Is There Still an Atmosphere of Racial Oppression or is that Subject to Interpretation?

I believe that some black people, and other people of color', are living in a state of oppression. However I believe that the atmosphere of oppression is a matter of mental perception. I am a black female, living in Southern California, which is by and large an open minded and culturally diverse state. I am currently in a relationship with a white male, who works at our local college in the financial aid department. I am the first black female that he has ever dated, and I am certain where you to have asked him five years ago if he envisioned himself living with and engaged to a black woman, he would have been taken aback. Not that he is in any way, shape, or form a bigot or even a segregationist, but from the comfortable niche of his life before I came along, he would have, as I have several times pointed out to him, "laughed himself sick at the idea". He has only recently had to deal with racism and racial oppression and that only occasionally. I am not a stereotypical black female. I have managed to fall into some of the traps and pitfalls that are common to our race, dropping out of high school, becoming a mother at the age of 15, drug addiction etcetera. Although those bleak facts when taken alone would lead one to believe that I am indeed a white person's idea of the stereotypical "nigger". If one chooses to interact with me however they will find that I am quite intelligent with an agile and "thirsty" mind, I do not live, nor was I raised in the "hood", and when given the opportunity, I present and comport myself in quite the "socially acceptable" fashion.