(...from the new book, "America Dreaming," ... by Laban Carrick Hill)
---“To me all the problems began in the Sixties.”
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--- retired Texas Republican Congressman
and House Majority Leader Dick Armey
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“Whatever the future holds, and as satisfactory as my life is today,
I miss the Sixties and always will.”
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---former Democratic State Senator in California, former SDS activist
and Chicago Seven defendant Tom Hayden
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A more equitable nation
MAKING A
A LEGACY OF PROGRESS
RAINBOW
or the rise of a welfare state?
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When it comes to the ‘60s, everyone seems to disagree. Armey and Hayden are not unique in their completely opposite assessments of the era. No two people seem to be able to agree on the legacy of the ‘60s. Some saw a more equitable and humane nation, open to all its citizens. Others decried the rise of the welfare state, where the government intervened to take away personal responsibility.
Passionate reactions confirm just how important and influential the era was. Whether or not you believe this decade had a positive influence on contemporary culture, it has affected us all---even those who were born a decade or more later. Every aspect of the nation changed, from the highest levels of government and corporate culture to how we dispose of our garbage.
Just a quick glance around your neighborhood will provide real evidence.
In almost every village, town, and city in the country, people set aside their used plastic, glass jars, aluminum, metal, and newspapers. Then, once a week, these items are either set curbside in blue containers to be collected or dropped off at waste management centers for recycling. As well, a significant portion of the American populace compost kitchen and yard wastes in their backyards. Before the ‘60s all of that trash would have been buried in the town dump in such a way that it would not decompose for a millennium or more. That town and city dumps are now called waste management centers tells us a lot about how our thinking has changed about the environment.
On the streets today, many of the cars are hybrids that contain engines running on a combination of batteries and gasoline. These cars emit significantly less pollution than traditional gasoline-fueled vehicles and have become the fastest-growing segment in the automotive industry. But the passage of the clean air and water acts in Congress are still threatened by companies opting out of the compliance and by developers drilling in protected areas.
On a national level, minorities have gained significant representation, influence, and power in government. Perhaps the most dramatic example is in Memphis, Tennessee, the city where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Memphis now has an African-American mayor, an African-American U.S. congressman, and a predominantly African-American city council. When King died, the government establishment was all white, despite the fact that nearly half of the city’s citizens were black. Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed Bombingham in the ‘60s for all the racial bombings, is also governed by an African-American mayor. This change in the power structure of local governments is common all over the South as well as in other parts of the country.
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SUSTAINABILITY
In the late 1990s a new approach to thinking about humankind’s relationship with the environment was captured in the coining of the term “Sustainability.” Though the word has been around for centuries, only recently has it become popular to use to describe an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the future. Sustainability describes the attempt to coordinate economic, social, institutional, and environmental areas to protect and nourish both the human and nonhuman environment.
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Despite this real progress, not all African Americans have found a route to the American Dream. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black. About a third of all African-American men are under the supervision of the criminal justice system, and about 12 percent of African-American men in their twenties and thirties are incarcerated. These astronomical incarceration rates have huge social and economic consequences for black women, black children, and black communities.
Still race, ethnicity, and gender have on the whole become less of a factor in the public sphere. Despite the fact that women and minorities have not yet won the highest office in the nation---the presidency---they are represented on the Supreme Court and as heads of key federal departments, such as secretary of state and attorney general. One encouraging indication of how the country’s views on race have changed is Nike’s “Be Like Mike” advertising campaign n the 1990s. Considered the greatest basketball player ever, Michael Jordan so inspired kids and adults that he transcended racial boundaries to become America’s iconic hero. Before the ‘60s this would never have happened.
For women, changes begun in the ‘60s have meant a steady movement toward equality in the workplace and at home. Though women’s salaries are still not comparable to men’s they have increased steadily. In 1963, women earned 58 cents for every dollar a man made. Today, that has risen to 76 cents to every dollar a man makes. Corporations have changed their policies to allow women maternity leave, which was not the case before the Women’s Liberation Movement. This openness to women’s issues has also made it possible for men to get paternity leave. It has encouraged corporations to offer its employees on-site day care and leave for elder care. None of this would have happened without women speaking up for their rights. Though women still struggle with balancing career goals and motherhood, the real difference from the ‘60s is that women are in this struggle, instead of in the battle to be allowed to have a job at all.
The most visible area of improvement for women has been in sports. With the 1972 enactment of Title IX by the U.S. government---which guarantees equal access to sports for women---women’s participation in sports has skyrocketed from 290,000 high school girls to more than 1.9 million high school girls participating in competitive sports. The benefits of Title IX also surface in other areas of women’s lives. High school girls who participate in competitive sports are less likely to become pregnant while in school and are more likely to graduate from high school. The downside of increased participation by women has been that men’s sports programs at high schools and colleges now have to compete for the same dollars. This has led some schools to eliminate expensive sports programs such as football in order to balance the needs of women’s programs.
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Another highly controversial issue to come out of the ‘60s was the emergence of women’s reproductive rights. Birth control pills allowed women to be in charge of their bodies in ways that were inconceivable in the previous generation. Women could choose whether to become pregnant or not. This allowed women to go to college and start careers. Although the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade did not occur until 1973, it was clearly a legacy of the women’s rights movement. The Supreme Court’s granting women the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester is an enduring controversy that still divides the nation.
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WHO SAYS … Too Much Freedom is Too Much?
Nearly every night gay bars and clubs were raided in cities across America. Gays and lesbians were harassed, beaten and arrested simply because of their sexual orientation in the ‘60s. In the early morning of June 28, 1969, around 1:30 a.m., the gay community had finally had enough. Police raided an illegal bar, the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village. Rather than simply run, like most patrons did when police raided a gay bar, customers resisted. Within minutes the police were overwhelmed. More than 2,000 people chanted “Gay Power!” and threw bottles and rocks at the police. Over the next few days gays and lesbians battled the police. Hundreds were beaten and injured. The Stonewall Riot became the signature event that launched the gay rights movement and began the long, difficult fight to change public opinion on homosexuality.
In 1965, 82 percent of men and 52 percent of women said that homosexuality represented a “clear threat” to the American way of life. By 2005, a CBS poll recorded just how much opinions had changed over forty years. Fifty-seven percent of Americans now believed that homosexuals should be allowed to enter into either marriage or civil union relationships. Another 2005 poll, this time by Gallup, showed that 90 percent of the respondents believed that gays and lesbians deserved protections against employment discrimination. Unfortunately, only seventeen states and the District of Columbia ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, while only eight states ban discrimination based on gender orientation. The gay rights movement has made extraordinary advances since Stonewall in 1969, but LBGT (Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender) people are the victims every day of small and large discriminations that go unnoticed by the rest of the country’s population.
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For Native Americans, the most obvious difference has been the fact that the U.S. government has changed its policy of trying to eliminate their culture. Now Indian tribes have a lot more freedom not just to celebrate and practice their cultural heritage but also to make their own choices about their lives. One of the biggest indicators of this change is the increase of people who claim Native American heritage. In 1960, only 524,000 people identified themselves as American Indian. By 1990, that number had risen to 1.9 million, and by 2000, the number more than doubled to 4.1 million. That’s nearly and 800 percent increase.
Many tribes across the country have established profitable casinos, which have raised the living conditions of its members. Consequently, the median household income of Native Americans ($31,799) has risen above that of African Americans ($28,679) and Hispanics ($31,703). This is a significant change for the positive when you consider that Native Americans were the poorest minority in the country and were subject to a government policy of annihilation. The sad fact, however, is that American Indians, like most other minorities in the United States, still lag behind the dominant white culture when it comes to economic success and opportunity.
When looking at the progress Hispanics have made in America, one number stands out: Between 2000 and 2050, the Hispanic population is expected to triple, from 35.6 million to 102.6 million. The voice and power of Americans of Hispanic origin are increasing. California is home to 12.4 million Hispanics, while Texas is home to 7.8 million. Thirteen states---including Arizona, New York, Georgia, Illinois, and Washington---have Hispanic populations of more than a half a million. Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, is Hispanic. One characteristic that describes Hispanic culture and heritage is diversity. Hispanic people come from all over South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico. What binds them is that they can trace their origin or descent to Spain. While Hispanics are making considerable progress, they still trail behind their non-Hispanic White counterparts in income, jobs, education, and housing. The hope is that as the country becomes more brown and less white, more and more opportunities will open up. Only time will tell.
The era of the Sixties exposed many fault lines in our culture and gave voice to many who had none previously.
The legacy is that overt discrimination and government-sanctioned discrimination against minorities has been outlawed. There are now laws in place that guarantee many of the rights and liberties that were limited during the ‘60s. Where progress most noticeably has lagged has been with economic opportunity. Sociologist Eric J. Krieg argues that “racism is built into the very structure of our economic system.” In short, while our laws prohibit racism, our economic system of unfettered capitalism still leaves those without money vulnerable. He sees this vulnerability manifest itself in neighborhoods of the economically weak---those who live in low-income communities and communities of color. These neighborhoods are most likely also to be the home of the most dangerous hazardous waste sites. As an example, he cites the HUD public housing in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. “These enormous towers and open spaces with soccer fields were built on top of a landfill,” explains Krieg. “Here you have a great economic decision, saving state money by placing people in need of housing right-square in the middle of the most polluted section of town.” When Krieg sees figures of high rates of childhood leukemia and asthma as well as low scores in local schools, he’s not surprised. “If you live in a poisonous environment, that home is going to be a contributing factor in the causes of bad health and education,” he concludes. It’s basic logic, when common sense tells us our home is our castle---or perhaps our grave.
Most people witnessed the dramatic disparity between the affluent and the poor in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The poor communities in New Orleans, which were predominantly African-American, suffered the most. The neighborhoods were largely located in the most vulnerable areas below sea level. Unlike more affluent communities, which were on higher ground, these areas were most at risk of flooding and also least able to protect themselves. It was also these poor communities that were not evacuated, because the city did not provide transportation to those who did not have their own cars and trucks. What Hurricane Katrina highlighted was a vulnerability that poor communities have because they are not affluent. Because they are poor and lack economic power, they do not have strong representation in the business community or in government.
The era of the ‘60s exposed many fault lines in our culture and gave voice to many who had none previously. That some of the issues raised and some of the revolutions started are still ongoing demonstrates how deep seated these problems are and how necessary it is that our democracy continue to debate them. The lesson learned from the ‘60s was that all people---young, old, and in between---could make a difference.
That was a very important lesson indeed.
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