This seems like a real problem, but, well, I don’t know of any good way to deal with it. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling didn’t happen until after the Confederate war veterans were all dead.
As I once said some time ago: What kinds of things which are currently considered signs of social progress are also things that an average educated person from the U.S. of the 1800s would find horrifying?
What kinds of things which are currently considered signs of social progress are also things that an average educated person from the U.S. of the 1800s would find horrifying?
And of those, which of them should we still find horrifying today?
You probably should read a little more history. Things were better for most blacks in 1910 than they were in 1940. Woodrow Wilson’s election, and his subsequent expulsion of blacks from the civil service, started a period of decline for blacks that was deepened by the Depression, but had strongly started improving after WW II. Brown vs Board of Education was a result of the change not a cause, and “Civil War” veterans were irrelevant.
Thomas Sowell has written on race problems, notably in Economics and Politics of Race and large parts of his memoir, A Personal Odyssey. His discussion of Brown in the latter is particularly interesting, he was attending Howard University at the time, though a lot of comments about it and its effects are spread throughout the book.
Things were better for most blacks in 1910 than they were in 1940. Woodrow Wilson’s election, and his subsequent expulsion of blacks from the civil service, started a period of decline for blacks that was deepened by the Depression, but had strongly started improving after WW II.
I’m not particularly surprised by this, actually… things also got worse after 1877 when federal troops left the South and paramilitary organizations started suppressing the black vote.
Brown vs Board of Education was a result of the change not a cause
I just meant it as a milestone that showed how things had changed, not as a specific cause of that change. The ruling would never have been made without the successful execution of a long-term strategy to gradually change legal opinions. (The first schools to be integrated by the courts were state-run law schools...)
In this example, though, we’re the Confederate War Veterans—it seems rational, given our preferences, to crush the dreams of the future. (Or to alternate to an example with different affect: it’s rational for, say, an idealistic young lawyer to take precautions to ensure she doesn’t become an old scumbag lawyer, even if she know the old scumbag would be very happy those precautions had not been taken.)
Of course, perhaps Jim Crow was not the true implementation of Confederate CEV; they would have preferred different things if they had been more informed about the world and more the people they wanted to be, and so on. But in that case Confederates should expect that their future selves should more faithfully execute the real CEV as they become more informed, unless they don’t trust themselves (suppose I like fairness but like myself being on top slightly more, and that at after a certain point future-me is sufficiently unlike me that I’d prefer he not be on top (even though he will, since he will my preference set) - in that case it’s rational for me to precommit to stepping down after a certain time.)
So upon reflection this is a valid concern to the extent that 1) we don’t trust ourselves to implement our current CEV better than our successors and 2) we don’t trust our precommitment mechanism to work either. Of course “our” CEVs probably vary enough that there’s not a single useful answer here.
Indeed, one recurring problem is that we are who we are and not who we want to be. It’s easier to get Our Hypothetical Racist Grandparents to agree that the premises of racism are wrong but it will be harder to get them not to be upset by at the thought of their granddaughter marrying one, even if they know they shouldn’t be and actually do want to change.
Maybe someday we’ll invent brainwashing that works?
This seems like a real problem, but, well, I don’t know of any good way to deal with it. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling didn’t happen until after the Confederate war veterans were all dead.
As I once said some time ago: What kinds of things which are currently considered signs of social progress are also things that an average educated person from the U.S. of the 1800s would find horrifying?
And of those, which of them should we still find horrifying today?
You probably should read a little more history. Things were better for most blacks in 1910 than they were in 1940. Woodrow Wilson’s election, and his subsequent expulsion of blacks from the civil service, started a period of decline for blacks that was deepened by the Depression, but had strongly started improving after WW II. Brown vs Board of Education was a result of the change not a cause, and “Civil War” veterans were irrelevant.
Thomas Sowell has written on race problems, notably in Economics and Politics of Race and large parts of his memoir, A Personal Odyssey. His discussion of Brown in the latter is particularly interesting, he was attending Howard University at the time, though a lot of comments about it and its effects are spread throughout the book.
I’m not particularly surprised by this, actually… things also got worse after 1877 when federal troops left the South and paramilitary organizations started suppressing the black vote.
I just meant it as a milestone that showed how things had changed, not as a specific cause of that change. The ruling would never have been made without the successful execution of a long-term strategy to gradually change legal opinions. (The first schools to be integrated by the courts were state-run law schools...)
In this example, though, we’re the Confederate War Veterans—it seems rational, given our preferences, to crush the dreams of the future. (Or to alternate to an example with different affect: it’s rational for, say, an idealistic young lawyer to take precautions to ensure she doesn’t become an old scumbag lawyer, even if she know the old scumbag would be very happy those precautions had not been taken.)
Of course, perhaps Jim Crow was not the true implementation of Confederate CEV; they would have preferred different things if they had been more informed about the world and more the people they wanted to be, and so on. But in that case Confederates should expect that their future selves should more faithfully execute the real CEV as they become more informed, unless they don’t trust themselves (suppose I like fairness but like myself being on top slightly more, and that at after a certain point future-me is sufficiently unlike me that I’d prefer he not be on top (even though he will, since he will my preference set) - in that case it’s rational for me to precommit to stepping down after a certain time.)
So upon reflection this is a valid concern to the extent that 1) we don’t trust ourselves to implement our current CEV better than our successors and 2) we don’t trust our precommitment mechanism to work either. Of course “our” CEVs probably vary enough that there’s not a single useful answer here.
Indeed, one recurring problem is that we are who we are and not who we want to be. It’s easier to get Our Hypothetical Racist Grandparents to agree that the premises of racism are wrong but it will be harder to get them not to be upset by at the thought of their granddaughter marrying one, even if they know they shouldn’t be and actually do want to change.
Maybe someday we’ll invent brainwashing that works?