By Rodney LaBruce

“If the Negroes are to be elevated… you must educate the white man more, or he will be overtaken.” – President Andrew Johnson, 1865

President Andrew Johnson said that just months after slavery was abolished. It wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t a side comment. It was the stated belief of the man running the country.

That quote has stuck with me—not just because of how boldly racist it is, but because of how eerily familiar it still feels.

We like to tell ourselves that times have changed. And yes, some things have. But the fear that drove Johnson’s words? The fear that if Black folks—or any other minority—rise, white folks fall? That hasn’t gone anywhere. It just learned to wear a nicer suit.

This Isn’t Just History. It’s a Pattern.

After emancipation, Black people built schools, churches, and businesses. They voted. They held office. And that progress scared the daylights out of the people in power. So what happened next? Black Codes. Lynchings. Convict leasing. Sharecropping.

We see this play out again and again: every time progress is made, there’s a backlash.

The Civil Rights Movement gave us voting rights and desegregation—but it was followed by a “war on drugs” that led to mass incarceration.

Integration efforts led to white flight and the rise of private schools.

And today? Well… we can’t even teach honest history in some classrooms without folks crying “indoctrination.”

Education Is Still a Battleground

We know education is one of the fastest ways to shift generational outcomes. That’s why it’s always been policed so hard.

In 1907, Mississippi Governor James Vardaman didn’t mince words:

“Educating the Negro only spoils a good field hand and makes an insolent cook.”

Fast forward to today, and while people don’t say it like that anymore, you still see the same resistance—just wrapped in different language.

School districts pull books about race. State legislatures ban topics that make students “uncomfortable.” Affirmative action is dismantled, but legacy admissions stay untouched.

And when efforts are made to even the playing field, they’re painted as unfair, “woke,” or reverse racism.

The Real Issue Isn’t Equity—It’s Insecurity

Here’s what’s really going on: Some folks believe equality means loss. That if someone else rises, they must be falling. It’s a scarcity mindset. A fear that power is a pie and someone else getting a slice means there’s less left for them.

It’s why Chief Justice John Roberts could write in a 2007 ruling:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Sounds clean and logical—until you remember that the entire system was built to favor one group over the others. You can’t fix inequality by pretending it doesn’t exist.

And that fear of "losing ground"? It’s why Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin built his whole campaign around banning critical race theory. Not because CRT was running rampant—but because even the ideaof teaching real history threatened the old narrative.

This Isn’t Just About Black People

We see the same pattern with other communities, too.

Latino voters face voter suppression and language-targeted laws. Asian Americans are celebrated when they fit the “model minority” stereotype but are ignored when they organize for equity. Indigenous communities are still fighting just to be heard.

Whenever a marginalized group starts gaining real ground—political, economic, cultural—there’s resistance. Sometimes loud. Sometimes quiet. But always there.

Even Ronald Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, made a stop in Philadelphia, Mississippi—the very place where three civil rights workers were murdered—and said:

“I believe in states’ rights.”

He wasn’t talking about taxes. He was signaling to a certain crowd that the old ways still had defenders.

So, What Are We Afraid Of?

Are we afraid that equity might actually work?

Because here’s the truth: power-taking isn’t the real issue. Nobody’s trying to flip the pyramid. We’re trying to flatten it. To balance the scales. To build something that’s fairer and more just.

Dr. King said it best in 1967:

“It is much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job.”

That kind of deep change makes people uncomfortable—because it means rethinking systems that have protected their comfort.

But let me say this plainly: Black and Brown advancement isn’t a threat to America’s future.

It is America’s future.

The Danger Isn’t the Rise. It’s the Resistance.

The real danger isn’t that minorities will gain too much power.

It’s that we’ll keep running into the same resistance every time we try.

And if we don’t break that cycle—if we keep mistaking justice for overreach, or progress for loss—we’ll keep dragging the same baggage into every generation.

We have to stop fearing the rise of others and start fearing what happens when we hold people back for too long.

Power-sharing isn’t the end of this country.

It’s the only way this country ever truly begins to live up to its ideals.

The Line in the Sand: 1965 and the Long Road to True Acceptance

When people ask, “How long will it take to fix this?”—whether “this” is racism, systemic injustice, or generational poverty—I often point to one moment in time: 1965. That’s the line I draw in the sand.

Before 1965, every major federal law—from the Constitution to the Black Codes, from Plessy v. Ferguson to Jim Crow—was written in favor of slavery, segregation, or systemic oppression. After 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the law finally began to change direction.

But law and culture are not the same. Law can change overnight. Culture doesn’t.

So how long does it take for a society to actually accept the new moral code? To not just legalize justice but to live it?

The Answer: 3 to 5 Generations

Sociologists and legal scholars tell us that deep cultural transformation typically takes three to five generations. That’s 75 to 125 years. And that’s if there’s consistent and intentional effort—which, let’s be honest, we haven’t always had.

If we count a generation as 25 years, here’s how the timeline looks when you start at 1965:

• First generation (1965–1990): Witnessed legal change but lived through resistance—school integration battles, redlining, voter intimidation. These were the survivors and the skeptics.
• Second generation (1990–2015): Grew up under “colorblind” rhetoric. Affirmative action became controversial. Mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow with a new suit and tie.
• Third generation (2015–2040): That’s us. The first generation with a real shot at internalizing equity as a shared value—if we’re honest about our past and intentional about our future.

If we don’t do the work, this timeline stretches. If we stay passive, racism and inequality won’t just persist—they’ll evolve, adapt, and dig in deeper.

We’ve seen this before. Germany, after World War II, launched a full-scale national reeducation effort. They banned Nazi symbols, taught the Holocaust in schools, and refused to glorify their dark past. Within three generations, public sentiment shifted. They still struggle, but they confronted the lie.

America never did. After slavery, we never reeducated. We never had a national reckoning. We let statues stand, let textbooks lie, let systems carry on. And that’s why we’re still here, wrestling with the same demons under new names.

Real Change Is Generational—But It Starts Now

If we’re serious about justice, we can’t just change policies—we have to shape hearts, inform minds, and challenge long-held beliefs. That means education, storytelling, advocacy, coalition-building. That means refusing to let apathy win.

It also means telling the truth:

Change is slow. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting for.

We are now entering the third generation. This is our shot.

Let’s not wait another hundred years to get it right.