:pinker: Line Go Up Things Get Better?

I don’t even know anymore. Its nice to think that when we functionally purged the Klan (for, like, the third or fourth time) from government institutions in the 70s and 80s, material conditions improved for the country. But I don’t see it in the numbers. Did the prison population go down? Did the country get any less hostile towards migrants? Did we engage in fewer wars? Did social services meaningfully improve? Did wages increase? Did life expectancy and infant mortality improve?

It seems like we didn’t bring colored folk up when we abolished the Klan. We just allowed more white folk to sink down, while a few token minorities were positioned as a new class of overseer.

As a Houstonian, I still see police wrestling with homeless black men on the street. I still drive through the slums and shop at stores full of low-wage minority workers. I still know where all the big prisons are. I’ve been down to Ben Taub Hospital, I’ve passed through the HISD school districts and talked to the teachers. I’ve volunteered at the Houston Food Bank and I’ve door knocked through some rough parts of town on behalf of a certain skateboarding would-be Senator.

I can’t tell you how things were in the 1960s, but I can tell you how they were in the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s. This doesn’t feel like a city that’s getting better, even if a few people clamber up through the cracks and make it into the upper-middle class.