You didn’t ask me what the black people you talked to may have thought. Nor did I ask you to take my word. You asked me if I thought black people were treated with dignity and respect in the 50s and 60s. I agreed that they weren’t, but that in very important and significant ways they have it much worse now.
Bill Cosby and Charles Barkley have got it right. There is very little in this day and age holding black people back. I see black people working all over the place, inter-racial couples are commonplace, and society in general has acknowledged that racial discrimination is wrong and society in the main fights against it. By and large black people are free to make the most of what they can be and they have very little in the way of external forces holding them back. Black doctors and accountants and executives and businessmen are commonplace as well. Most of what’s holding black people back today are self-defeating behaviors – for example the practice of accusing students who try to do well in school or who behave politely and professionally at work of ‘acting white’.
That kind of crap has got to stop if the two races are ever going to live harmoniously with each other.