Charlie’s fusillade against Axios quotes a Florida state senator who considers Governor Ron DeSantis’s conditional rejection of a proposed AP African-American studies course “Jim Crow 3.0.”
It’s hard to keep up these days. The original Jim Crow, I understand. The regime of state-sanctioned segregation that obtained for decades in the American South is a stain on American history and an abhorrent aberration from this country’s founding principles. After that, though, throwing the “Jim Crow” label around gets dicey. In 2022, President Biden declared that Georgia’s new voting law, a wholly appropriate measure (as Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger explained here), was Jim Crow 2.0. (In 2021, he called it “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”) Yet as Dominic Pino noted earlier this week, “0 percent of black voters in Georgia said they had a poor experience voting” in the first large-scale elections for which the measure was in effect. So much for Jim Crow 2.0.
But Georgia’s law is still in effect. Is that why we have moved on to Jim Crow 3.0? Even while Jim Crow 2.0 is still operative? Does this mean Florida is now worse than Georgia in this regard? And that Georgia is no longer a problem? Or is Georgia still a problem? If so, then how are we on to 3.0? These questions, and others one could pose about how far one should take the intended reference to technical numbering, suggest that I may be putting more thought into the formulation than its wielders, who continue to view all their modern problems — and enemies — through the same unhelpful and outdated lens.