I Want My Country Back — A Return to American Apartheid?

The country that many Trump supporters yearn for is one in which Jim Crow was the law and custom of the land. Jim Crow lasted in the United States from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, until the 1960s.

Jim Crow was the set of laws enacted by lawmakers bitter about the end of slavery, the loss of the Civil War and the gains made by blacks during Reconstruction.

Jim Crow laws and customs were based upon the ideology of white supremacy and created a racial caste system which operated primarily but not exclusively in the South. Jim Crow was a system of segregation and discrimination that relegated primarily blacks to second-class citizenship.

What would a return to this America of the past be like? The country of the past which a segment of white Americans yearn for is based upon the construction of racialized “space” and “place. ” Jim Crow laws governed racial spaces, forbidding blacks from entering spaces reserved for whites.

In the America of yesteryear, whites and blacks were not to share the same social space. Most forbidden was whites and blacks eating and drinking together.