Sam Fulwood III: Buchanan’s fantasy past isn’t prologue to America’s future

  I’ve lived in many Americas.

  As a child of the 1960s, I remember the racial segregation of separate bathrooms and drinking fountains in my North Carolina hometown. In the late ‘70s, I was a beneficiary of affirmative action programs that provided both educational and occupational opportunities that my parents and grandparents were denied. Through the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early part of this century, I witnessed the rise, fall, and rebound of our nation’s economy; the decimation of jobs and industries; a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots; amazing advances in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, rights; and a persistently stubborn gap in wages between men and women. In 2008—and again in 2012—I saw something I thought impossible: the election and re-election of an African American as president of the United States.