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'it would not be fair to say that no progress has been made since then (mid 20th c). the poverty rate among those classified at the time as 'nonwhite,' or mainly african american, in 1966 was over 40%. today, among african americans it is 25%. that is still far too high, but it is nevertheless a vast improvement. the benefits of that improvement, though, are felt more in the suburban areas where upwardly mobile black families have moved than in the central cities. the poverty rate for black residents of st. louis and milwaukee is 35%, and in cleveland and buffalo, over 40%. in this respect at least, these cities are still living in the 1960s.' - alan mallach
milwaukee and cleveland also made the ten most segregated cities in america list after the 2010 census. these two sets of facts together very clearly demonstrate that the civil rights era did not even come close to achieving what was needed in the NORTH.
i myself felt like civil rights never even happened when i first moved to milwaukee written in other parts of the blue ( race_in_america )
but growing up learning that the civil rights era was history and that all these noble things had been achieved and now everything was all better has smacked me in the face over and over and over in my adult life. to the point that i am not surprised about trump or all the ugliness that is stirred up by him and his supporters. i was a child of diversity education. i have spent my adult life swimming in a diverse sea and i love it. but i know, deep in my heart, there are still plenty of people all over this country that have dark bigoted hearts. i was still denied service for almost an hour in a restaurant because i was sitting there with my mexican boyfriend so we were tacitly unwanted and ignored. i was the one that made a scene as we left; he was the one that sat there, in 2011, with barely a flicker in his eye, not a word to say, because this was an old song and dance he had learned when he was young, where it wasn't safe for him to make a scene. but i had white priviledge and i used it to make all those snobby bougie motherfuckers uncomfortable on my way out the door.
how many more sociologists need to compile how many more statistics about the skewed and unequal society before things actually change for people in the cities i spent the first thirty years of my life in?
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