[dragonwriter]

> But 1992 was a dramatically more racist and reactionary era than 2021

No, IMO, it wasn't.

It was a dramatically less antiracist era, which isn't the same thing.

(That is, active racism wasn't much more prevalent in 1992, and maybe even less prevalent, but active antiracism—especially in the US concerning targeted groups other than blacks—was much less prevalent.)

[ojnabieoot]

You are just wrong: in the early 90s 55% of US whites were opposed to interracial marriage (compared to 13% opposition in 2013) [1]. In my view this one shocking and outrageous stat is enough to refute your point. But also look at the political world then. Ron Paul was selling virulently racist propaganda in 1992 while serving as a representative [2]. Someone simply could not get away with that today - even Steve Scalise would call for them to be expelled from the House. 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. This was the era that Rush Limbaugh rose to great fame (and he certainly had the most racist major radio program the country had seen since the 60s). Hatred towards homosexuals was standard - it was rare even for even snooty liberal art films to treat gay people like human beings (showing off drag queens was representation enough).

The country has become more progressive since then (despite the Republicans specifically becoming more reactionary on the whole).

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[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...