AHC: Public Sector "Compromise" on Civil Rights?

Is there any way that a "moderate compromise" between white Southerners and the civil rights movement where public services and the workings of government are desegregated, but private services, businesses, and associations can deny service or discriminate in any way they see fit?
 
Is there any way that a "moderate compromise" between white Southerners and the civil rights movement where public services and the workings of government are desegregated, but private services, businesses, and associations can deny service or discriminate in any way they see fit?

any compromise would simply be followed by demands for total equality. There's just no long term justification for it especially if it doesn't exist in most of the western world or even in all states.
 

Ian_W

Banned
any compromise would simply be followed by demands for total equality. There's just no long term justification for it especially if it doesn't exist in most of the western world or even in all states.

This.

The corrupt, vicious old Southern Aristocracy only offered "moderate compromises" as an alternative to utter defeat.
 
I'm not saying it would be justified, of course. Are you guys saying that, if the Civil Rights movement has enough leverage to push this, it will have enough leverage to demand true equality?
 

Ian_W

Banned
I'm not saying it would be justified, of course. Are you guys saying that, if the Civil Rights movement has enough leverage to push this, it will have enough leverage to demand true equality?

As OTL, yes.

If the Southern Aristocracy was interested in reform, then the whole slavery thing would have ended up the way it did in Brazil or Mexico.
 
I'm not saying it would be justified, of course. Are you guys saying that, if the Civil Rights movement has enough leverage to push this, it will have enough leverage to demand true equality?

by justification I mean "arguments put forwards by the segregationists". If most of the western world had apartheid like government, a segregationists could make the argument that integration in the public sector but segregation in the private sector at the discretion of the owner was much better in comparison.

In OTL however, the civil right movement could see that northern states and in most western countries, visible minority had the same legal rights and protections so unless the authorities decided to stick to their guns and risk a civil conflict, there is no way that even partial segregation could be maintained for long.
 

Tovarich

Banned
Is there any limit on what a US State can privatise?

If not, then I'd imagine that in short order everything will be put out to tender, up to schools, roads, policing, voter registration, and the National Guard.
 
Maybe in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court decides on more limited grounds that the railroad in question was technically private.

The direct wrongfulness of the decision combined with, wow, railroads receive a lot of direct and indirect government benefits to be called fully private, gets the ball rolling. In the '00s and '10s, there's a variety of state laws that common carriers will operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. In the '20s, state laws that employment will be nondiscriminatory. In the '30s, New Deal programs.

Combined in the '30s with laws and actual implementation that enlistment and promotion in the U.S. military will be nondiscriminatory. And during WWII, the vast majority of units are nondiscriminatory. The occasion segregated unit is viewed as an anachronistic throwback, almost as quaint, and as an inefficient use of personnel.

And that's the linchpin which changes everything. Once African-American citizens have served in significant numbers, there's not much more case left for anything but full equality.

PS All the above time sequence is one way I'd hope it would work out. But a lot of state law became ever more discriminatory as it's a way for crappy stare legislators to appeal to the masses. So, maybe the first thing to do is a Reconstruction which is serious about the voting rights of persons newly freed from slavery.
 
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