This Isn't Your Mother's America

By Fusion Staff | November 12, 2013 | 5:33pm

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To the dismay of many social conservatives, the times are ‘a changing. This is something Washington Post columnist, Richard Cohen, recently wrote about.

In the piece he says:

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Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

While Fusionista, Jordan Fabian, finds the piece bizarre, perhaps many will agree with Cohen.

Unless you’re familiar with Cohen’s work, you might not understand his political stance. In this piece he’s noting the disgust of radical conservatives over significant shifts in the United States.

“Like FOX News Channel viewers, Tea Party advocates skew old,” said Leonard Steinhorn, author and professor at American University.

That makes sense. Remember the controversy over that cute Cheerios commercial? The comments on the cereal company’s YouTube page were so nasty, they were forced to turn off the comments feature. Meanwhile, these little kids didn’t see the big deal.

Fabian quoted a recent Gallup poll that found “Eighty-seven percent of adults approve of interracial marriage,” to argue America has moved past this type of prejudice. The poll showed “consistent support across different age groups and regions.”

But polling methodologies continue to get criticism for being outdated.

When being asked questions for a poll, many people say what they think they should say rather than what they truly think. Anonymous comments, on the other hand, tend to echo what people truly believe, but are afraid to say publicly.

Despite how much we’d like to believe we’ve moved past racism and bigotry, they live on. While it would be nice to think it’s just the older folks that are clinging to this, the recent racist Tweets around the Miss America pageant suggest otherwise.

Yes, the times have changed and the country is making progress, but we’re not there just yet.