Without having a date on the quote, it's hard to know exactly which three decades he's referring to, but we certainly seem to be in a better position regarding crime, housing and race relations than three decades ago. Education, probably not so much. This sounds to me like just a meta-contrarian longing for a return to the imagined "good old days".
Without having a date on the quote, it's hard to know exactly which three decades he's referring to,
He published that in 1993, which was about at the historic peak of violent crime in the US since 1960. The situation has improved a lot since then, but through the decades of 1960-1990, things looked pretty grim.
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: