Well, I think you're equating "protest" and "violence", and the belief that this type of protest is inherently misinformed.
No, no, I have no problem with this protest or the ones for Chickfila and so on. I just don't think because they "fail" (I don't think they do long term) that we then need to turn to violence.
Where you and I will disagree philosophically is on your opinion on discrimination, where I think there is a legitimately interest in curbing discrimination towards minority groups. But, that's for another day.
Let me be clear, I oppose government discrimination and that's why I support the other ten parts of the Civil Rights Act. I oppose discrimination for bigoted reasons because I'm not a bigot (Canadians
aren't human beings, the science is clear) but have no illusions and understand that they actually come from a "good" place historically. They're an expression of our fear of those not in the tribe. So I don't find using a very discriminatory tool (the state) to discriminate is a way to curb discrimination.
And I think discrimination in general is good because deciding between things based on their various components is worthwhile.
Is your argument that it was the government that was stopping southern society from trying to integrate itself?
No, but that merely looking at it as government saving the day from the private sector covers up that the States were likely hindering any movement in that direction. Hence why as noted earlier the National Guard and courts were used against State governments, not a private businesses. Woolworth's changed its corporate policy from hands off local franchises following local rules to no-discriminatory lunch counters years before the law changed. And a number of Woolworth's owners participated in protests by doing things like paying their own black employees to sit there.
I think that most businesses would have preferred integration because of costs alone and a general indifference. The pizza place in this case being a good example of a business making clear it won't cater gay weddings but will serve anyone otherwise.
Let's say, just for hypothetical sake, 30% of the south was super racist, 20% was semi-racist but wouldn't beat up anybody or anything like that, 20% didn't care and 20% was anti-racist. Even if you fall into the latter three groups, the authority of the region is in the first group, so the second and third are encouraged to either go along or ignore the first groups deployment of their institutional power.
It's one reason I like to harp on
Plessy, the railroad company specifically setup the entire situation including paying the detective to arrest Plessy because they knew he would charge Plessy
only on the segregation "crime." As well as helping to pay for the cost of the case appeal. They wanted the laws struck down because they had to have twice as many cars, pure self-interest, nothing noble needed. Meanwhile the enlightened Supreme Court (which was operating on majority opinion in society at the time) upheld them and made separate but "equal" a guiding doctrine.
I find the recent state of the gay rights movement to be similar in this case, as every poll seems to show increasing tolerance of gays in general to near super-super-majorities and gay marriage is moving into majority levels at a rate similar to interracial marriage was, at the same time that a bunch of states have taken rearguard actions elevating bans to the state constitution and trying to pass other laws. I think something similar was the more likely state in the south, that newer generations were more tolerant (thus why anti-discrimination and other laws were even accepted in the first place) and the resistant authority was merely delaying an inevitable situation.
I think the state of race relations in the south and the United States as a whole shows that even though we "solved" it in the 1960s there was still a long ways to go before things like Cliff Huxtable made it okay to be black on TV and
Mayor Bloomberg made it okay to be black on the streets of NYC. Oops.
I don't think "public" accommodations laws have done much of anything except hide initial information really, as I'm sure any minority here on GAF can attest. Everybody knows where you'll get treated like shit for your race.
EDIT: Also, let's say for hypothetical sake 10% of the south didn't exist at all because the free market failed learning too me math to much.
