Coded Language and Double Standards

The struggle for civil rights in New York City and Boston challenges the traditional Civil Rights Movement narrative by highlighting the challenges almost identical to those in the South that were faced by northern African Americans. Clearly, segregation was not simply a regional problem—if it was, there would not have been the intense and drawn-out struggle for desegregation within the northern school systems. In northern cities such as NYC, city officials were dedicated to pushing the idea that segregation was a mere accident. They tried to argue that the schools were primarily white or black because of zoning ordinances alone. That argument, however, has a hole in it—the existence of the HOLC maps. Loans that facilitated business and neighborhood development were not likely to be given to “neighborhoods in New York with more than 5 percent Black people” (Theoharis). We know the zoning wasn’t accidental, nor was it completely out of the superintendent’s or other city officials’ hands. This is evident by the coded language that white officials and parents used to describe what was happening, why it was happening, and why they were against it. At times, things did get blatantly racist, as displayed in this quote: “One white parent spoke it plainly: ‘Clean up the Jungle Homes and you won’t have Blackboard Jungle Children’” (Theoharis). But oftentimes, northerners got away with disguising their racism, emphasizing that segregation de jure was not a reality in northern states. Theoharis quotes lawyer Paul Zuber, who said, “‘Down home [in the South], our bigots come in white sheets. Up here, they come in Brooks Brothers suits and ties’” (Theoharis). These white officials hellbent on preventing segregation “saw how language mattered, and thus deliberately tried to use different words to describe what was happening in New York’s schools” (Theoharis). Their coded vocabulary became a strategy, furthering the idea that New York did not have southern issues and, as a result, was not obligated to change anything following Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Segregated schools were called “racially imbalanced.” White parents didn’t admit that they were opposed to their white child sitting next to someone of a different race, so they instead pushed their dedication to “neighborhood schools” and opposition to “forced busing.” Officials couldn’t admit Black students weren’t at a systematic disadvantage and continue to hide their figurative Klan hats, so they instead forced the blame upon students and their parents, calling them “‘problem children’ who suffered from ‘cultural handicaps’ and came from ‘culturally deprived homes’” and their mothers were painted as “dangerous” individuals (Theorharis). The same issues that plagued Black southerners were ever present in NYC and Boston, and white officials were just as eager to subdue civil rights and desegregation. To condemn the problems in the South and then turn around and condone or justify the same issues in the North is hypocrisy. 

I was not surprised by this history because racism is so heavily embedded in the United States that there was no possible way it was just a regional problem. Similar coded words, phrases, and symbols are used today to continue to frame Black people in a negative light. We also still see an effort to redirect blame today. This was notably portrayed by Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera, who shamed Kendrick Lamar for singing about police brutality in 2015. On air, Rivera said, “Hip Hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years” (thefader.com). Lamar, similar to the mothers that spoke out on behalf of their children, did not let that slide. He responded by including that clip in his song “DNA” and following up with the lyrics, “Tell me somethin’ / You m*****f*****s can’t tell me nothin’ / I’d rather die than to listen to you / My DNA not for imitation, your DNA, an abomination” (Lamar, “DNA”). Just as Theoharis asserts that the fairytale ending to the civil rights movement is easier to stomach than the North being just as complicit, the problems that Black communities faced in the 1950s and 60s are still very real.