When I was growing up in the '90s, it seemed like racism was a thing of the past. Sports stars, actors, musicians, and everything else in pop culture and media was completely unlike the hate and violence we saw in our history books from the 1950s/60s. Times had changed, but if the allegations about the Southern Poverty Law Center are accurate, there was money to be made in beating a dead horse, and the people fighting hate turned to fueling it to keep the money flowing and maintain the illusion of their own importance. It's a bit like how the Soviet Union is long dead, but NATO persists as a vestigial organ.
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You make a valid point about institutional inertia. It’s the dilemma faced by any ‘problem-solver’: if you actually solve the problem you were created to tackle, you cease to be needed. In the 90s, we were perhaps overly optimistic in believing that pop culture was the end of the road, but what you mention about the SPLC and NATO points to a potentially more uncomfortable truth: social structures, once they reach a certain size, develop a survival instinct that can end up being counterproductive to the original cause. They become narrative-processing machines rather than engines of change. It’s time for an update.
When my family moved west to the Spokane, Washington and North Idaho panhandle region in the late 1990s, there were still pockets of literal neo-Nazi racists. The Aryan Nations compound near Hayden was notorious, and the local skinhead losers held annual marches in downtown Coeur d'Alene. Their numbers dwindled, and counter-protests grew. Unfortunately, well-meaning people sought legal action which actually garnered a degree of sympathy since it seemed more performative condemnation than pursuit of justice for real wrongdoing. Assholes still have rights, after all, and it seemed like the concept of "due process" was being stretched for ideological reasons. That's the challenge of principle in the face of hate. Don't become the tyranny you are trying to oppose.
Amazing what identity stupidity and economic hardship can do.