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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Anyone want to talk about test cases? Rosa Parks' name has come up again to remind us that there is a group of people who didn't know the incident was staged by the NAACP as a way to put segregation on trial. I hope that everyone knows test cases are a thing and I'm a little curious what percentage of the famous judicial cases this would apply to. I guess it tarnishes people's fuzzy feelings about the scrappy individual with pure motives facing off against evil oppression but it doesn't change the facts of the case. Personally I have the impression that the judicial system is skewed against the poor and un-savvy and rewards those who have resources behind them and know how to work the system. So it does seem to the outsider as if everyone could benefit from having an organization behind them to raise attention and mount a strong defense. Rosa Parks may have been one person but her case ended up helping the many not-so-sympathetic individuals who were also victims of the unjust system. So when you hear about a high profile case, does it matter if the person was specifically set up as a test case, and if it matters, why?

So when you hear about a high profile case, does it matter if the person was specifically set up as a test case, and if it matters, why?

Because the rest of your framing is wrong.

Rosa Parks may have been one person but her case ended up helping the many not-so-sympathetic individuals who were also victims of the unjust system.

Rosa Parks was one person but her case ended up helping the many not-sympathetic individuals who were kept in check by broad rules. If you want to assert that the system that produced order was "unjust" you also have to own what Detroit and Newark and Camden and Gary look like without that "injustice".

That's the problem with test cases - they present an implicitly false case intentionally designed to confuse people and play on sympathies. The legal principles would have been the same if the case was about Corner Man and it would have been much less deceptive.

You seem to be saying that Jim Crow kept crime in check. Yet, the places you mention saw crime rise in the late 60s to 70s despite never having Jim Crow. So removing Jim Crow could not have caused that. And if this data is accurate murder rose less in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina

than in the US as a whole. So I am skeptical of your argument.

I think this is right, and I'll elaborate with stats.

From the 1940's to 1970's, the black population in the northeast and midwest increased by about 150%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Migration_(African_American)#Statistics

So you seem to be suggesting his theory is wrong because over the same corresponding time period, regions where the black population increased 150% (northeast, midwest) saw an increase in crime while regions where the black population went down 20% (the south) saw a much slower increase.

So quite possibly the issue was merely overall size of the black population, not Jim Crow specifically. Good noticing!

Except that the vast majority of that increase took place long before the increase in crime. And, the Second Great Migration was over by 1970, yet crime kept rising in the 1970s. And, in fact, the murder rate dropped quite a bit after a1960. If the theory that blacks freed from the constraints of Jim Crow commit violent crime" were true, then that would not have happened.