This is a classic case of remembering fondly "the good old lies". It appeared that racism was at an all-time low at least on the surface, but we left large segments of the population behind, which is why we're seeing SJW/woke types are finding creative ways of admitting to their bigotry. And that's just one thing. Think of all the lies we told ourselves back then, "the media is unbiased", "our economy is built on a solid foundation", "some politicians are corrupt, but on the whole, they have our wellbeing at heart" etc etc. These were all lies that we built society upon, but it wasn't a solid foundation, and if we're to continue this beautiful experiment, we need to expose these lies and built anew.

If the west is good at one thing, it's this, constantly re-examining ourselves and weeding out the lies that the west is built upon. We did it colonialism, slavery, suffrage etc, we're about due to do it again and in a big way.

In a mythological sense, this is the time of heroes.