Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
So besides the fact that 50 years ago interracial marriage was still outlawed in many states, housing was still segregated, only a small fraction of white Americans had ever gone to school or worked with a black American, very few blacks had attended college, and there were almost no black police officers, not really much has really changed.
So basically MLK and other Civil Rights campaigners didn't really achieve much. Is that about right?
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That's not actually at all what the implication was. The implication is merely that racism is still alive and well, even if it's not in as blatant ways such as segregation.
Segregation still happens--though it's not by law, just circumstance and systemic oppression of one group rather than another. There are still "white" neighborhoods and "black" neighborhoods, even if they aren't legally kept that way. The system as it is keeps things that way.
There are "white" schools and "black" schools. There are suburbs and "inner cities."
Interracial couples are still regularly treated with disgust and disdain, even if they are legally allowed to marry. Hell, an innocent Cheerios commercial featuring a mixed race couple with a biracial child warranted uproar just three years ago.
MLK and the Civil Rights movement did a lot of wonderful, amazing things and their contributions and sacrifices cannot possibly be fully appreciated by myself, as a middle class white woman. But that doesn't change the fact that black people in this country are still far, far behind their white counterparts. And honestly, the SCOTUS gutted the voting rights act in recent years, which was one of the major gains of the Civil Rights movement, so to me it seems we're working backward, not forward.
The point is not that the Civil Rights movement wasn't effective, the point is that there is still a monumental amount that needs to be done with regards to race relations in the US, and for people to keep going back to 1968 as some kind of watermark that racism was defeated is BS.