Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.
I don't understand your comment. The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
>The whole reason why most nightmarish historical moments are considered nightmarish is because they give certain groups drastically elevated rights, and others none. Talking about an apartheid society without talking about privilege is nonsensical.
The 1950s were not nightmarish for anybody actually living in them. Racial minorities, though still mistreated, were mistreated a heck of a lot less than in decades prior and had much more economic opportunity though they were starting from lower on the ladder on average than white people.
That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back.
The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical, to put it very, very charitably.
> The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical
Well, you can go upthread and read about the lynching of Emmet Till, or familiarize yourself with any of the many ways in which the Jim Crow laws were formally and informally enforced. You can look at the photograph of Emmet Till, even, before or after he was lynched.
Maybe you have thicker skin than I, but I think living in a community where you could be brutally killed for any or no reason, and knowing that your killers would not be convicted, is a nightmare.
>ell, you can go upthread and read about the lynching of Emmet Till,
Funny you mention that. I was this >< close to preempting your comment by mentioning him but figured I'd give you the benefit of the doubt.
Ask yourself, why do you even know Till's name? Why did Till's killing spark national outrage when 20yr later that would have gotten barely a peep out of people? Because times changed and that kind of behavior was no longer excusable.
>but I think living in a community where you could be brutally killed for any or no reason...
Till was killed for violating social norms (that he presumably was not sufficiently aware of). His death was no different than that of a peasant 1000yr earlier killed for bad mouthing a local lord. It's tragic. But it wasn't without reason, though we may think the reason flimsy and disagreeable.
And this time I am going to head off the inevitable reply by pointing out that I am not defending or justifying Till's killers, just explaining the context.
> Till was killed for violating social norms (that he presumably was not sufficiently aware of).
You are defending them; your 'context' is simply how these particular murderers justified their actions. The real context is that white people could kill black people with impunity. The context is not that black people kept on making mistakes.
That is a large chunk of history and a lot of people were in it. You've put forward 1 name. Although there is an argument for your position, you haven't made it. Can things even have been said to have changed if there was 1 example in the 50s and 0 examples in 2020? That is a low-signal trendline.
People still felt the need to propose an anti-lynching law in 2020 [0] so maybe lynchings are an ongoing problem. There isn't anything to argue about without actual evidence.
The point about a lynching is it is a message. Imagine the power dynamic between a black man and a white man in the south, when the black man knows that the white man can murder him and get away with it.
This particular lynching was obviously not the only proof of this reality in the decade.
> That economic opportunity is what everyone wants back.
Given the frequency of folks literally marching around with Confederate and Nazi flags, you've overstated your case here. Perhaps that's what you want, but there's a significant movement in support of a white ethnostate. That movement has representation in the Republican party, and for example Tucker Carlson is wont to voice its talking points and his show is one of the most watched on cable TV.
Pretending that racism was just a blip in the past and not a present and ongoing problem, or ignoring it because it didn't impact your parents, is at best naive. The Emmet Till case was a stark reminder to Black Americans that their lives were worthless in the eyes of the law and the white citizens who had the power to change it. To call that event terrorizing is not remotely a stretch.
What will people in 2092 think of 2022? I won't be around to see it unless Bezos makes a breakthrough in immortality research but I really doubt this decade will be seen as the magical time when we finally figured everything out. Our grandchildren will probably not look on our time any more fondly than we look on the '50s.
I doubt people in the '50s thought "we are evil and we enjoy being evil so we shall be evil". If you read contemporary magazines and newspapers they actually thought they were quite modern and progressive. And why not? 1955 was as modern in 1955 as 2022 is today. It's only in retrospect that it looks backward and barbaric.
Many things that were seen as modern and progressive then are looked on in horror now (lobotomy, gay conversion therapy, insulin coma therapy, using asbestos in cigarette filters, segregation, redlining, anti-miscegenation laws, blacklisting communists, anti-sodomy laws, many others).
What will the list of "Oh my god can you even BELIEVE people did that?" look like in a couple of generations? I've got some ideas but they're almost certainly wrong because I can't see the future any more clearly than the 1950s people could. I would however bet my life savings that some of the values held by all right thinking decent people now will be seen as abhorrent in 70 years. I just can't tell you which ones. Conversely some things seen as shocking now, stuff that will get you ostracized from polite society, will be believed by all right thinking decent people in 2092. Again I can't tell you which ones (nor do I think it will even be related to race, disability, or LGBTQ+). But this does seem to be the pattern.
To be clear I am not saying consensus views were more right then, or that we are wrong now, or that I wish X, Y, or Z thing would make a comeback. I'm just saying I don't think we've finished history yet and we should wait till history is over before patting ourselves on the back.
