In 1962, 85 percent of white Americans told Gallup that black children had as good a chance as white kids of getting a good education. The next year, in another Gallup survey, almost half of whites said that blacks had just as good a chance as whites of getting a job.
In retrospect, we can see that these white beliefs were delusional, and in other survey questions whites blithely acknowledged racist attitudes. In 1963, 45 percent said that they would object if a family member invited a black person home to dinner.
I don't think there was anything delusional in that, while there were areas of America, democrat controlled areas where Blacks had less opportunity, it wasn't until LBJ and the democrats instituted their grand social engineering plan to control Blacks that their opportunities were reduced nationwide and their family units destroyed, further hindering their opportunities. In the early sixties we had two Black families living on our block and no one in the neighborhood treated them differently, my sister was friends with two of their girls and they came over to our house frequently, though not for dinner, and my mother, a nurse, worked with Black nurses in the hospital and they would go out to eat sometimes after shift. Now maybe that's because my parents didn't come to America until the early fifties, but we were taught to judge people by their actions, not their skin.
