Quote of the Day

Jim Crow, and in many ways white life ever since, was constructed for white comfort: to keep Blacks and others from drinking at the same water fountains, eating at the same restaurants, riding on the same buses, sitting in the same classrooms, playing on the same diamonds, gridirons, or courts, worshiping in the same sanctuaries, and, God forbid, being buried in the same cemeteries, all because white folk believed that they were superior and that they should be spared the discomfort of having to be near what and whom they were better than.  And, just in case their heightened view of themselves proved to be false, they spared themselves the discomfort of confronting the ugly truth.  Thus they protected themselves from any contradictions of or challenges to these notions.  Where the South's brand of de jure segregation didn't work, the North's de facto separation proved just as good.  White folk were comforted, and that comfort kept them from knowing too much of anything that was worth knowing about Black life.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 185-186