Is it really a long time? How long ago did Black Americans get the right to vote? Then, how long ago was it that they weren't intimidated into not voting? How about school integration, riding the bus wherever you feel like sitting, or going to the theatre? There are still 'whites only' golf clubs in the USA - one isn't so far from Bethesda, where a relative of mine lives. There are millions of Black Americans who can still remember being spat upon, or harassed, or chased out of restaurants. Some had the living crap beaten out of them for looking at a white woman. The Tuskegee Experiment went on until 1972.
We're not a hell of a lot better in Canada, we've just had a better PR approach. The last segregated school in Canada was in Nova Scotia, and it closed in 1983! Only 32 years ago!
Racism is very much alive, and the institutions that should be working to end it, don't. Oddly enough, the most racially integrated organization I've seen in the US, is their military, and even that's only recent, and still experiencing problems.
This isn't something from our far distant past, it's still part of a painful living memory.