"America In 2020 Not Much Different For Blacks Than In 1852"; Or: What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?

Actually the claim in quotes above is the title RCP put on the piece; the title at the Seattle Times is "Check Your Patriotism." 

Anyway:

   I know, I know: Many of you think this an exaggeration. How could anyone claim, with even a shred of credibility, you ask, that much hasn’t improved since the antebellum period? What leaps immediately to mind is that we had a Black president. Surely, that counts as progress, does it not? One might well add that at least slavery and Jim Crow, times during which Black lives clearly had little value, are long gone.   

   Yes, slavery and Jim Crow, as historical periods, are long gone. Even so, how much has the relative worth of Black lives really changed since 1852?

But aside from the aquaducts, the sanitation, the roads, the irrigation, medicine, wine, the public baths, education, public order...

   But--hyperbolic as Parker's thesis is--I've long argued that American blacks have had way more loyalty to this country than they have any obligation to have. To point to just one example and not the worst one: they fought for this country in WWII and came back to Jim Crow. For all the nonsense about pervasive institutional racism, "privilege," the open season myth and all that...there's what, according to me, is a strong point in there. (Of course the ridiculous "privilege" language and the "checking" language has to go...but no need to make a big deal out of it right now.) 

   So anyway...no, it's not true that the country isn't much different than it was in 1852. It's radically different. Though, with respect to race, we might have hoped it'd be a bit more different.