Mock Trial

                                               

                                              Mock Trial 

I've been looking into Louisiana's Separate Car Act from 1890, and honestly, the way they tried to justify segregation is both clever and disgusting at the same time. It's wild how they managed to make racism sound like good business sense.

The Money Argument

So here's how Louisiana tried to spin it: they claimed segregation was actually about protecting the economy. Their basic argument was that white people were the ones buying first-class train tickets, so if you mixed the races, white folks would stop riding the trains altogether.

Think about that logic for a second. They're basically saying, "Look, we know our white customers are racist, so we need to be racist too or we'll lose money." It's like they turned bigotry into a business plan.

They argued that without segregation, there would be boycotts, financial losses, and the whole transportation system would fall apart. It's pretty gross how they made it sound like they were just being practical business people instead of, you know, enforcing white supremacy.

The "Keeping the Peace" Excuse

But wait, it gets worse. Louisiana also claimed they were actually preventing violence by keeping people separated. They said that if Black and white people rode together, there would be fights, property damage, and chaos.

This is the part that really gets to me. They created a system that treated Black people as less than human, and then said they needed to keep that system to prevent trouble. It's like punching someone in the face and then saying you need to keep punching them to prevent them from getting angry.

They called it "police power" - basically saying the state had the right to segregate people to keep order. But whose order? And why was that order more important than treating people equally?

What This Really Was

Looking back at this stuff, it's pretty clear what was happening. Louisiana knew they couldn't just say "we hate Black people and want to keep them down." That wouldn't fly, even in 1890.

So instead, they wrapped up their racism in fancy economic and legal language. They made it sound like segregation was about money, safety, and states' rights instead of what it really was - a way to keep white people in power and Black people oppressed.

Why This Still Matters

The scary thing is how well this worked. When you dress up discrimination as economic policy or public safety, it becomes harder to argue against. People can pretend they're not being racist - they're just being "practical."

I see echoes of this kind of thinking today. Whenever people want to justify unfair treatment, they find ways to make it sound reasonable and necessary. They talk about economics, safety, tradition - anything except admitting they just don't want certain people to have equal rights.

What I Learned

Studying this case taught me that bad policies don't usually announce themselves as evil. They come wrapped up in language that sounds smart and reasonable. Louisiana's lawyers probably thought they were being brilliant by turning segregation into an economic argument.

But at the end of the day, no matter how you dress it up, treating people differently because of their race is wrong. The fact that it took so long to overturn these laws shows how powerful these "reasonable" arguments can be.

It makes me wonder what we're accepting today that future generations will look back on and shake their heads at. What are we calling "practical" or "necessary" that's really just unfair?

Note: I used AI to help organize my thoughts from the mock trial we did in class about this case.