As for Yglesias, I am in concurrence with his strong belief that America is a much better place today than it was in 1949. With few exceptions, to think otherwise signals a lack of cross-racial empathy, at minimum. But I resist the idea that there is nothing save white privilege for John Boehner to wistfully miss. He's a conservative Catholic. As a kid, he lived in a country where religion played a larger role in public life; divorce, premarital sex, and cohabitation were stigmatized; a comparatively larger share of social welfare spending came from private charities; abortion was much less common; and city bureaucrats would never dream of shutting down a kid's lemonade stand. All good things if you're a conservative Catholic, aren't they?

Of course, all this presumes nostalgia is rational.

But almost every older American one encounters is nostalgic for the era of his or her youth. Hasn't it always been so? (For one thing, they were young back then!) One of the magazine pieces I found most rewarding to report concerns a senior center in Harlem, and the elderly black people who frequent it.

Here's the beginning of the piece:

On West 151st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, an unobtrusive sign in a small park provides one version of neighborhood history: "Convent Garden lies in the heart of the Sugar Hill section of Harlem," it says, "so named because of the 'Sweet Life' of its residents during the first half of the 20th Century." When I read the sign, I wondered whether local elders shared its romantic notions of the past. The lives of older people are almost always more interesting than they imagine, or so I've gathered from countless conversations with senior citizens, and lost youth typically causes them to lament the fading features of a golden past.



Is that a human trait, I wondered?



Do black people whose youthful memories include lynching and segregation, and whose children and grandchildren inhabit a more equitable, less bigoted society, nevertheless share the senior citizen's sense of nostalgia?



They do!

In that senior center, I encountered a bit of racism from some residents who complained about the Dominican immigrants who'd moved into the neighborhood over the years. Certainly you can tell a story about immigration, gentrification, and a relative loss of black privilege in West Harlem.

For the most part, however, folks had fond memories of youth, lamented that cultural institutions like the Savoy Ballroom no longer existed, complained about rising crime especially when perpetrated by members of their own racial group, and offered all the standard grandparent complaints too: the kids these days, with their informal dress, lack of respect for elders, affinity for talentless musicians, etc.

Older white conservatives are the same way. Yeah, some are racist in ways that make me uncomfortable. Others aren't racist at all. And among both groups, there are a lot of senior citizens who think the country of their youth is slipping away.