Fifty Years Is Not A Long Time

Most of my aunts and uncles are well past fifty, and I have siblings in their forties.  They remember well when no one liked black people.  And many of those white people who haven't changed their mind since then are still around - and are teaching their kids to think the same way.  Especially this school bus driver who is starting her own anti-Rosa Parks campaign.  Now this did happen in Louisiana, but it is not just a southern thing.  The guys over at AFP filed a story that makes New Orleans sound like 1980s Johannesburg.  But it is not just an NO thing either.  St. Louis is famous for being majority black, with almost no blacks on the boards of any St. Louis based corporation.  Then there was the incident were Nelly was asked to leave Union Station because he had a doo rag on - which is not allowed there.  Al Sharpton got mad because Nelly refused to make a stink about it.  And we all know Chicago is one of the most racist American cities ever.  At least New Orleans had a thriving black fencing community for most of its history.

 

It's weird for me to read, but most great American thinkers of all persuasions for the most part hated black people.  Washington, Calhoun, Wilson, Coolidge, Mencken, Patton - all had some disdain for African Americans - and in their time they weren't out of line for thinking that way.  It really sucks, but there has not been a lot of time between the beginning of black acceptance and now.  It has barely been enough time for two generations to pass.  The only hope is that blacks start to really appreciate how MUCH things have changed in only 50 years - and that we start to take full advantage, while not being seduced by white politicians who claim to feel our pain.