The 1950s Are Greatly Overrated

It’s possible to find people on both sides of the political aisle who wax nostalgic for the 1950s. Many on the right wish for a return to the country’s conservative mores and nationalist attitudes, while some on the left pine for the era’s high tax rates, strong unions and lower inequality. But despite the period's rapid economic growth, few of those who long for a return to the 1950s would actually want to live in those times. For all the rose-tinted sentimentality, standards of living were markedly lower in the '50s than they are today, and the system was riddled with vast injustice and inequality.

Women and minorities are less likely to have a wistful view of the '50s, and with good reason. Segregation was enshrined in law in much of the U.S., and de facto segregation was in force even in Northern cities. Black Americans, crowded into ghettos, were excluded from economic opportunity by pervasive racism, and suffered horrendously. Even at the end of the decade, more than half of black Americans lived below the poverty line: