I recognized even back then that it wasn’t perfect, yet in many ways the culture of the 90s felt more progressive than today. And there was hope about the future.
90s liberalism had its flaws (it often didn’t acknowledge systemic racism as we know it), but at that time most open racism had been thrown out of mainstream media, except for occasional spots on scandal shows like Jerry Springer.
The very idea that racism would become open again like it is now was unthinkable. But they slowly and surely allowed it to come back.
Racism on the internet always existed. Stormfront and various white nationalist sites sprung up almost immediately once the internet became mainstream in the mid-90s. From what I understand, the first ever site on Martin Luther King was literally a site smearing the man and calling him a fraud back in 1995.
I recognized even back then that it wasn’t perfect, yet in many ways the culture of the 90s felt more progressive than today. And there was hope about the future.
90s liberalism had its flaws (it often didn’t acknowledge systemic racism as we know it), but at that time most open racism had been thrown out of mainstream media, except for occasional spots on scandal shows like Jerry Springer.
The very idea that racism would become open again like it is now was unthinkable. But they slowly and surely allowed it to come back.
Racism on the internet always existed. Stormfront and various white nationalist sites sprung up almost immediately once the internet became mainstream in the mid-90s. From what I understand, the first ever site on Martin Luther King was literally a site smearing the man and calling him a fraud back in 1995.