Same here. Grew up deep in the South. Kids got in trouble for racist talk in public school.
Comment on Are we all suffering from "future shock" in 2025?
toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoi’m in my early 40s. back when i was a kid - even in the southern US - there was a clear message that racism was on its way out. tons of sitcoms even did special episodes about it! (/s) And because media was so controlled back then (ie you couldn’t just post something to the internet), a lot of people actually blelieved it. i know that i did as a kid who didn’t know any better.
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
toy_boat_toy_boat@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
i want to say i don’t know what changed, but the only thing that changed is that the government they hate said it’s fine to hate again. stupid isn’t even the word
yarr@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Is this similar to violent crime? A lot of right wingers bemoan the increasing amount of violence in “blue states and cities”. Except, almost by any way you can measure it, violent crime has been on the decrease for years now. Is racism becoming worse, or are you just becoming more aware of it?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I think it depends where you place the starting point. It’s certainly less racist than the 1800s, or even the 1940s. But if you only measure your own lifetime (so call it starting at the early 1980s), I think it did dip in the late 90s, and stayed in the dip until about 2008. Then it came soaring back to 1980s levels.
And now it feels like it’s rising, being used as a tool of fascism.
treadful@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
The only real change was how open those assholes felt they could be. Doubt they increased or declined at all. They just got platformed.
yarr@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Serious question: if someone claimed deaths by smoking are up or down, there’s stats we could rely on to tell if that’s the truth or not. How do we tell the amount of racism in 2025? What statistic or statistics are indicative of racism?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I use general reactions of society. If you see things like protests, societial movements, riots, demonstrations, ect, it may not be an exact number, but in general if people are mad enough to take to the streets, we know those issues are on the rise.
And if everything is mostly calm, you know those issues aren’t the dominant issues of the day.
It also is harder because the internet has changed society. Now issues can grow and gain exposure to a global audience instantly. So it’s no longer grassroots movements. Thats what made the million man march so impressive. A million black men, marching in suits, because they knew if they didn’t dress up they would be mocked as thugs, all without the media to help them, all organized this way exclusively through word of mouth. And they had a million men march with them.
It wouldn’t be so impressive today. Now you can just post a thing online, the whole world sees it. Nobody gives a shit about clothing, and the march would be a petition online. And nobody would care.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
Just spitballing, but you could track it by number of hate crimes? There’s the issue that the United States notoriously underreports hate crimes, so you might not be able to find accurate numbers, but I think that’s the best hard statistic you could find for racism