What was race relations like in the 90s?

We've gotten better, but also worse. People have made everything about race. If you didn't vote for Obama, it's because you were racist. If you don't support BLM, it's because you're racist. There is no more room for nuance anymore. Nowadays people think "agree with me or you're racist."

I grew up in the 80's and 90's and at no point did i ever think about the colour of someones skin.

I never watched a movie or heard a song and thought oh wow they are black, never once crossed my mind.

These days it is thrown at you all the time. Evil white man and everything is racist.

As an example. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rural-britain-is-racist-says-countryfile-presenter-ellie-harrison-wpk0lc7gn

Basically the countryside is racist, this is where we are at. We have regressed not progressed.

There was no tension. The modern trope of people drooling with hate is just propaganda.

On the other hand, communities used to live apart. Reality was more like each community going their own way. Interaction was less frequent, but much more relaxed and friendly than today. There's an English proverb that says "Good fences make good neighbors"*, that would sum it up.

My first serious gf was half-Chinese, we were together for more than a year. I can't remember one single person who talked about her race back then. Nowadays, it'd be a recurrent topic.

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* EDITED It's not an English proverb, but a line in the poem Mending Wall, by Robert Frost.

I'd have to say in the 90's it was actually better than what's been developing lately.

I remember my roommate and I having a discussion on Affirmative Action. We were 180 degrees apart on our opinions about it but the whole conversation was very civil and we went back to our lives. Today people overhearing would be screaming racism and looking to report us to the dean for possible hate crimes.

Everything will be fine once white people accept they are subservient to black people.

I think things have gotten better for black people, but maybe not for the right reasons. It seems like people do the right thing for the wrong reasons to feel good for 10 minutes. Also, people nowadays are quick to boycott, and powerful people know this beforehand so they just lie.

With "social" media and video cameras, things can appear worse than they really are. When I hear "Things haven't improved since the 60s" I would urge people actually viewing the archival video, text, audio, etc.

I also think there were more shootings back in the day, but they just weren't recorded. If that one guy didn't purchase that camcorder and film Rodney King's beating, no one would have believed him, and yet, they found Officer COON and his fellow thugs NOT guilty.

How many cities were burned to the ground in the 90s?

Nowhere near as bad as today.

Now there were certainly more white people and less black people on tv, that's for sure. We did have all-black casts on tv shows like "Family Matters" (the great irony was, white viewers loved that show more than black viewers did!), the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "The Parkers," "Moesha," and a few others. But they were not as numerous as tv shows that typically had a mostly white cast, with at least one black person included, sometimes one other minority character in there. We also had black superheroes, such as Blade and Blankman, but nobody made a big deal about it because nobody in power was stoking the fires of hatred between the two groups (unless you count Al Charlatan or Jesse Jackson the fake preacher).

Most of the time there wasn't as much tension compared to the 2010s/2020s. Often kids did that "you don't bother us, we won't bother you" technique when it came to whites and blacks. Unless someone actually brought up racism, then it would get ugly. One thing that hasn't changed one bit are dumb white people from a certain political party "protecting" black kids from "evil white kids," even back then. (This usually happened in Blue States). Reality was, it was very common for white kids to be bullied in the crappier schools by black kids, and the public schools did one of two things:

1.) They punished both kids, citing that bullshit phrase "I don't care whose fault it is!" even though one of the kids had done nothing wrong and was the victim. This often led to the victims not reporting the bullying because they were afraid of being punished unjustly. Plus, you don't need to be an adult to see that the punishments didn't do any good, because the bully would be at it again next week.

2.) They'd punish the victim (usually a white kid) and pretend to punish the black kid, but often they let the little bastards get off Scot free because they were "a poor oppressed little minority."

The only time they did the right thing and sent the little bastard criminals-in-training to juvie was when they had no choice, like when blood was spilled in the hallways.