Read the letters to the editor at the bottom after reading this article: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/till-ki...

Only one was an embarrassed Southerner. The rest were nonplussed or outright angry that the article and confessions were published. There are black people alive today who were alive then, it hasn’t been that long.

Every time someone says anything good about any year prior to 1980 or so someone shoots back with this low effort quip. I think it's obvious that anyone praising the 1950s in 2022 can be assumed to be saying "like that but for everybody" unless there is a specific reason to think they want to exclude certain groups.

What will people in 2092 think of 2022? I won't be around to see it unless Bezos makes a breakthrough in immortality research but I really doubt this decade will be seen as the magical time when we finally figured everything out. Our grandchildren will probably not look on our time any more fondly than we look on the '50s.

I doubt people in the '50s thought "we are evil and we enjoy being evil so we shall be evil". If you read contemporary magazines and newspapers they actually thought they were quite modern and progressive. And why not? 1955 was as modern in 1955 as 2022 is today. It's only in retrospect that it looks backward and barbaric.

Many things that were seen as modern and progressive then are looked on in horror now (lobotomy, gay conversion therapy, insulin coma therapy, using asbestos in cigarette filters, segregation, redlining, anti-miscegenation laws, blacklisting communists, anti-sodomy laws, many others).

What will the list of "Oh my god can you even BELIEVE people did that?" look like in a couple of generations? I've got some ideas but they're almost certainly wrong because I can't see the future any more clearly than the 1950s people could. I would however bet my life savings that some of the values held by all right thinking decent people now will be seen as abhorrent in 70 years. I just can't tell you which ones. Conversely some things seen as shocking now, stuff that will get you ostracized from polite society, will be believed by all right thinking decent people in 2092. Again I can't tell you which ones (nor do I think it will even be related to race, disability, or LGBTQ+). But this does seem to be the pattern.

To be clear I am not saying consensus views were more right then, or that we are wrong now, or that I wish X, Y, or Z thing would make a comeback. I'm just saying I don't think we've finished history yet and we should wait till history is over before patting ourselves on the back.