“…Damn right. Only 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation…”
I’ve said this before: I was stationed in the south when Jim Crow was still extant. The civil rights movement followed shortly thereafter. I thought there would be some evolution. There has been precious little among large segments of that population. One would think so many caught in some kind of time warp.
There’s a quote from Faulkner, something like, “The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”
In the latter half of the Sixties, we all thought there was a new day acomin’. We just didn’t realize, it was mostly like the old day.
Still, in 1928, the Klan marched openly in Washington DC. In 1968 George Wallace ran for President on an openly racist platform. In 2018, we have 17 black female judges elected in one part of Texas.
I really don’t like progress that is measured in generational increments. But I suppose it’s better than the alternative. People are just so hard to detach from their inherited ideas.
When they believe their own economic and social status, never mind power and prestige, depend on the perpetuation of those ideas, it’s astounding that even generational change happens.