First off, I am not white. I am Asian, and I also experienced discrimination and occasionally still do. Racism does exist, no one is going to deny it. BUT can you imagine Barack Obama getting elected 50 years ago? Absolutely not.
Why deny how far we’ve come as a country? When Teddy Roosevelt first invited a black person (Booker T. Washington) to dinner at the White House, it was a scandal. When Marion Anderson was first invited to perform at the White House, that was also a scandal.
Once upon a time, blacks and whites could not sit down to dinner together in the Jim Crow South.
In 1990, I worked in a small town in South Carolina and I regularly went to restaurants with both black and white friends and co-workers. This is PROGRESS.
My neighborhood is a middle-class one in a suburb and I have white neighbors, Asian neighbors, Hispanic neighbors and yes, black ones too. And we all get along. When I pass a black person walking their dog on the trail behind our community, I greet them and we will let our dogs sniff each other. Same experience with white neighbors and Asians and Hispanics.
Of course you have your own experiences, as we all do. My experiences do not nullify yours, and yours do not nullify mine.
But if we actually look at FACTS — how many black mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, etc., do we have today? How many did we have 50 years ago? Blacks have come a long way. This should be a cause for celebration. Of course, it’s horrible that racism still exists but if we could transport back in time to the 1950s we’d see a starkly different and much less equitable society and it’s foolish not to see how far blacks have come since then, thanks partly to the work of great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr but also thanks partly to American exceptionalism that allows whites and others to also strive for the rights of individuals.
While it’s true that blacks still deal with racism, just ask yourself — would your grandmother want to go back in time and live in the America of her childhood, or the America of today, as a black woman?
I know for myself, as a person of color, I would rather live in the America of today than the one of 50 years ago.
