> in the early 90s 55% of US whites were opposed to interracial marriage
In the early 90s, roughly 80% of whites were opposed to laws against interracial marriage, but a larger share thought “disapproved” of it. Was that racism, or an assessment of it's viability based on life experience of older adults growing up a society where racism had always been prevalent? A hint might be that it wasn't until the mid-1990s that Black support for interracial marriage started climbing from where it had been since the 1970s. [0][1]
> . In 1990 David Duke came dangerously close to becoming a US senator (after serving four years as a representative) and in 1992 was still very powerful in LA politics.
And in 2000 his superior performance with his appeal to his white supremacist base was explicitly cited by Donald J. Trump when he dropped his bid for the Reform Party nomination—before reinventing himself politically and coming back 16-years later using the same tactics and appeal to the same ideals to win first a major party nomination and then the Presidency.
Whites in America seem to think that racism continued being less of a problem over time through to today, but for blacks, in a number of areas, that perception increased starting in the late 1990s. [2]
> The country has really become dramatically more progressive since then (despite the Republicans specifically becoming more reactionary on the whole).
I think that's arguably true, but only in a way consistent with my description earlier: it is much more that (a significant subset of) the not-racist segment has become much more actively anti-racist than that the country has become less racist. This has also resulted in racial issues being much more polarizing.
In the early 90s, roughly 80% of whites were opposed to laws against interracial marriage, but a larger share thought “disapproved” of it. Was that racism, or an assessment of it's viability based on life experience of older adults growing up a society where racism had always been prevalent? A hint might be that it wasn't until the mid-1990s that Black support for interracial marriage started climbing from where it had been since the 1970s. [0][1]
> . In 1990 David Duke came dangerously close to becoming a US senator (after serving four years as a representative) and in 1992 was still very powerful in LA politics.
And in 2000 his superior performance with his appeal to his white supremacist base was explicitly cited by Donald J. Trump when he dropped his bid for the Reform Party nomination—before reinventing himself politically and coming back 16-years later using the same tactics and appeal to the same ideals to win first a major party nomination and then the Presidency.
Whites in America seem to think that racism continued being less of a problem over time through to today, but for blacks, in a number of areas, that perception increased starting in the late 1990s. [2]
> The country has really become dramatically more progressive since then (despite the Republicans specifically becoming more reactionary on the whole).
I think that's arguably true, but only in a way consistent with my description earlier: it is much more that (a significant subset of) the not-racist segment has become much more actively anti-racist than that the country has become less racist. This has also resulted in racial issues being much more polarizing.
[0] https://igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racial-attitudes
[1] https://igpa.uillinois.edu/sites/igpa.uillinois.edu/files/ra...
[2] https://igpa.uillinois.edu/sites/igpa.uillinois.edu/files/ra...