In fairness to the the OP’s second post, racism existed long before the 1950s, and persists long after. The 1950s also marks the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Brown vs. Board of Education and the outrage over the lynching of Emmett Till. However, we are much better off in today’s world.
“all of their schools were fully integrated”
Maybe in the North, but here in Virginia we had “Massive Resistence,” where public schools were closed rather than integrate.
I’m trying to figure out if you’re badmouthing the heavy cars of the 1950’s(the ones made of steel) or laws about hit and runs.
I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but exactly what was so bad about Amos and Andy?
I’ve seen a bit of it, and didn’t see anything that wasn’t par for the course for those kind of shows at the time. The only difference seems to be that the cast was black instead of white. The concept of a dumb person being funny has been around for a long time and is still on TV.
Maybe I haven’t watched enough of it but I didn’t see anything that seemed racist.
Nothing so drastic. Just get them to shut their festering pie-holes for five minutes so’s we could have a simple discussion about nostalgia.
In studying the history of design, I do look with wonder at the advertisements of the time. Such a seemingly near-effortless display of style. Cars actually looked different from one another. So many positively-stylized depictions.
Which leads me to a question for you, the fashionably cynical: Now that all (most) of the nasty things about America in the 50’s have been dealt with, today we should be enjoying an era of unbridled optimism and industriousness, right?
Hmm. ::looks around::
Divisiveness, negativity, selfishness…
Yeah, we’re much better off now.
Other than playing up racial stereotypes, the worst thing about Amos and Andy was that * they weren’t actually black*… they were white guys in blackface makeup.
No no no…that was the radio show where white guys talked in stereotypical black dialect. There may have been some things wrong with the Amos and Andy TV show, but blackface wasn’t one of them.
Actually for at least a little while, it was two honkies in blackface on the Amos and Andy tv show.
The original OP was about the “optimism” of the '50s. I was but a child then, but about some things there was more opimism, at least in the U.S. There were things that were bad, and we knew them, but there was a feeling that the bad things could be changed, and that people would change them.
Back then we thought, for example, that since we now had this wonderful penicillin, that soon any bacteria-caused disease would be curable, or even preventable. In the early part of the decade, before the Korean War got going, there were all these returned veterans, and couples making up for lost time pumping out babies. The GI Bill enabled many to get an education. Single-family homes were more available than before. The war shortages were gone. The civil rights issue was starting to be addressed.
However, this optimism was, I believe, really felt only by certain groups, mostly white, middle-class and upper-class folks. It was still pretty much business as usual for minorities. Women’s rights was a thing of the future. A pregnant woman, even if married, was expected to leave her job immediately. If unmarried, well, she was just a slut and had best hang her head or go hide somewhere.
As to how we could regain what optimism there was, I think that as one grows older one may gain a better perspective. I’m actually quite optimistic, myself. Heck, even though antibiotics have been found to be not the panacea we once thought they were, the current generation is largely spared a whole passel of problems their elders were not. We could make a long list of things we now have that were literally science fiction in the '50s.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, but the following is from The Museum of Broadcast Communications web site:
The position of the Amos 'n Andy show in television history is still debated by media scholars in recent books on the cultural history of American television.
Amos 'n Andy, was first broadcast on CBS television in June 1951, and lasted some two years before the program was canceled in the midst of growing protest by the black community in 1953. It was the first television series with an all-black cast (the only one of its kind to appear on prime-time, network television for nearly another twenty years). (bolding mine)
Do you have a cite for your blackface contention?
I can find a movie where the characters were played in blackface (Check and Double Check), but the TV show seems to have had actual black people in the lead roles.
OMG, I cannot believe that this is the thread that gets me to stop lurking.
I don’t know if you guys are going to flame me for this. If you are easily offended, DON’T OPEN THIS LINK.
<a href=“http://www.boners.com/grub/787719.html”>This was once considered acceptable to print.</a>
Hm… regain the optimism of the 1950s? Tall order. First, we’ll try to recreate the 1950s under laboratory conditions (preferably with some kind if 1920s death ray).
We’ll begin with a period of boisterous isolationist prosperity and relaxing moral standards. Add one crippling depression with depressed stock market and high unemployment. Allow one war to hove into view, ideally in the form of a specter from abroad that we always knew would be trouble, but which we can now deal with by using good old American might. Use this opportunity to rally mindlessly around the flag. Crush the enemy soundly using superior technology and manufacturing, and try to work in some devestating push-button bomb to end the conflict decisively. Install military bases and mop up to make room for corporate oligarchy and unprecedented wealth for the already-rich, and this will let in an era of feel-good politics.
Wait, we’ve already done that. This is the era of optimism like the 1950s. Ain’t it great? 
FISH