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<DIV><B>From:</B> <A title=nedlt@yahoo.com href="mailto:nedlt@yahoo.com">Ned
Late</A></DIV>
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<DIV>> I don't think that the decade of the '50s was merely
a repressive nightmare.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Well, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by
"repressive nightmare," but widespread housing
discrimination, so-called "miscegenation" laws (in some states),
lynchings, outright discrimination against gay people (just about everywhere),
unequal rights where women were concerned, prayers led by teachers in some
public schools, de jure segregation in the Southern states, unequal access to
law schools and medical schools (and the like), hardly any diversity in
politics, movies, television, books (other than the WASP model),
illegal abortions (out of necessity) - coupled with no really effective birth
control, no real undertanding, concern or protection against corporal
child abuse and sexual child abuse, no protection for women against sexual
harrassment in the workplace, the McCarthy witch hunts ... will this do for
a start? Of course, not every family was "repressed" (especially if they
conformed and/or were of the "innie" variety), but the repressions - and many
nightmares - were cruelly real for many, many people. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>> Besides we're second-guessing history, the '40s were even worse,
what with WWII. Perhaps we should have avoided that big ugly war with a pax
Germania & pax Nippon?<BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Well, I wasn't comparing decades - and I was
talking principally about life in the United States (not what was happening in
Germany, Japan or - horror of horrors - Stalingrad - all undeniably sad episodes
in world history), but since you brought this up (and from the American
perspective) - certainly, some things got better in the 1950s (e.g.,
desegregation of the military, polio vaccine was discovered), but some
things got worse (women didn't work outside the home as much as they had
done in the 1940s). </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Olga</FONT></DIV>
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