Its funny how things change so much that they don't really change at all.
I know I have changed. . . And many others also. In 1950 I entered 4th grade. We lived in the country and our shool was on its last few years before consolidation. All white. White janitor. A lot of negative comments from the teachers.
During the decade, George Wallace, a populist who espoused any opinion that would get him elected, found his issue.
Graduated in 1959. Still a segregated school. In that year for an English assignment I wrote a story from the perspective of a little girl starting to school, hurt deeply that people hated her and called her names. No one would talk to her. . .based on the actual event of desegregation in Arkansas. A+, no comments from the teacher. If she had, it could have cost her her job. Maybe she has deep conflicted feelings. In part, all this was in rejection (for other reasons) of my old man, a racist at home. . .
In 1960? James Meridith started to UM. Big riot, two deaths -
I see it thus: people are resistant to change, sometimes violently so. The adults of the first generation,in the years of the changes, cannot themselves change. That is true whatever the change, and a that is a general, not specific, statement.
The second generation bears the brunt of the social upheaval, adjustments, ambivalence. During that time, George Wallace publicly embraced equality - privately, only he and his God will ever know.
Third generation has no idea what the fuss was about. Social mores have not settled completely and there are segments that have not changed at all. The old guard, both the agents of change and the resistors of change, cannot themselves change, and a phantom battle continues.
But the old days are over.
Imagine a seashore. There are periods of calm, stability, order. Then a new wave crashes onto the beach, and as it retreats, there is a new order of things on the sand, which will remain until the next wave. . . Human society has many generations between the crests of the waves. Change, rapid or slow, is the only consistancy.