Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
"Lack of responsibility
Single mothers not being shamed"
You left out "MEN not accepting responsibility for their actions".
There were single mothers in the '50s also. However, the difference was quite often the man was willing, and felt obligated, to marry the girl. It was simply the "honorable" thing to do. Yes, many of those "shotgun weddings" ended up in divorce, but so did many of the "regular" marriages. Some actually lasted until "Death do us part".
Then again, many of the girls in that position said "NO" to marriage, went away to have the baby ("Visiting her aunt in Boston" or some such), gave the baby up for adoption, and returned home wiser. A few quietly arranged for abortions.
Yes, our society has changed. For the better, in some ways; not so much in others. Societys tend to do that...
Men today do not want marriage and responsibility. They no longer suck it up and do the honorable thing.
Geesh, the OP posted a totally gussied up Hollywood version of the 1950s - hilarious! I was born in 1950. Blacks (Negroes then) and Jews were discriminated against to the max, and to the point of violence. Elvis was reviled by preachers as an influence of the Devil, and his records were burned. Women couldn't work outside of the home unless they were in low-end jobs, and if a man needed the job they were fired. Schools were segregated. The mentally handicapped were put away for life in a lot of cases.
Then came the 60's with hippies, free "love", sex, drugs and rock and roll. There were protests and riots. People were killed on college campuses Society was going down the drain.
In the 70's, we had disco music to rot society and our culture. We had "streakers" running across the campus. Gays were coming out of the closet. More sex and drugs. This moved right into the 80's with rampant greed and consumption piled on top. More "rot". Same for the 90's and into the 2000's.
Come on folks, there hasn't ever been an "idyllic" decade in America's history. I've lived through 6 of them already and all of them have had their challenges and their rewards. I've seen incredible changes and some awful catastrophes as well, but I sure wouldn't single the 50's out as being some Mayberry type of living situation for most folks. We locked our doors then, but I don't now if I go out, so that's improvement to me!
Excellent post. I absolutely agree.
Hindsight has rose-colored glasses.
__________________
When in doubt, check it out: FAQ
It's pretty obvious to me that the OP never lived in the 1950s.
I did, and there were people who whined about cultural rot then, too.
Elvis Presley was going to send all their children straight to hell. Gangs of motorcycle riders were going to kill us all. There are no morals anymore. The nation is run by a shadow government. Hordes of starving Asians will be coming over the hill to destroy America. The Russians and coming! The Russians are coming!
Everything that is bad now was just as bad then. The only difference is that, back then, much more sin and crime was covered up officially, or just never talked about. When someone fell on hard times, they were on their own, and their struggle lasted forever afterward.
Anyone who was having mental trouble shut up and just grew worse because of the stigma. No one ever mentioned the 13-year old girl who was married off just to get her out of the family. No one ever talked about the 16-year old boy who was enlisted by his parents just to get him out of the family.
Nobody talked about the mom who went through a fifth a day while the kids were at school. No one talked about the guy at the appliance store who was a junkie. Or the cop who had a boyfriend. Or the civic leader who was stealing the company he worked for blind.
It never changes. One geezer generation never approves of the next to follow. It's part of aging. I've never seen a generation yet that had people who didn't think past times were better than the present. And I've never seen people from the same generation who thought the present they lived in was the best times of their life.
The only real difference between now and then is we all know about the bad things that have always been a part of humanity, and we all talk about them much more openly.
Is that good or bad? I think it's both. There are always going to be people who are fearful and those who are not. The fearful are always going to fear. They will fear the known, and the unknown. Their fear will always cause them to be negative, suspicious of others, and pessimistic about life in general.
Those who don't have fear will always see things much differently than those who fear.
Most folks are in the middle between the extremes of both attitudes.
Only the small external differences change, and they change all the time; music, fashion, slang, mannerisms, are all just a few examples. But human nature doesn't change much, and it never changes very fast. It takes a century or more to even notice the big changes, and they are only discovered by close examination of the past. That's something most people don't do.
[quote=green_mariner;47215218]My mother is from the South. She told me she remembers the KKK marching in her town during the 60s.
As for suburban St. Louis, that doesn't surprise me. Kansas City had its own issues. Did they ever buy house from that Black family?
Yes, they collected enough cash that night 35000 in about 1967, to buy the house. The agent told her buyers by the time she contacted the seller agent the next morning to present their contract the house already had a contract.
We had a foster baby whose mom was white and the dad was AA. The neighbors ignored and would not speak to us for the year we had him. Then we got a blond haired, blue eyed baby and they wanted to be friends. I was not polite telling them to KMA.
We put our house on the market and moved to Crestwood the next month because I did not want to live among such people. It was then I learned it was everywhere. My son had a black GI Joe. The neighbor kids would not son play with them. We had a party. When the some of the neighbors saw who else was in my house they left.
I cannot pronounce half the names on my current block. All kinds of people making up all kinds of families. Nobody cares about that crap now days. Thank goodness.
I was born in 1954, grew up in the late 50's and into the sixties and early seventies. Things started going south in the late sixties.
That is when my father was born. He grew up in that same time. His neighborhood was kind of marginal compared to other parts of the city. His parents owned their home. However, it was in a kind of sketchy area. There were drugs and crime in his neighborhood. It got worse in the 70s and 80s. As soon as Black middle class people could live elsewhere, they did. They got out, and stayed out. The elderly, the poor, and the jobless stayed behind. More drug dealers came. Gangsters from Chicago co-opted the young men in his neighborhood during the 80s.
And I know this about Pittsburgh. Steel industry started to change. Less brawn labor needed. Alot of Blacks who worked in the mills got laid off. Those who could do better went elsewhere. Alot of Blacks who managed to get college diplomas have been leaving Pittsburgh. I should know. Many have ended up in the Atlanta area where I live. Guess who stayed? Those who couldn't do better.
I read and do my research so that I can get a better grasp of things. It would be simple to say "things went south in the sixties" or "Blacks are the cause of the problem". However, I know there are more to the problem.
Things in the inner cities went south in the 60s. For someone like me, Black, single, age 30, I have no reason to believe the 50s were any good. I have family members that tell me the 50s weren't very good. Now, the neighborhood I live in, it is safe. In my subdivision, I can walk outside at night and not worry about getting jumped. I worry about that when I go near some of the trailer parks about 2 miles away(meth is a problem in the county I live in).
I don't want the 50s coming back. I am middle class. I have as much freedom as anyone else. Same freedoms as everyone else. I live where I want. No one can tell me "no Blacks allowed here". No "we refuse service to Blacks". There is no one who can say "you're not allowed to live here". Ban me from dating outside of my race? Won't happen.(I'm perennially single, but that's beside the point). I do what I want to do. That is my priority. If I don't feel safe where I live, I can leave, and I'll know that I can go anywhere I want.
"You have to remember it was two different worlds back then."
So I've heard it said but it makes you wonder...is the degradation of the "good" half a necessary byproduct of our efforts to make conditions better for the "bad" half, or did we just go about things the wrong way? If the former is true then a lot of the concerns of those who were "standing in the way of progress" seem to have been entirely justified. If the latter is true however, well maybe we need to stop collectively personifying the definition of insanity and start figuring out how we can do things differently.
I used to think most of us had the same final destination in mind and we just differed in how we thought we should get there. As the end game seems to be approaching and we're starting to see what the final result of all these years of effort are shaping up to look like I'm no longer sure that's true but I still hold out hope.
Rap music
Lack of responsibility
Single mothers not being shamed
Fat people
Crappy diets
Couch potatoes
No respect for each other
Stupid iPhone games
Littering
No respect for cops Whiners
Ghetto people
Excuses for dumb people
Bad education
Improper grammar
People used to respect each other. Watch this video. MAGA!
No, I don't yearn for the days of segregated schools, hospitals, bathrooms and drinking fountains. I don't wish that I lived in a time when it was legal not to hire someone because of their sex or race. I don't find myself wishing for the golden age when I couldn't get a loan without my husband's signature. I'm perfectly fine not living in the days when gay people stayed in the closet for fear of being attacked or worse.
I'll take stupid iPhone games and couch potatoes over that crap any day.
No, I don't yearn for the days of segregated schools, hospitals, bathrooms and drinking fountains. I don't wish that I lived in a time when it was legal not to hire someone because of their sex or race. I don't find myself wishing for the golden age when I couldn't get a loan without my husband's signature. I'm perfectly fine not living in the days when gay people stayed in the closet for fear of being attacked or worse.
I'll take stupid iPhone games and couch potatoes over that crap any day.
So are you saying the good parts of those days could not have existed without the negative things you just listed? If so, why not?
So are you saying the good parts of those days could not have existed without the negative things you just listed? If so, why not?
We're all saying that BECAUSE those things existed back then, it isn't worth it. We can't change history, we can only respond to it.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Same for the 90's and into the 2000's.
