Thread by @douglasblackmon

I’ll assume for a moment that you are an actual person and give you a serious answer:
No serious person disputes that Italians (& many other immigrant groups) faced discrimination. Yet you and many others feel compelled to argue that it was part of “Jim Crow,” which it wasn’t.

https://twitter.com/garyfrtampa/status/1108749412153638912

2) “Jim Crow” refers to a labyrinth of laws all over the US, but particularly in the South, that created an apartheid system of racial separation in the US, from the 1870s to the 1970s. It was specifically targeted at African-Americans.
It’s not a synonym for “bad things.”

3) The only logic I can come up with for the compulsion to redefine Jim Crow laws & anti-black attitudes as having also victimized a laundry list of others is either a kind of jealousy that your ancestors victimization wasn’t as bad, or an effort to minute what really happened.

4) Whichever it is, that thinking reveals staggering historical ignorance. The only in any fashion comparable atrocities to what was done to African-Americans was the genocide of native peoples here.

5/5) The historical mistreatments of Italians, Irish, Asians & many others must be acknowledged. But we don’t have to lie about them, or make up stories suggesting comparability to centuries of enslavement.
This is so absurd a discussion I can’t believe I’m even having it.