Since I was born there has been zero progress but you are much older than me.
the election of a black man in 2008 isn't progress?
His mother is white. And no. Zero progress. BLM rose under Obama, the wealth gap was never closed, inner cities are still disasters, not one student proficient in math in Baltimore’s 13 high schools. Boyz N the Hood came out when I was 11. I am 40, and nothing has changed for the black community in LA. When African Americans do become affluent they move into white and or Jewish neighborhoods.
All of the above cannot be refuted.
When you post "all of the above cannot be refuted", you're an idiot because all of the above can be refuted. What do you know about the black community in LA, when you live in Boston? The two cities are as different as night and day.
When anyone becomes affluent they move out of the crap neighbourhoods and into areas with decent schools, housing and recreational facilities. But much has changed. There is a large and thriving black middle class - the children and grandchildren of affirmative action college admissions in the 60's and 70's and the success stories of Johnson's War on Poverty.
Black Poverty more than cut in half by Johnson's War on Poverty, and the rise in wealth and power by the new rising black middle class is the reason why Reagan couldn't wait to end the social programs and affirmative action programs which enabled it.
You decry the failure to close the wealth gap. That wealth gap was much, much smaller when you were born and is entirely the product of Republican tax policies which tilted the economic plate so that all wealth flows to the top 10%. Republicanism has all but eliminated social mobility for those born poor.
Today, 20% of black people live in poverty. That's a far cry from the more than 40% living in poverty when I was growing up, but evidence of the lack of ongoing racism and lack of opportunities for black citizens. That also means that 80% of black people aren't living in poverty and that's where the problem lies.
Working and middle class black people are sick and tired of being racially profiled, and killed simply because they're black. Black professionals are afraid to leave the house unless wearing office attire.
One man's wife said her "teddy bear" of a husband went to the local 7/11 to get milk one night and a white woman thought he looked "suspicious", called the police and then pulled a gun on the man until the cops arrived. When the police arrived, they immediately pulled their guns and things got very tense. If their neighbour - a white lawyer, had not happened along to the scene, it could easily have become another hashtag moment. The "suspicious looking" black man is a chartered accountant, husband and father, wearing a golf shirt.
Another black professional posted that Amazon had left a package on his front porch for the house two blocks over - by mistake. There is no telephone listing for these people. He would return this package to its rightful owner, but as a black man in a racially mixed neighbourhood, it isn't safe for him to go knock on his neighbour's door, and it certainly isn't safe to said one of his teenage sons to do it either. So the package will not get to its rightful owner.
Black Lives Matter exists because unarmed black men keep getting killed in their encounters with police no matter what they do. And because of cell phone cameras, and public media, the whole world now knows that has really been going on with policing in America.
And THAT has changed everything.
