re: #49 Absalom, Absalom, Obdicut
I think the 1950s comparison is apt, because there was a veneer of ‘there are no problems, there’s no ‘racism’ there’s just scientific acknowledgement of the inferiority of the black man. You had cultural relativists explaining that blacks were infantalized by black culture, and the natural tendency of blacks to be communists explained at length by many on the right, finally firmly established in the John Birch Society.
But during the 1950’s the Eisenhower (GOP) administration was actually very progressive in terms of civil rights, labor and anti-trust.