I was going to make the same point about Jim Crow laws, Typo Boy.

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I do love the word "megalopolis". It rolls off the tongue. It ought to be a kind of ice cream. Sort of like tutti frutti, but with more mix-ins.

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I spent a long part of my childhood thinking that Britain was vast, because it took days to get from here to there. (You know, I knew they were riding horses, but somehow I assumed that horses and cars went the same speed.) I was very disappointed when I discovered that the English and the Scots had been fighting over a football-field's worth of territory for several hundred years. I mean, for crying out loud.

Bwah!
If it’s any consolation most of us grow up thinking the same thing and there are grown adults, educated grown adults I have met who still believe that the world revolves around the South of England.

British geography and dialects etc all evolved from walking distances. 10 miles in a day is a fair days walk and defines the radius of most local and dialect boundries.
By this definition Edinburgh and London are actually in different worlds.

It’s fascinating to read about travelling in the US. The distances are mind-boggling.

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Until the early sixties there were states where Black peple could not vote, could not enter most shops or resteraunts, had to ride different classes of accomoadation on public transport, had to go miles out of their way compared to whites to find a restromm they could use ... Legal equality between blacks and whites in the U.S. is a comparatively recent phenomena.

Thanks Gar, this is what I knew some of and why I had made the assumption that 'voting rights' were part of the 'civil rights' movement. That is why I was so surprised when the answer was 1868, I was sorta expecting 1968.

I'm trying to suss out if there is any correlation with people's experience/knowledge of things like the civil rights movement and their conception of democracy. As in, are you more likely to see democracy as an evolutionary process if you were born around the time of the CRM or the decade or so after, when the issues were still at the forefront of socio-political education.

The angle I'm coming from is that much of the peace/anti-war and even some of the anti-US imperialism sentiment seems based in a gut-understanding of the hypocrisy inherent in the way that most US foreign and economic policies are enforced around the world.

Is it because many who have experiential, or at least academic understanding, of such major issues as civil rights and equality, recognise that those are aspects of democracy that we have only recently figured out for ourselves?

Why do some people believe so strongly that democracy as a practical application can be forced/co-erced/enacted as a static entity onto nations and cultures who have no background of anything resembling democracy and no real understanding of the concepts which go to make up democracy (as we know it), such as equality, to take one example?

Have these people(?) forgotten that we only achieved some of this stuff for ourselves within the last few decades and have we really gotten all the wrinkles ironed out ourselves, or are our legal systems still struggling with case after case brought about on racial or discriminatory grounds.

Sorry this isn't particularly structured it's sorta stream-of-consciousness at the moment.

Sarameg, thanks for the link I'm going to go read it now.

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moonlit, I don't think you realize that the civil rights movement isn't universally recognized as a good thing. Or that millions of Americans believe the gravest civil rights abuse current at the moment is the denial of the rights of whites.

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There should be six hours between cities!

Heh. I grew up in Indy, so Chicago was about 4 hours away. And now I'm in DC, and NY is about 4 hours away...I think four hours between cities is perfect!

Megalopolis is a cool word, but much as I enjoy the East Coast, I LIKE the space out west or even just midwest, and find the unending city a little scary as a concept....

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Well, I don't know if you can call Hamden, Connecticut an unending city, but at least you can get doughnuts there.

moonlit, what Betsy said. I don't think it can be broken down generationally, or not really; and after all, we've been fighting on and off about the same issue (democracy in other countries leading to results the US doesn't like, or similar) for a very long time. I'd be more likely to call it That Dude (Country) Don't Learn than anything specifically related to the time-period/culture in which one grew up.

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Sorry Betsy, I haven't said anything wrong or offensive have I?

I don't think you realize that the civil rights movement isn't universally recognized as a good thing.

Do you mean that there is a fairly high percentage of Americans who think that segregation/non-voting etc should still be in effect? As in the fairly commonly held view that even though African Americans have legal equality, right to vote and be voted for etc. America is still very racist.

Or that millions of Americans believe the gravest civil rights abuse current at the moment is the denial of the rights of whites.

As in they feel that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, a backlash?

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As in they feel that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, a backlash?

Yes, that's it. There are people who feel we've Gone Too Far, that since there is no more discrimination it's time that white folk, particularly men, got their due.

Whatever.

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Sorry Betsy, I haven't said anything wrong or offensive have I?

No, no, far from it. I'm just responding with despair.

Yes to both of your questions. Various politicians have made healthy careers using coded phrases to express their disapproval of civil rights -- Jesse Helms, for instance, calling Martin Luther King a Communist. Jesse Helms won his 1990 election by running an ad showing two white hands crumpling a sheet of paper. "You needed that job. And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority."

Cites

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