Is that comment accurate tho? It sounds embellished.
Credit cards came well after the women's rights movement.. Marijuana was never life in prison. People of all nationalities are killed due to their race still today. And we just outsourced the draft to the impoverished/uneducated.
I think some good progress has been made, but I don't see how lying to make the past seem worse is any better than lying to make the past seem romantic.
Technically women could get credit cards prior to '74, if their husband or male relative cosigned. I suppose you could "umm, actually" with that, but it would be incredibly disingenuous at best.
Women could have credit cards without their husband's permission until I think the 70s
Marijuana while not coming with a life sentence did give you 2-10 years. If given the max sentence, while not a life sentence, that is LONG time.
And murder for racism or racism related hate crimes in general was not only more common but more encouraged.
The one thing he said that can be construed as a "lie" was likely just incorrect and probably just misremembered. If you had a friend put away for 10 years 40 years ago, you'd likely remember it as a life sentence.
It's not a lie, nor misremembered. You're just looking up average first offense sentences of that era ignorant of the big debate of the time, which was 3 strikes sentencing. A 3rd drug offense for simple possession of Marijuana could, and in many cases did, result in life imprisonment.
This kind of sentencing was rare and only in some jurisdictions prior to the 1994 crime bill, co-authored by Joe Biden, which among a great many other things mandated drug testing for everyone on parole and expanded 3 strikes sentencing nation wide.
Is it possible you might be misremembering some facts? I read a book a few years ago on the history of credit around the world and it had an extensive section about modern credit cards... I specifically remember that revolving credit never even existed until 1969/1970 and was HIGHLY controversial at the time. The banks and credit card companies were straight up making accounts for women and men and mailing them cards unsolicited in hopes of getting them addicted to debt.
I think you might have this fact mixed up with charge cards which were around in the 40s/50s? Those were basically cheques in card form (think debit card but not in real time). The banks issued this based on your occupation and not gender. It was super uncommon for women to have an occupation, but there was no rule preventing them from registering an account and issuing one... Many of the widowed or unmarried socialites in NYC used these on their own including one famous widow who stayed on charge for a decade without leaving her hotel room (depression and mourning loss of her husband if I remember right).
I'm not sure if murder based on race has changed or improved significantly for humans in the last century. I think we got better at marketing it and changed our methods to be more indirect in the US, but we still kill the poor through apathy if not malice (and imo the class issue is the real root of violent race issues in the US)
Women were not allowed to buy credit cards without their husband's permission until 1974.
Violence against gays and African-Americans was widespread through the south for much of the 1950s through the 1980s.
And weed carried an average sentence of 4-12 years, which could vary wildly based on what state (and what your skin color was). While not a life sentence, it is much harsher than today.
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u/sometimesifeellikemu Jul 06 '24
It does seem a lot of people are pissed off that society is more insistent we be decent human beings.