sweet effay

I can't remember the context from that Dick short story, but Jim Crow is the term that describes racist laws in the U.S. Southern states after the Civil War, that is, during Reconstruction. These laws were characterised by an attempt to bring racism in through the back door, so to speak. For example, although after the Civil War it was no longer legally possible to deny blacks the right to vote outright, it was possible to de facto deny them this right by making all sorts of laws that could be used to disenfrancise blacks in other ways (like by making it unreasonably difficult to register to vote). So that's what Jim Crow means, but i don't know if that's helpful because i can't remember what the story is about. I am, however, currently rereading Ubik. Yay!

Cheers, BG; that's definitely it. The story is the one about robots ruling Earth and discriminating against humans. James P. Crow gets rid of the robots and takes over, but the implication is that things aren't about to get much better.

My knowledge of US history isn't good enough for all these little references that Dick keeps chucking about in the early short stories. I should stick to stuff like Valis: I don't have half as much difficulty with the Leibniz and the Gnosticism...

If only this were merely US history rather than US current affairs. See greg palast.

In any case, I'm reading The Maze of Death. Hurray!

....and Jim Crow turned up in Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles" as a black Voodoo Loa-invoking honky-taunting terrorist-assassin...