But lest people view the past through rose tinted glasses, do people have a good memory of a world before mass immunisation, especially smallpox and polio, or antibiotics that save people dying from what we now consider a simple wound.
Yes, medical advances have been so positive. I'm presently reading "The Golden Age", about the children populating that polio hospital, where many died in their iron lung, and the more healthy were dependent on calipers and crutches to support their useless legs.
The past was a world where the colour of your skin limited your ability to vote or even the public transport or water fountain you could use (in the case of the USA or Apartheid South Africa). Then there was the belittling attitudes towards woman, and overt racism to Asians and Southern Europeans. There's plenty about the past I'm happy is no longer in the present
Certainly the overt presentation of the sort of racism you describe has gone, but I'm not convinced it doesn't still exist in some places in covert form.
What I most notice is what seems, at least in retrospect, to be life's simplicity of a few decades ago, perhaps because of fewer choices (think technology in particular), but most especially the obedience young people overall displayed toward their parents, teachers, authority figures in general.
This doesn't exist now, or if it does it's in a very limited form. Rather pre-pubescent kids will state "I have just as many rights as you do". That might be fine in principle, but given the immature brain and lack of life experience the theory is rarely supported by the evidential behaviour.
I'll have you know, I was Third Grade class milk monitor. As you would expect, I was superb in this role.
Of course you would be, Logique. It was undoubtedly that experience that set you on the road to leadership and fame, viz in particular your wisdom being quoted in (I think?) "Strewth" in "The Australian".
Such nostalgia, little bottles of banana and lime milk, served at room temperature.
You must have been privileged. No flavourings at all in ours. Just warmed by the sun to nausea-inducing temperature.
However, the idea was sensible enough if only someone had thought about the need for refrigeration.
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