Page:Race distinctions in American Law (IA racedistinctions00stepiala).pdf/25

 LEGAL AND ACTUAL DISTINCTIONS

There is a difference between actual race distinctions—those practiced every day without the sanction of law—and legal race distinctions—those either sanctioned or required by statutes or ordinances. Law is crystallized custom. Race distinctions now recognized by law were habitually practiced long before they crystallized into statutes. Thus, actual separation of races on railroad coaches—if not in separate coaches, certainly in separate seats or portions of the coach—obtained long before the "Jim Crow" laws came into existence. Moreover, miscegenation was punished before the legislature made it a crime. Some race distinctions practiced to-day will probably be sanctioned by statute in the future; others will persist as customs. In some Southern cities, for instance, there are steam laundries which will not accept Negro patronage. Everywhere in the South and in many places in other sections, there are separate churches for the races. It is practically a universal custom among the white people in the South never to address a Negro as "Mister" or "Mistress." This custom obtains to some extent elsewhere. Thus, in a recent case before a justice of the peace in Delaware in which the parties were Negroes, one of them insisted upon speaking of another Negro as "Mister." The justice forbade him so to do, and, upon his persisting, fined him for contempt. Yet, these distinctions and many others that might be cited are not required by law, and some of them, if expressed in statutes, would be unconstitutional.

Most race distinctions, however, are still uncrystallized.