So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.

Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ?

That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.

One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.

This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).

> "fellow white people"

Is oddly specific.

Were you referencing this by chance? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fellow-white-people-arent-you...

If so, I got the reference and I'm unimpressed by your trolling, dude.

I am separate from them. I didn’t do any of that stuff.

Also, I have many opinions that disagree with the overwhelming majority of my peers. Do you think you would have been racist back then?

Everyone wants to believe they would have been a dissenter, but the likelihood is low. Most people follow the crowd, especially if there are repercussions for doing otherwise. It's a terrible reality, which is why the ability to dissent must be protected.

You're doing it right now.

Projection much? I'm not white and I feel the same way as gp

Yep, textbook projection.

It's also the era that created the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty. You're correct that political leadership in the United States was almost entirely white at the time. But the fact that they passed many substantial pieces of legislation helping other groups shows that people are more decent than the "race war" narrative that gets pushed a lot these days.

From my perspective, what occurred is that people wanted desegregation in principle but not in their particular social circles. They didn’t want large numbers of black students in their child’s school for instance.

These laws were passed in an environment of both great social upheaval domestically, and the cold war internationally. Both contributed.

The Soviet Union kept pointing out US race relations whenever the US claimed to be for freedom. The hypocrisy of the US could not be ignored by the predominantly white christian leaders who enacted these laws while expecting to have any credibility abroad. And, now that the cold war is over, the predominantly white christian political right is attempting to dismantle every single one of these acts and more.

I think there's a big difference between "white people were in control of everything" and "the people who were in control were white".