1981. p. 265).

  The emergence of aggression is the internalisation of quarrelling parents. In order to gain control of the bad experience, the child internalises it and unconsciously carries it with him into adulthood. Winnicott’s theory can be seen in the responses of Black Americans in the past decades towards the Jim Crow laws. Since they were largely marginalized and segregated in society, they retorted by forming communities, churches, restaurants, and other amenities exclusively for those of their colour.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites