The recent I'm talking about is about 10-15 years before our time, which really isn't distant enough to be called distant. Things like the Stonewall Riots, and the Tuskeegee Experiment (which didn't end until 1972). Things that are -just- outside of our radar because we're primarily 80s kids. We grew up and our experience was largely our parents reassuring us that our grandparents were "just from a different time". We had our time in the 90s when everything was "gay" and "faggy" and then we stopped using those words because we rose above it. We didn't really start becoming progressive about any minority rights until the 1960s. Hell, women couldn't even vote until 1920. If you go back to some of our grandparents, we're talking about a time when women weren't able to VOTE for the president, much less become it. Betty White was two years old when women got the vote. If people are still alive today from when it was horrible, then it counts as recent, in my book. And unfortunately, you don't have to look anywhere near back that far to get to some horrible shit.
We absolutely are a very progressive country, but we just don't realize how recent a development that is since for the better part of -our- lives, the progressive part has always been a thing.
No doubt there.
Adding on:
Heck, it was illegal to be gay in 14 states until the Supreme Court overturned it in 2003. 2003.. Now we're talking about having a Vice President in favor of conversion therapy, a President who courted certain groups of voters by skirting the line of intolerance with some questionable rhetoric, and what is it, 3 Supreme Court appointments coming up? When you take all the evidence, and again, I don't feel that the sky is falling at all, I think it's completely justified for certain minority groups to be afraid.