Racial Conditions in the North

“Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known. 

It is true that in the North of the Union the law allows legal marriages between Negroes and whites, but public opinion would regard a white man married to a Negro woman as disgraced, and it would be very difficult to quote an example of such an event. 

In almost all the states where slavery has been abolished, the Negroes have been given electoral rights, but they would come forward to vote at the risk of their lives. When oppressed, they can bring an action at law, but they will find only white men among their judges. It is true that laws make them eligible as jurors, but prejudice wards them off. The Negro's son is excluded from the school to which the European's child goes. In the theaters he cannot for good money buy the right to sit by his former master's side; in the hospitals he lies apart. He is allowed to worship the same God as the white man but must not pray at the same altars. He has his own clergy and churches. The gates of heaven are not closed against him, but his inequality stops only short of the boundaries of the other world. When the Negro is no more, his bones are cast aside, and some difference in condition is found even in the equality of death (Tocqueville p. 343).

Reading Tocqueville words were very alarming to me. But it makes sense, if we think about the way African Americans had to fight for equality for so many years in this country. Also, we know that mixed marriages between African Americans and whites, were not accepted since not long ago. And of course we read about the opposition to African American students to enroll in white schools and the battles people had to go through to overcome this absurdity. It was not a long time ago that African Americans suffered segregation and to this day this population suffer racial discrimination. It was interesting though that people with common sense would bravely point out the hypocrisy of the people in the North who felt so superior to the people in the South, but were not good examples of moral conduct.