America repeatedly declares race problems solved just as new forms of racial subordination solidify

Evidence

Throughout American history, as we have struggled with the issue of race, the particular circumstances of black lives have been hidden by the illusion that white America has adequately addressed “the Negro problem.” We have a long history of prematurely proclaiming that our race problems are long over. In the years following the Civil War and Reconstruction, for example, many white Americans lauded the end of the race problem in the country just as Jim Crow took shape in the South. The Supreme Court in the civil rights cases of 1883 declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. That law had fined private business owners for engaging in racial discrimination. Many saw the law as an infringement on freedom of choice (Senator Rand Paul made a similar argument in 2011 against the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Slavery had been over for almost twenty years, and the justices cautioned that black people needed to finally stand on their own without the help of government despite crippling poverty, daily violence, and the ascendance of Jim Crow. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 103

Categorization

• XREF: The 1883 civil rights cases antecede the ‘complaints about immodesty/rights’ pattern of declaring a problem closed while subordination persists; also parallels Horkheimer-era ‘premature proclamation’ readings.