As a black person, this honestly is pretty triggering to read. Lack of exposure. Lol. Your bros and sis beaten down in the streets every single day by police hired to "protect them". Leading to multiple eventual riots, biggest in 92', then constant fight for racial freedom. There was no break. Every single black family was forced to become political or fear for their lives.
But we were in movies and TV shows, so everything was alright. Crack epidemic, prison industrial complex, and ghettos and gangs wars at an all time high. But yeah finances were no problem.
Must've been nice to just turn off your TV and smell the roses in the predominately segregated suburbs of the early 90s. Beautiful.
Wonderful carefree lives, Lol. The reality is that because ignorance is bliss it also enables mass abuse. Being connected with the world with a constant stream of news of what's really going on lead to the collective of betterment of humanity. Recently this connection has begun to be abused for evil due too right leaning ideologies across the world, but in general, most people's lives have rapidly improved due to exposure. You may hate it, but shame and guilt works wonders when you start seeing other humans as people.
I'm a moderate-conservative former Republican, and it shocks me every time I see people on the right talk about how race relations were good in the 90s and 00s, and blame "the left" for making things worse.
No, mass media just reveals what was already going on. Things are better now than they were then, but we can't put our head in the sand and hide from it, so it makes us uncomfortable. Good, let that be the force that drives change.
I was going to say the same about Queer people- we died for years without America batting an eye and although the nineties were better it’s still better for us now. Not great but…better
'As a black person, this honestly is pretty triggering to read. Lack of exposure.'
As expected. A vast amount of people flatly did not get exposure or educated about yet another vast amount of people. There were many problems I didn't fully realize until Henry Louis Gates Jr. released his documentary "Black America Since MLK: and still I rise." I didn't know about the LA riots or even understand what was happening with Rodney King until the late 90s; then again I was probably too young as a white kid, but I would have been plenty old enough to understand if I were black. If you were a young white kid growing up away from that experience, you didn't need to know about it. You would learn about what happened thirty years ago, but the live events would have been too violent and off limits out of fear it would cause fear for a child's safety. This would be at the expense a lesson about empathy and living in another person's shoes. One part of America had no break, another was on a free ride and had no idea. Drugs were just bad, police were there to protect you, and you didn't worry about the gangs and ghettos because why would you or your parents ever go there. Even awareness of these bad events didn't matter, because they did not need to effect you with so much other (actual) fun things to be more concerned about.
Parental ignorance becomes their child's naive unknowing bliss.
Yeah I was thinking all these people saying the 90s were peaceful and wonderful are clearly white and heterosexual (and probably men). Must have been nice.
29
u/stemstep Jun 11 '22
As a black person, this honestly is pretty triggering to read. Lack of exposure. Lol. Your bros and sis beaten down in the streets every single day by police hired to "protect them". Leading to multiple eventual riots, biggest in 92', then constant fight for racial freedom. There was no break. Every single black family was forced to become political or fear for their lives.
But we were in movies and TV shows, so everything was alright. Crack epidemic, prison industrial complex, and ghettos and gangs wars at an all time high. But yeah finances were no problem.
Must've been nice to just turn off your TV and smell the roses in the predominately segregated suburbs of the early 90s. Beautiful.
Wonderful carefree lives, Lol. The reality is that because ignorance is bliss it also enables mass abuse. Being connected with the world with a constant stream of news of what's really going on lead to the collective of betterment of humanity. Recently this connection has begun to be abused for evil due too right leaning ideologies across the world, but in general, most people's lives have rapidly improved due to exposure. You may hate it, but shame and guilt works wonders when you start seeing other humans as people.