Not-so-good old days

In Mike Masterson’s Oct. 23 op-ed, he waxed nostalgic about the greatness of the decades of the baby boomers’ formative years. As a fellow boomer (white, Christian, male), I have to say I don’t share all of his enthusiasm. He has firmly cemented his credentials as the whitest white man practicing journalism in this state.

Couching memories of that time as just a matter of playing outside or drinking from the garden hose makes it easier to overlook a lot that was shameful about that era. I grew up in a larger city in Iowa. On my side of the tracks,

I could have come away with the same attitudes. It was easy to ignore the side of town where white citizens were warned to stay away because of redlining; therefore, it was pretty likely that my only encounters with people of different ethnicities was watching them stereotyped on TV shows. The most popular sitcoms found amusement in domestic violence (“To the moon, Alice!”, “Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do!”). We had the fun of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, school integration at the point of a gun, racially motivated lynchings in the South, useless duck-and-cover drills, etc. My cousin’s best friend from high school was a Freedom Rider until he disappeared in Mississippi.

It’s easy to look at the past from the perspective of “my normal was

normal,” but it is short-sighted at best and a lie at worst. If we’re so eager to go back to the ’50s, let’s start with the IRS rates on highest earners, individual and corporate; not the institutional misogyny, homophobia and racism that characterized the decade. I’d rather live at a time when it’s a little messier, but more people feel free to express their individuality without fear of punishment for not “fitting in.”

BILL HESSE Bella Vista