Charles Blow: Every Turn from Reconstruction Forward, the Backlash Against Black People’s Progress Was ‘Intense’

EXCERPT:

BLOW: “I think what we have — I do not, I do not. At every turn from Reconstruction forward, when black people made progress, the backlash against that progress was intense. And it has happened every 50 or 60 years or so, from Reconstruction forward through the civil rights movement. And then, I guess, I would always call BLM the civil rights movement of our time. And the backlash that you’re seeing right now is a backlash against both the Black Lives Matter movement and Barack Obama as president. So, I mean, I am very cautious about saying that the best idea won, that racism was crushed, that it went away.”