I've only been posting for less than a year, this is the only name I've ever used. As for the rest, if they want you to know their names, I'm sure they'll tell you.
As for the social problems we've been bantering about, I am not so sure that anyone's really taken a good close look at them. I grew up in the Jim Crow south ~ I've posted repeatedly about growing up before integration, as have others on the thread, and I'm only 46. I remember when black people in Baton Rouge (my home town) went to schools taught only by black people whose education had, itself, been inadequate. At the end of the school year, we would go through our textbooks, and if any of them were too ripped up or ruined for us to use, we'd send them to the black kid's schools.
I remember the "back of the bus," I remember segregated water fountains, I remember when black people couldn't eat at the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, use the same hospitals or doctors, or even urinate in the same toilets, as white people. My mother kept separate dishes for the black maid and the yard "boy."
And, of course, it was almost impossible for a black man, much less a black woman, to become a doctor, lawyer, CPA, corporate executive, or college professor ~ hell, it was almost impossible for a black man to get a job in a trade union!
This was about 30 years ago, Michael. And I remember it like it was last year.
How long does it take to "overcome"? I don't think it's something you can expect to be transcended overnight.
On edit I will post a link to a recent Washington Post article on "The Year the Whites Left the City." All the nice middle-class white residents of D.C. left in the 1950's, rather than live next door to "them." If you've got an easy answer, I'd be willing to hear it.
washingtonpost.com |
