Exaggerating racism
The failure of the Western intellectual, black and white
I came across an article in the Washington Post that noted an interesting fact. In 1969, among young college-educated males, the median salary of “non-Whites” was 98% that of whites, up from eighty percent ten years earlier.
The approximate parity between young male college-educated blacks and whites indicates a low level of racial discrimination in the aftermath of the significant racial reforms of the period 1954 to 1965. Such an interpretation is consistent with my personal experiences of the time. It seemed to me clearly evident that events in Montgomery and Birmingham, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”, and the clear pronouncements on the issue by two American presidents had stimulated a sea change in white attitudes, particularly among white youth and whites in positions of authority in institutions in various sectors. By the end of the 1960s, the great majority of whites were either committed to or accepting of a more just and…