[QUOTE="seoulsearch, post: 3660033, member: 20130"
Looking at our discussion of life in the 1950's, what could be said about race relations during that time? For instance, if you had African American neighbors, how would they be treated? Would they be seen as equal to anyone else in the neighborhood?
It's interesting to me how God chooses each of us to be born in a specific era, even though some might feel they were misplaced. Now, God bless everyone who loved that time, but I for one am pretty sure I would not have liked growing up in 1950's America. Even growing up in the 70's and 80's, people did not understand my family at all (Caucasian parents who adopted Asian children.) Even today, one of my relatives is constantly asked, "So... are you a good Korean, or a bad Korean?"
I'm pretty sure that I would not have enjoyed life during that particular time frame. Just recently, I saw a movie set in that era in which an African American couple is berated, screamed at, and forbidden from sitting at the front counter of a restaurant, even though there is only 1 other (white) customer in the entire place. They are told that to them, the counter "is full all day, every day", and they are never allowed to sit there. When they turn to leave in shame, the person at the counter who belittled them says pleasantly, "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" as if he'd done nothing wrong... and I'm sure that in his mind, he hadn't--because this is what was socially acceptable at that time.
And after that, I assume, everyone got dressed up in their Sunday best and went to church, just like every good citizen did in those days.
My circle of family and friends is fairly diverse, and I would not have been able to stand watching them be treated this way.
Angela, I am so sorry that your brother was treated in such a horrible and degrading manner. And of course, it's not that the same thing doesn't go on today, but I am thankful that today there is at least some kind of understanding that this behavior is just wrong, and hopefully, something will be done about it.
Zero, it's interesting that you mentioned the "explosion of HIV in the 80's." I read a very interesting article a while back in which it was said that scientists had found blood samples from the 1950's that tested positive for HIV.
I don't know why HIV was "officially" identified and presented 30 years later. Did they not have the technology to identify and classify it back then? Were there not enough cases yet in order to consider it worth mentioning to the public? Or was is something else that was just swept under the rug at the time because it would be too "upsetting" and "impolite" to talk about?
Thank you all very much for your contributions, and please, keep posting and sharing your thoughts.
This has been a very educational discussion for me (especially the history behind the mood of the country at the time), and I hope for others as well.[/QUOTE]
It feels like my life was made for this thread!
Although Canadians don't have a lot of black neighbours, except in Nova Scotia, where a lot of ex-slaves settled, I always had people from other cultures, including black and Asians in my home, in the 1950's.
Why? My Dad played Canadian professional football, and they were allowed a few imports in those days. Always people who could not make the NFL, but were still better than your average Canadian. We also had a man called the "China Clipper" who was Canadian Chinese, who was a super runner and could put that ball over the end zone line like no one else!
So, there were lots of parties, including Grey Cup parties, my Dad was in 4 Grey Cups, and they won 3. My Dad was a kind of foreigner, although he was born in Canada, his parents were from Eastern Europe, Slavic, a people group that was very scorned in western Canada, at least. So, I had friends who were black and Asian, when there were basically none in Canada at that time. And I found there was no difference between people based on outside colour or other physical characteristics.
I will say, the group most discriminated against in Canada were the natives. They had very hard lives, until the 1970s when the government gave them some restitution money. It was sad - 16 year old boys would buy a loaded, $50,000 pick up truck, and total it in a matter of months. Then they went back to being poor. There is a whole different dynamic with the natives, and it does vary from place to place. They got a raw deal in Canada, and now are demanding money, which really is not going to fix decades of generational neglect!
We never had Jim Crow laws, so no one sat at the back of the bus or restaurant. I knew a black man who had a theory, (he actually did a PhD dissertation on this!) who figured that the amount people in the minority group, and when they arrived, are a big issues. In Canada, Muslims are hardest hit these days. Especially women wearing burkas or niqabs. Quebec is probably the worst at accepting different races, coming out of their attempts at sovereignty and trying to keep their French language and culture.
Finally, AIDS! I first heard about this plague in the early 80's. Everyone was terrified, because no one knew how it spread. I knew a man who slept with a gay man, then heard about AIDS, and went out of his mind with worry for a long time. Nothing happened, but that guy went straight after that. As if he couldn't get it from a woman! I find it hard to believe there was AIDS in the 50's. I heard it was a virus that crossed the species barrier in Africa - from monkey to man. Which, is a horrible thing to contemplate how it jumped. Maybe that has changed? I did not know anyone gay, although later in life, I figure my friend who lived 2 doors down became gay, based on what a mutual friend said.
Most of these articles say they identified HIV in 1983, but the man I just talked about was worried in 1981. So, something was already wide spread enough in the gay community to know about it.
"When HIV was identified in 1983, researchers
almost immediately suspected that the virus came from non-human primates. This suspicion was heightened when a team of researchers found
AIDS(acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), the fatal final stage of HIV, in a
captive colony of macaque monkeys.
Over the last two decades, Dr. Hahn’s team has shown that HIV originated in a sub-species of chimpanzee"
http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-entered-our-world/
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/
And yet, Wikipedia is saying 1920's?? An interesting article, not quite in line with the scientific journals!
"
AIDS is caused by a
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which originated in non-human
primates in
Central and
West Africa. While various sub-groups of the virus acquired human infectivity at different times, the global pandemic had its origins in the emergence of one specific strain – HIV-1 subgroup M – in
Léopoldville in the
Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1920s.
[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS
AIDS is something I can identify with. Not because I have it, but because Orencia, the biologic I take kills T cells, just like AIDS. Although it hasn't left me open to pneumonia or cancer, so far. I also read that people with RA who get AIDS feel a lot better. Of course the catch is, if they don't treat the AIDS, they will die of it. That would be very complex.
I doubt the information on AIDS was hidden from the public, but it just didn't exist, especially in North America in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
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