Chapter 42

Chapter 42The American People Face a New Century

I. Economic Revolutions• Opening 20th century:

• United States steel was the flagship business of America’s booming industrial revolution

• Generation later it was General Motors– Annually producing millions of automobiles– Characteristic American corporation

• Shift to the mass consumer in the 1920s• Flowered in the 1950s• After World War II the rise of International Business Machines

(IBM)• Later Microsoft Corporation led transformation to the fast-paced

“information age”: the storing, organizing, and processing of data became an industry.

I. Economic Revolutions(cont.)

• 21st century the growth of the Internet—communications revolution– New corporate giants like Google– Social networking like Facebook and Twitter– Peoples rocketing down the “information superhighway”– Toward the uncharted terrain of an electronic global village– Speed and efficiency of the new communications tools

threatened to wipe out entire occupational categories– Now businesses could be “outsourced” to other countries

• Scientific research propelled the economy– New scientific knowledge raised new moral dilemmas and

provoked new political arguments– The threshold of a revolution in biological engineering

I. Economic Revolutions(cont.)

– The Human Genome Project established the DNA sequence –the way to radical new medical therapies

– The cloning industry—legitimacy of applying cloning technology to human reproduction, human stem cells research

• Resulting in unprecedented ethical questions:– What principles should govern the allocation of human

organs for lifesaving transplants?– Was it wise to spend money on such costly procedures?– Should resources be better spent on improved sanitation,

maternal and infant care, nutritional and health education?– Should society regulate the increasingly lengthy and often

painful process of dying? (see pp. 994-995)

II. Affluence and Inequality• Americans were an affluent people at the beginning of the 21st

century:– Median household income reached $49,400 in 2011– Most enjoyed a higher standard of living than 2/3 people– Americans were no longer the world’s wealthiest people– The richest 20% of Americans raked in ½ the national income– The poorest 20% received a little over 3% (see Table 42.1)– This trend was evident in many industrial societies– The Welfare Reform Bill of 1996:

» Restricted access to social services» Requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to find work.

– There were signs of widening inequality» Numbers of those who had health care or did not » Those who remained in poverty

II. Affluence and Inequality(cont.)

– Indictment of the inequities afflicting an affluent and allegedly egalitarian republic (for comparative data, see Figure 42.1)

• What caused the widening income gap?– The tax and fiscal policies from Reagan to the Bushes, which

favored the wealthy (see Table 42.2)– The intensifying global economic competition– The shrinkage in high-paying manufacturing jobs for semi-

skilled and unskilled workers – The greater economic rewards commanded by educated

workers in high-tech industries – The decline of unions– The growth of part-time and temporary work– The rising tide of relatively low-skill immigrants

II. Affluence and Inequality(cont.)

– The increasing tendency of educated men and women to marry one another and both work, creating households with very high incomes

– Educational opportunities perpetuated inequality:» The underfunding of many schools in poor urban areas» The soaring costs of higher education

Table 42-1 p992

Figure 42-1 p993

Table 42-2 p993

Figure 42-2 p995

III. The Feminist Revolution

– Women in the workplace:• Beginning of the 20th century, women made up about 20%

of the workforce• Constantly increasing their presence in the workplace over

the next five decades• Increased during World War II• Beginning in the 1950s women’s entry accelerated

dramatically• By the 1990s nearly half of all workers were women• Most astonishing was the upsurge in employment of

mothers• In 1950s most mothers with children stayed at home.

III. The Feminist Revolution(cont.)

• By the 1990s a majority of women with children as young as one year old were wage earners (see Table 42.3)

• Women brought home the bacon and then cooked it• By 2008 population of American women in the workforce

was higher than most countries except Russia and China (see Figure 42.3)

• In the 1960s all-male strongholds—Yale, Princeton, West Point, southern military academies like Citadel and Virginia Military Institute—opened to women

• By the 21st century women were piloting airplanes, orbiting the earth, governing states and cities, and writing Supreme Court decisions.


– Yet many feminists remained frustrated:• Women continued to received lower wages• Tended to concentrate in low-prestige, low-paying

occupations (the “pink-collar ghetto”)• Accounting for ½ the population in 1990, they were:

– 32% of lawyers and judges (up from 5% in 1970)– 32% of physicians (up from 10% in 1970)

• Overt sexual discrimination explained some of this occupational segregation:– Most, however, attributed to the role of motherhood– Helped for the persistence of a “gender gap” in voting

behavior.


• Most voted for Democrats:– Women perceived them as more willing to favor

government support for health and child care, education, job equality, and more vigilant to protect abortion rights

• 20th century men’s roles changed as well:– Some employers provided paternity leave in addition to

maternity leave– More men assumed traditional female responsibilities– Congress passed the Family Leave Bill in 1993:

» Mandating job protection for working fathers as well as working mothers who needed to take time off from work for family-related reasons.

Table 42-3 p996

Figure 42-3 p996

IV. New Families and Old

– The traditional family suffered heavy blows in modern America:• By the 1990s one out of every two marriages ended

in divorce:– Seven times more children were affected by divorce– Kids who commuted between separated parents were

commonplace

• Traditional families were increasingly slow to form in the first place: – Adults living alone tripled in the four decades after 1950– By the 1990s nearly one-third of women aged 25-29 had

never married

IV. New Families and Old (cont.)

– By the 1960s, 5% of all births were to unmarried women– Three decades later:

» One out of four white babies» One out of three Latino babies» Two out of three African American babies» Were born to single mothers.

– Every fourth child in America was growing up in a household that lacked two parents

– The collapse of the traditional family contributed to the pauperization of many women and children» As single parents (usually mothers) struggled to keep their

households economically afloat» Single parenthood outstripped race and ethnicity as the

highest predictor of poverty in America.

IV. New Families and Old(cont.)

– Childrearing, the family’s foremost function• Being increasingly assigned to “parent-substitutes”

– To day care centers or schools– To television and DVD players

• Parental anxieties multiplied with the Internet– Where youngsters could “surf” through poetry and problem sets as

well as pornography

• If the traditional family was increasingly rare, the family itself remained a bedrock of American society in the early twenty-first century:

• As viable families now assumed a variety of forms:– Children in household led by single parent, stepparent, or

grandparent

IV. New Families and Old(cont.)

– Children with gay and lesbian parents– Gay marriages took place when Massachusetts Supreme

Judicial Court ruled them legal in 2003.

• Teenage pregnancy– A key source of single parenthood, was on the decline after

the mid 1990s

• Divorce– Rates appeared to ebb a bit– With 3.4 divorces per thousand people in 2008, down from

5.3 per thousand in 1981

• The family was not evaporating, but evolving into multiple forms

V. The Aging of America

– Old age was to be a lengthy experience• Americans were living longer

– Someone born in 2000 could anticipate a life span of seventy-five years.

– The census of 1950 recorded that women for the first time made up a majority of Americans

– Miraculous medical advances lengthened and strengthened lives

– Noteworthy, the development of antibiotics after 1940– Dr. Jonas Salk’s discovery in 1953 of a vaccine against a

dreaded crippler, polio

• Longer lives spelled more elderly people– One American in eight was over 65 in 2009

V. The Aging of America(cont.)

– Projected that one in every five would be in the “sunset years” by 2050

• Host of political, social, and economic questions about older Americans:– They form a potent electoral bloc that lobbies for senior

citizens– The share of GNP spent on healthcare for people over sixty-

five more than doubled in three decades after the enactment of Medicare in 1965

– The growth in medical payments for the old outstripped the growth of educational expenditures for the young

– As late as 1960s over ¼ lived in poverty, three decades only one in ten did


– Triumphs for senior citizens brought fiscal strains• Especially on Social Security and Medicare systems

– Social Security payments to retirees did not represent reim-bursement for contributions that the elderly had made during their working lives

– The Social Security payments of current workers into the Social Security system funded the benefits to current gener-ations of retirees.

– The problem intensified with the soaring rise of health-care costs– The huge wave of post-World War II baby boomers that

approached retirement age– What the government is taking in is not matching or cover- ing

what is being paid out:» Might rise above $7 trillion.


– The “third rail” of American politics:• The electoral power of older Americans • Social Security • Medicare• Which politicians touched only at their peril (see

Figure 42.4)

Figure 42-4 p999

VI. The New Immigration

– Newcomers continued to come in waves that numbered 1 million persons per year:• Europe contributed fewer than did Asia and Latin

America (see Figure 2.5)• They settled in the traditional ethnic enclaves in cities

and towns • And in sprawling suburbs, where many of the new jobs

are located

– What prompted new immigrants to America?• Many came for the same reason as the old ones did• Left countries where the population was growing rapidly

VI. The New Immigration(cont.)

• From countries where agricultural and industrial revolutions were shaking people loose

• In search of new jobs and economic opportunity• Some came with skills and even professional degrees and

found their way into middle-class jobs• Most came with fewer skills, and less education, seek-ing

work as janitors, nannies, farm laborers, lawn cutters, or restaurant workers.

• The Southwest felt the immigrant impact especially sharply—Mexican migrants

• Latinos made up nearly 1/3 of the populations of Arizona, Texas, and California– 40% in New Mexico (See, pp. 1002-1003)


• Mexican American have succeeded in creating a cultural zone.• Some old-stock Americans worry about the capacity

of the modern United States to absorb these new immigrants.• The Immigration Reform and Control Act, 1986:

– Attempted to choke off illegal entry by penalizing employers of undocumented aliens

– And granted amnesty to many of those already in the U.S.

• Only 13% of the American population in 2007 were immigrants


– Critics of immigration:• They robbed citizens of jobs• They dumped themselves on the welfare rolls at taxpayers’

expense

– Some worry about unscrupulous employers who might take cruel advantage of alien workers

– Debates over immigration were complicated by the problem of illegal immigrants• Bush and a bipartisan group of legislators proposed a law

to establish a guest-worker program• Anti-immigrant forces condemned the plan as “amnesty”

VI. The New Immigration (cont.)

• Business interests protested that it would put too great a burden on employers to verify the right to work

• Immigrant right advocates claimed it would create “second-class citizens”

• Legislators in Arizona, provoked by continuing immigrant flows over the state’s long desert border with Mexico:– Placed a harsh anti-immigrant law in 2010 requiring local police

to detain people if there was “reasonable suspicion” that they were illegal

– “Racial profiling”

• Congress rejected the DREAM Act

Figure 42-5 p1000

Figure 42-6 p1003

VII. Beyond the Melting Pot

– Latinos were becoming an increasingly important minority• The United States was home to about 47 million

– 31 million Chicanos, or Mexican Americans

• They elected mayors in several cities• The United Farm Workers Organizing Committee

(UFWOC) headed by Cesar Chavez– Succeeded in improving working conditions for the mostly

Chicanos “stoop laborers” who followed the cycle of planting and harvesting across America

• Increased influence by the presence of Spanish-language ballots and television broadcasts

VII. Beyond the Melting Pot(cont.)

• Latinos became the largest ethnic minority, outnumbering even African Americans in 2003– The Chicano population of America’s largest state,

California, led the Anglo population– In 2003 most newborns in California were Latinos

• By 2010 the Census Bureau counted four “majority-minority” states:– No ethnic group commanded a majority: Texas, New Mex-

ico, California, and Hawaii– Nationwide, the birthrate for nonwhites in 2010 was poised

to eclipse the white birthrate for the first time in history.


– Asian Americans• By 1980s they were America’s fastest growing minority• Numbering 15 million by 2008 • Once called the “yellow peril,” they were now counted

among the most prosperous Americans• Their political influence was heralded in 1998 election

– When Oregon’s Taiwan-born David Wu was the first Chinese American to serve in the House of Representatives.

– Indians, the original Americans• Numbered more than 2.5 million in the 2010 census• Half have left the reservations to live in cities


• Unemployment and alcoholism had blighted reservation life• Many tribes took advantage of their special legal

status as independent nations to open bingo halls and gambling casinos for the general public on reservation land• But the cycle of discrimination and poverty proved

hard to break

VIII. Cities and Suburbs• American cities

• Crime was the greatest scourge of urban life• Violent crimes reached an all-time high in the drug-

infested 1980s and leveled off in the 1990s• America imprisoned a larger fraction of its population than

almost any other nation• The migration from the cities to the suburbs were swift

and massive– Creating a majority of American who were suburban dwellers (see

Figure 42.7)– Jobs became suburbanized

• The nation’s brief “urban age” lasted 7 decades after 1920

VIII. Cities and Suburbs(cont.)

– There was a new fragmentation and isolation in American life

– By the first decade of the 21st century, the suburban rings around big cities were becoming more racially and ethnical-ly diverse» Through individual schools and towns were often

homogeneous

• Suburbs grew faster in the West and Southwest– In the outer orbits of Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, and

Phoenix– Newcomers came from both the nearby cities and other

regions of the United States

VIII. Cities and Suburbs(cont.)

• Some major cities exhibited signs of renewal:– New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and even the

classic “city without a center,” Los Angeles– Most did not become genuine cities of residential

integration– Cities remained as divided by wealth and race as the

suburban social landscape surrounding them.

IX. Minority America

– Racial and ethnic tensions exacerbated the problems of American cities:• These stresses were especially evident in Los Angeles

– A magnet for minorities– Especially immigrants from Asia and Latin America– The Los Angeles riots of 1992 testified to black skepticism about

the American system– In 1995 O. J. Simpson’s murder trial fed white disillu- sionment

with the state of race relations

• American cities have always held an astonishing variety of ethnic and racial groups:– By the 20th century minorities made up a majority of the

population of American cities, as whites fled to the suburbs

IX. Minority America(cont.)

• The most desperate black ghettos, housing a hapless “underclass,” were problematic

– Successful blacks who had benefited from the civil rights revolution of the 50s and 60s • Followed whites to the suburbs• Leaving a residue of the poorest poor in the old

ghettos• The inner cities, plagued by unemployment and drug

addiction, seemed bereft of leadership, cohesion, resources and hope.


• Single women headed about 45% of black families in 2009, three times more than whites• Many African American women, husbandless and job-

less, struggled to feed their children• Many fatherless, impoverished African American

children were consigned to suffer from educational handicaps too difficult to overcome• Some African American communities did prosper• Black elected officials had risen to 9,000

– Some three dozen members of Congress» Mayors of several large cities » And president—Barack Obama.


• By the 20th century blacks had advanced in education– Still, the educational gap between blacks and

whites persisted– The political assault against affirmative action in

California and elsewhere• Compounded the obstacles to advance• Won a key case involving the University of Michigan• The Court preserved affirmative action in university

admission policies.

Figure 42-7 p1005

X. E Pluribus Plures

• Controversial issues of color and culture pervaded the realm of ideas– The creed of “multiculturalism”

– “Cultural pluralists” like Horace Kallen and Randolph Bourne embraced it

– It celebrated diversity for its own sake– And stressed the need to preserve and promote, rather

than squash, a variety of distinct ethnic and racial cultures in the United States

• The nation’s classrooms became battlegrounds for the debate over America’s commitment to pluralism

X. E Pluribus Plures(cont.)

• Multiculturalists attacked the traditional curriculum as “Eurocentric”– Advocated greater focus on the achievements of African

Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans– Critics:

» Too much stress on ethnic difference would come at the expense of national cohesion

» And an appreciation of common American values

• The Census Bureau enlivened the debate in 2000 when it allowed respondents to identify themselves with more than one of the six standard racial categories:– Black, white, Latino, American Indian, Asian, and Native

Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

X. E Pluribus Plures(cont.)

• 7 million Americans chose to describe themselves as biracial or multiracial• As of the 1960s interracial marriage was still illegal in

sixteen states– Mixed marriages of golfer Tiger Woods and actress Rosario

Dawson– By the 21st century many Americans were proclaiming their

mixed heritage as a point of pride.

XI. The Postmodern Mind

• Americans in the 21st century:– Read more, listened to more music, and were

better educated• Colleges awarded some 3 million degrees annually• Educated people lifted the economy to advanced

levels, creating more consumers of “high culture”• Every year millions of Americans:

– Visited museums– Patronized hundreds of opera companies and symphony

orchestras– As well as countless popular music groups.

XI. The Postmodern Mind(cont.)

– Postmodernism generally refers to:• A distrust of rational, scientific descriptions of the self

or the world• And the insistence that human beliefs and realities are

socially “constructed.”• In place of modernism’s faith in certainty, objectivity,

and unity– Postmodernism stresses skepticism, relativity, and multiplicity

• Postmodernism has enormously influenced contemporary philosophy, social theory, art, architecture, and literature, among other fields.


– Postmodern architecture made the most visible footprint• Robert Venturi and Michael Graves revived the deco-

rative details of earlier historical style• Postmodernists celebrated a playful eclecticism of

architectural elements• Frank Gehry used luminous, undulating sheets of

metallic skin—– Guggenheim Museum (1997) in Bilbao, Spain– The Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in Los Angeles


– Postmodern sensibility carried over into art forms• John Adams and John Zorn:

– Broke down boundaries between “high” and “low” styles– Blended diverse musical genres and traditions in an

experimental mix

• Choreographers Steve Paxton and Twyla Tharp:– Paired everyday movements with classical techniques and

gave contemporary dancers license to improvise

• Hip hop artists Biz Markie to Jay-Z “sampled” beats and overlaid them with complex “rapping” schemes.


• “Mash-up” artists – Cleverly fusing fragments from songs of different musical

genres– Remixing one song’s vocal track over another song’s

instrumentals.

• Visual artists also felt the eclectic urge:– Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker combined old

and new media to confront, confound and even offend the viewer

– Jeff Koons and Shepard Fairey borrowed industrial materials and pop culture imagery to blur the hidebound distinction between highbrow and lowbrow cultures.


– Postmodern literature• William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas

Pynchon:– Pioneered the use of non-linear narratives, pastiche forms,

parody and paradox in their fiction

• Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Zadie Smith:– Adapted these techniques for contemporary audiences

• David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)• Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999)• Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections (2001) and

Freedom (2010)


• Toni Morrison:– Wove a bewitching portrait of maternal affection in Beloved

(1987)– In 1993 became the first African American woman to win

the Nobel Prize for literature

• E. Annie Proulx:– Comical yet tender portrayal of a struggling family in The

Shipping News (1993)

• James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie:– Contributed to a Native American literary renaissance that

sought to recover the tribal past while reimagining its present


– Immigrant writers:• Playwrights David Hwang, novelist Amy Tan• Chinese-born Ha Jin, Waiting (1999) • Jhumpa Lahiri explored the painful relationship between

immigrant Indian parents and their American-born children• Latino writers:

– Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)

– On stage:• Political themes and social commentary predominated• Tony Kushner, Angels in America (1991)


• Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award-winning musical Rent (1996)• Eve Ensler espoused feminist empowerment and an

end to violence against women• Cuban American Nilo Cruz won a Pulitzer Prize in

2003 for Anna in the Tropics

– Films continued to flourish:• George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and

Spike Lee

XII. The New Media

– Internet• First created by the government for Cold War

intelligence sharing• Spread into American homes, schools, offices• To communicate, shop, work, electronically bond

with family and friends• The “dot-com” explosion of Internet-based high-tech

companies drove the tremendous economic boom• Giants in retail (Amazon.com), information gathering

(Google), and even finance (E*Trade)• Reshaped the corporate world

XII. The New Media(cont.)

• Internet has democratizing effect:– Spreading power and information– Young people and social-networking sites—Facebook, Twitter to make

connections– YouTube allowed everyday users to post home videos– “Weblogs,” “blogs”

» Presented challengers to traditional media—especially newspapers» “New Media”: Supporters—added fresh voice and new

perspectives. Critics—questioned bloggers’ expertise and accused them of spreading misinformation.

– Americans became ever less willing to read– Internet made the 24-hour news cycle a reality– The Internet drove major readjustments in modern American

economic, social, and cultural life.

XIII. The American Prospect

– Problems that confronted the Republic• Women still fell short of first-class economic citizenship

– Groped for ways to adapt the traditional family to the new realities of women’s work outside the home

• Civil rights– Full equality remained an elusive dream for countless

Americans of color

• Powerful foreign competitors challenged America’s premier economic status

• Americans began to fear for their economy • Environmental worries clouded the country’s future

XIII. The American Prospect(cont.)

– Coal-fired electrical-generating plants contributed to greenhouse effects

– Problem of radioactive waste disposal hampered the development of nuclear power plants

– The planet was being drained of oil– Disastrous accidents– The cry for alternative fuel sources had given way to public

frustration with solar power and windmills, etc.– Energy conservation an elusive strategy

» Kyoto treaty, Copenhagen Climate Conference– Cleaning the earth of its abundant pollutants

• Other problems:– Ways to resolve the ethnic and cultural conflicts– New opportunities—outer space, inner-city streets, etc.

XIII. The American Prospect(cont.)

– Unending quest for social justice, individual fulfillment, and international peace

• The terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001—another challenge to the United States– Finding ways to preserve its security without altering its

fundamental democratic values and ways of life– Danger of terrorism:

» In fighting it, Americans would so compromise their freedoms at home

» And so isolate the country internationally that it would lose touch with its own guiding principles

• The capacity to nurture progress abroad– Depends on the ability of Americans to improve their own

country, to do so in the midst of new threats to their security.

Chapter 42

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