A near impossible literacy test Louisiana used to suppress the black vote

As other commenters have noted, in Louisiana specifically, these types of tests would have been per parish and would not have been uniform.

For a bit of a happier perspective and a personal american story - I descend from this area from emancipated slaves. The farm they worked on was given to them when the owner died, and they became prominent and educated members of the community and established a legacy that still exists today. I am always amazed at the adversity they must have faced when achieving success in reconstruction era - but from my research at least, the really bad systemic stuff didn't come til 40ish years after emancipation, like the "one drop" laws and stuff that was attempting to roll back the progress made during reconstruction. It's a really fascinating part of history I always try to learn more about.

> It's a really fascinating part of history I always try to learn more about.

I suspect the regressive cultural backlash at the US at the moment as the "next generational" response the the civil rights campaigns in the mid-late 20th century.

In my personal opinion directly race based stuff is behind us at this point. There's only one generation alive today who remember a time where it wasn't just taken for granted that all races have equal potential to yield high (and very low) achieving people and that generation is above "shaking things up" age.

I think regression will be along some other axis. My personal two suspects are a) some variant of gender roles and the way they've changed since the 1960s and b) the widespread acceptance of cultural diversity being a good thing and the idea that there can not be superiority between cultures. The "goodness" of both of these things has been challenged quite a bit recently either directly or by shifting circumstances on other fronts causing people to need to think more critically about those subjects. In contrast, the goodness of not being racist (at least on a first order level) has been sailing along quite successfully recently.

> the idea that there can not be superiority between cultures

I don't believe that. I don't even think that you believe it.

Here's culture A, which believes that there cannot be superiority between cultures. And here's culture B, which believes that there can be superiority between cultures, and in fact that B is the superior one. I'm pretty sure, based on what you said here, that you think that A is the superior culture, and that B should change into A (or at a minimum, that A should not change into B).

And if you can look at, say, the culture of Denmark, and that of Afghanistan, and think that neither is superior as a culture to the other, that seems to me to be almost wilfully blind.

You're right I, here and now in 2024, don't believe it, at least not without some pretty tightly bounded limits. And when you take it to extremes like "afghans vs danes" I think it becomes clear that lot of other people also never really believed in limitless cultural tolerance and sensitivity to the same extent with which they peddled it and that there was always implied limits that were never verbalized.

Funny you mention Afghanistan. I almost did in my original comment. I think Afghanistan and the people we we spent 20yr propping up there is the wedge that will drive open the door to broader discussion domestically.

You can already see this starting to happen where people are getting more comfortable comparing the pros and cons of various subsets of American cultures. Will it turn into anything, IDK.