I might be one of the older members of this thread so let me give my $0.02
I'm Black and Injun. I was born in 1973. I lived in a two parent home in the suburbs. Both of my parents went to college. I can remember going to meetings, rallies or just having people over my house and the topic of race relations would come up. I'm talking in the early 80s, before The Cosby Show. Before Spike Lee started making movies. I'm talking before Martin Luther King's birthday was a national holiday.
I can remember that educated Black people felt like you never see a Black person on TV unless he was an athlete or entertainer. Furthermore, if you saw a Black person on TV, he was usually shucking and jiving like JJ Evans on Good Times. Another common complaint was that whenever you see a Black girl on TV she's light skinned with long hair.
In the NBA there were no Black coaches or owners, it was always a Black team with a white coach. In the NCAA players would take dummy classes like basket weaving so they could have enough credits to be eligible to play, but when the basketball was over those Black college players wouldn't graduate, nor would they make it to the pros. The colleges just used them to play Basketball but didn't encourage them to get good grades or to graduate.
In Hollywood Eddie Murphy was a rising star. But he was always shucking and jiving. Beverly Hills Cop is a good example of what I mean by shucking and jiving.
MTV wouldn't play any Black artist videos. But Michael Jackson broke the color barrier and later Prince and Run DMC would have videos on MTV.
Sometime in the mid 80s things started to change. First thing I remember was The Cosby Show. It was the first time you saw a successful Black family with the parents being a doctor and a lawyer with the kids going off to college.
There were three movies that came out around the same time that were the catalyst for the change in Hollywood. Those 3 movies were A Soldier's Story, Hollywood Shuffle and She's Gotta Have It. I recommend seeing all three if you haven't seen them.
Spike Lee's first movie came out in 1986 and was the polar opposite of what Eddie Murphy was doing. Spike Lee was an African American director while Eddie Murphy's movies were directed by White directors. Those white directors clearly didn't know how Black people interact with each other.
Georgetown University, coached by John Thompson, won the NCAA Tournament in 1984. John Thompson was the first Black coach to win the NCAA tournament. He had a policy that all of his players graduated. He didn't tolerate his players taking dummy classes just so they could be eligible to play.
Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and again in 1988. He actually won a few states in the primaries and was being taken seriously as a legitimate candidate.
By the end of the 80s, all of the complaints that people had about racism had been addressed. There were Black coaches in sports, There were Black directors in Hollywood, there were television shows that featured Black families. You started to see more Black people in executive positions.
Colin Powell was one of the top Military people. During the first Persian Gulf War when they gave press conferences, Colin Powell was the one that answered all the questions.
Clarence Thomas was nominated and confirmed in the Supreme Court.
Michael Jordan was an athlete and entrepreneur with a sneaker line that was generating hundreds of millions of dollars.
Oprah was the queen of talk shows and had the number one rated show. She owned the rights to the show rather than selling it to a network. And she was Brown skinned and overweight.
Denzel Washington was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Cry Freedom in 1988 and won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Glory in 1990.
Spike Lee made a movie every year for about 7 or 8 years in a row and they all had Black casts that acted like civilized people, not buffoons. He directed Malcolm X which was a big deal at the time.
All in all, the way I remember it, everything that people used to complain about when I was a kid changed right before my eyes. At 43 years old, most of the stuff that people complained about when I was a kid is no longer true. There's still problems with police brutality and the criminal justice system but there's also a 50% dropout rate in the inner city. The statistics show that people who drop out of high school are more likely wind up in prison. So while there is police brutality and the criminal justice system needs to be addressed, half of the blame (or more than half) goes to the Black and Latino kids who are dropping out of high school. Dropping out is a direct path to nowhere.
Anyway, my point is that in the beginning of the 80s there were a lot of problems that the Black Community thought needed to be addressed and now we've had a Black president that served two terms.
Yeah, there's a disproportionate number of Black people in the criminal justice system, but they dropped out of high school so what do you expect? People that graduate high school and go on to college are less likely to be caught up in the system. Its really that simple.
