No, it's not ludicrous. But I think your framing here is exactly the problem with the way genuine progress is being pulled off the rails.
You’re so laser focused on negatives that you refuse to see any positives. If hatred still exists then it might as well still be 1960 according to you. You talk about the hard fought progress that has been made since those days as if it's nothing, because you have no idea what people went through back then and no appreciation of how difficult that progrss was to achieve.
I grew up talking to people who had been in those fights. I see those positives because I understand what life was like fifty years ago. I see how angry and bitter some of my elders are as a result. And I get it. What they went through was unforgivable. But thanks to their hard work, I get to live in a world which is better in every way. I won't have anybody take that lightly.
Speaking of which, the gains of the civil rights movement haven't been lost. What are you talking about? By what metric are black people worse off today than they were fifty years ago? By what metric are laws more oppresive or opprtunity less available? As a black man, with black family and black friends, I can say with confidence that phrases like "walking while black" or "shopping while black" are ridiculous ("driving while black" not so much).
Have I experienced racism? Of course! Have I been singled out by authority figures and police? Yes! I have no interest in pretending that racism isn't a problem we need to address in its many complex forms. But the bizarre desire to portray living one's life as a black person is a daily avalanche of oppression is a lie. And the only reason I point that out is that our discourse is so twisted by it that when somebody tries to speak seriously about genuine racial issues too many people roll their eyes and say,"Ugh, there they go again, blaming racism for everything".
Racism is too big and important a problem to talk about with imprecision and hyperbole. I'm interested in solutions. Not wannabe revolutionaries who want to talk tough about tearing down systems they have no idea how to build into better ones. I want to avoid mindless rhetoric from costing more black lives like, for example, when Minneapolis city council decided to try to abolish the police without thinking and saw MORE black people die as a result.
Most of the people who are making the most noise about abolishing the police are priviliged children who know nothing about the wishes of the black people in those communities or their needs. Because if they did, they'd know that the black people in those communities want a STRONGER police presence, even as they also see the value in more nuanced, community based apporaches to policing.
I don't want incrementalism. I want a solution that with the flip of a switch will achieve racial equality and prosperity. Do you have one? Because if you do I’m fully on board. But if not, all your talk of "the incrementalism of yesterday not meeting the needs of today" is meaningless posing.
