Most people in the 1950s were racist

But it is much different than people try to depict today. It was different than you might think. White people were racist of anyone of a different skin tone than themselves. Black people were racist against white people. Hispanics were racists against white and black people and Italians were racist against anyone who wasn't Catholic.

So, When JFK got elected the first Catholic president it was a really big thing. But, in some ways it was no surprise he got assassinated because the U.S. was and is mainly Protestant Christian and still is so it was more likely a Catholic president was going to get assassinated than a Protestant one for a variety of reasons then.  But, then you have white on white racism like then Russians against White Americans and White Americans against Russians. Two sets of white folks separated by systems of government. And before that you had Hitler's Germany against French and English and then Americans which was was white racism against Hitler and the Nazi ideas. Then you have Tojo in Japan and all the American Japanese put into Concentration camps like Jewish people were put in in Europe and there were killed and gassed and all their wealth and property stolen: at least 6 million people who were Jewish were treated in racist ways.

Now you have white Supremacist Racists for Trump which is a sort of throw back to the 1950s again.

However, like I said most people were racist in the 1950s. If you weren't you were likely already dead.

But, it was different then than now and that's what most people of today don't seem to understand.

Racism in the old days (the 1950s and before) was mostly because most people hadn't even finished High school let alone gone to college. I'm not sure you can comprehend just how ignorant the average person was in the 1950s here in the U.S. It's not that they didn't have common sense but they definitely didn't know about diet, or medicine, or politics much either. So, only about 10% or less of people before World war II ever went to college. The GI bill changed all that and anyone who wanted to go to college who was a veteran of world war II could and they did.

The next burst of college graduates came from Viet Nam. Boys who didn't want to go from the draft in going to Viet Nam went to college and girls followed them and that's why we are so well educated today. It mostly has to do with World WAr II and the GI bill and then The draft and the Viet Nam war if you really want to understand it.

This is the main reason why everyone isn't still racist now so much. Because they came to understand how things really are beyond racism and ignorance.

Being more well rounded and educated has changed our whole country in amazing ways ever since the GI bill after world war II and the draft changed how many people went to college mainly because they didn't want to die in Viet Nam like all their high school friends were. The more body bags or coffins we saw coming back from Viet Nam (50,000) the more boys decided to go to college rather than to die like all their friends from high school were then for something most young people then could make no real sense of. So, it was like all our high school friends were dying for nothing. So, as many as could went to college instead of dying or walking the streets talking to themselves the rest of their lives like many Viet Nam Veterans you still see on the streets today even after all these years later.

So, in the end the GI Bill after World War II and the draft during Viet Nam were the main forces in educating our nation to rid ourselves (as much as possible from racism of all kinds).

So, I would say in many ways we have become a more noble nation than we once were because more people actually understand the world and race and ethnicity of all kinds 100s of times better after going to college and then often actually traveling all around the world to better understand it.

So, this is one reason why the U.S. is so well respected since World War II all over the world.